Is there a siffleur in the house?

If you were listening to the radio today and heard a new word - siffleur - referring to Ronnie Ronalde who has just died, you have not yet read the Five Leaves' book A Brief History of Whistling. Ronalde is of course covered in the book. A siffleur is a professional whistler. The female version is siffleuse, and our book was launched with a siffleuse, Sheila Harrod, who knew Ronalde, stealing the show. The book also retells John Gorman's story of Ronalde appearing on Sundays at a bar in Hackney, deserted during the week, but an upmarket bar with drag queens on Sundays. This was in the 1950s. Ronalde's whistling was popular in the 1940s and 50s, when he was regularly on the radio, had best-selling records and you could even by a Ronnie Ronalde whistling aid which looked like a polo mint but made of tin.
As far as we know, our book is the only book on the history of whistling!

A Modern Don Juan - subscription offer

Late news about Trent Bookshop has just come in

Geraldine Monk has edited a book of "recollections of poetry in transition" called Cusp (Shearsman), something she describes as a collective autobiography  of those involved in writing and publishing poetry between WWII and the advent of the world wide web. Clearly Geraldine sees the web as - hit me for using the phrase - a game changer - but the strength of the book is in the articles by people who are mostly in their seventies discussing their golden age. And, from here, it looked golden, with a tremendous flourishing of small presses  and reading series. The same names crop up again and again in the articles - Morden Tower, Tom Pickard, Jon Silkin, Basil Bunting, David Tipton, the Liverpool Poets, the Oriel Bookshop in Wales, Poetmeat, Poetry Information... This from a time not only before the internet but at a time when not everyone had a telephone. How did people organise then?
The best writer of the little press world is included - Jim Burns with the wonderfully titled chapter "The Left Bank of the Ribble" and this is followed by Hannah Neate on the Trent Book Shop in Nottingham. What? I had to sit down...
When I came to Nottingham in 1979 there was one very strong radical bookshop, opened in 1972, the remnants of a Communist Party shop and a soon to close Pathfinder (Trotskyist) Bookshop, but several people had mentioned Bux, an avant garde shop that had got into financial difficulties and closed in 1972. Actually, few people mentioned it. And here it was in its earlier, more successful life as the Trent Book Shop, by the Nottingham Forest ground, specialising in small press books from all over the UK, America and elsewhere. In all it ran from 1964-1972. Hannah Neate has written a superb description of the bookshop's life, its holdings, its own publishing and its reading. And I never knew a thing about it, despite working in bookselling and publishing in the city since I arrived.
I immediately rang my friend John Lucas from Shoestring, who both knows Hannah and was a regular customer of the shop - saying that the Trent bookshop was often packed on match days with Forest supporters calling in to pick up the latest poetry. Somehow he - and all the other veterans who must have used the shop - had never mentioned it.
And what of Poetry 66 - the shop's poetry festival? Here's the line up: Adrian Mitchell, Robert Garioch, Alan Brownjohn, Hugh MacDiarmid, Edward Lucie-Smith, Bob Cobbing, Dom Sylvester Houedard, Tom Pickard, George Macbeth, Edwin Morgan, Jon Silkin, Roy Fisher, Anselm Hollo, Ed Dorn, Michael Shayer, Ron Johnson, Gael Turnbull, Jonathan Williams, Jeff Nuttall, John Furnival, Cavan McCarthy, John James, Nick Wayte, Peter Armstrong, Andrew Crozier, Tom Clark, Pete Brown, Tom McGrath, Brian Patten, Adrian Henri, Michael Horovitz, Spike Hawkins, Nathanial Tarn, Vernon Scannell, GS Fraser and Jim Burns.
Crikey, one small bomb would have wiped out almost the entire small press scene of the time. Apart from women. There were of course fewer women involved in the small press scene then than now, but a festival with this sort of line up and NO women? I asked John Lucas who said this was noticed and he organised a sort of protest reading with a fine woman poet from Nottingham of that period, Madge Hales. But even so, this was some line up and indicative of the national and international contacts Trent had.
This was the period of Ultima Thule in Newcastle, Better Books and Indica in London, the Paperback Bookshop in Edinburgh (where I was a regular customer), Unicorn in Brighton - all of which I knew of, and all of which I'd read about. Yet somehow the news of this shop, down the road from me, was news.
And the rest of the book is fascinating too.

Sheffield Independent Publishers' Book Fair

Do drop by our stall if you are near Sheffield on 3rd November. There are also readings from our writers John Lucas, David Belbin and Danuta Reah while Liz Cashdan is taking part in a panel discussion. Not that we're trying to take over or anything.

Are poets intrinsically evil?

Recently, on facebook, my States of Independence colleague Jonathan Taylor posted: "I'm with Shelley, who wished for a world of poets. At least that would be better than now, when we have a world of too many murderers, too many war criminals, too many bent politicians."
The debate that followed concentrated on whether there was a shortage of poets or just good poets. Curmudgeonly as ever, I argued with Jonathan - and Shelley - suggesting that just because someone is a poet does not make them a good person, who might improve our world. I call as expert witnesses the shades of Stalin and Mao Zedong, two of the three biggest mass murderers of last century. Poets. At least Hitler stuck to art. They were not the only poet-leaders with a penchant for doing people in. Ho Chi Minh wiped out the biggest Trotskyist party the world has ever seen, which did not stop British and American Trots dancing through the streets chanting "Ho Ho - Ho Chi Minh". Ho Chi Minh could have suggested something that scanned better.
I cannot comment on the poetry of those mentioned, but I can say that some of the most moving lines on the death of a father appear in Egils Saga (see the Everyman edition, translated by the Five Leaves writer John Lucas), when, that is, Egil could break off from describing the assorted delights of chopping people to bits. So even good poets can be murderous. We also have the recent book of Taliban poetry, indicating that the nexus between murder and poetry is modern as well. Indeed, one could easily put together a Bloodaxe Anthology of Poems by Mass Murderers, and my choice of Bloodaxe is because of their name, and the man who inspired the name, not a criticism of their anthologies.
Even the poetic canon is not devoid of people of dodgy opinion - Ezra Pound for one, or the anti-Semitic TS Eliot. Stevie Smith was not a lot better. And what of the homophobic and anti-Semitic Wyndham Lewis? I am something of a fan of Lewis' paintings, but I would not like to be in a poetry group with him. Nor with TS Eliot - "Come on Tom, that Waste Land poem is OK - can't see anyone publishing it though - but all that stuff about Bleistein and his cigars?"
On the propaganda front... how about Hatikva, the Israeli national(ist) anthem, based on a poem by Imber. Most towns I've been in in Israel have streets named after Bialik, the Zionist poet. Indeed, Jabotinsky, as close to a fascist you will get in Israeli history, was also a poet. And what of Uri Zvi Greenberg, poet supporter of Herut and a Greater Israel occupying the whole of the West Bank?
Sorry Shelley, sorry Jonathan, but personally I would not like to live in a world of poets. The only art form I can think of where the artists are free from mass murderers, occupation justifiers, racists and the like would be jazz. No army has every marched to war with a jazz band leading it.
For the record though, not all poets are mass murderers, war criminals and bent politicians! Especially Jonathan and Shelley.

Flying Goose migration

The Shoestring Press readings at the Flying Goose in Beeston, Nottingham will finally draw to a close in March. This series of mostly, but not exclusively, poetry readings has been running for about seven or eight seasons. John Lucas, the organiser (and a Five Leaves' writer), has not kept the programmes, nor have I. Perhaps someone has. You may not have heard of the series - not surprising as a balance always had to be made between getting enough people along and too many since the venue holds 36 people. There was a famous occasion when 64 turned up, though when people breathed out at the half time break some attendees were propelled through the front door. Over the years the Goose has become a fixture on the small press scene - many, perhaps most, of those attending have been writers, publishers, teachers or organisers of literature, but new people have always been welcome. Most of the Five Leaves' writers from the region, and some from outside the region, have read there. The two last events in the current format are on Tuesday 15 February and 15th March at 7.30pm, the first with Five Leaves/Tindall Street writer David Belbin reading with fellow novelist Thomas Legendre, the series ending with readings by poets Ann Atkinson, a former editor of Staple, and Alan Baker, the founder/publisher of Leafe Press.

The Flying Goose readings will, however, continue in the hands of the poet Sarah Jackson (pictured), a Flying Goose regular since moving to Nottingham, but not under the Shoestring Press banner.

Thanks to John Lucas, and to all the writers who've produced some great nights over the years.

Notes from the frozen north # 1

God, Edinburgh is cold*. But the Scottish Poetry Library, Helena Nelson and a warm and generous audience was a great setting for the last of John Lucas' launch readings for Next Year Will Be Better. Mindful that the subtitle of his book is A memoir of England in the 1950s, he read from the only Scottish section of the book. This comprised a well observed note about visiting Dumfrieshire in the 1950s when he and an English friend were about the only people who stood for the National Anthem (then common practice in England) to find that some people shouted at them to sit down while others pelted the screen with orange peel and the like. A moment of discovery that not all Britons were royalists.
As well as launching John's book, we were launching a book published by him at Shoestring, a collection by Helena Nelson (publisher at Happenstance), Plot and Counterplot. The two readers worked very well together. I was pleased to see other Scottish publishers in the audience, as well as someone from STANZA, the St Andrews poetry festival - but then Helena has a big following in Scotland. It was nice to share some of that, and to bring her some of John Lucas' Scottish fan club.
*It got colder, wandering around later trying to find where First (the inappropriately named bus group) had moved the bus stop for travelling on to Hawick, then colder still in an unheated rattler of a bus for two and a quarter hours under blue lighting like that used in dodgy pub toilets to discourage junkies shooting up. The news from Hawick? The local football team has lost every match it has played this season, the Hawick rugby club is bottom of its league, the local Council is trying to get volunteers to cut the grass in local parks and there's a murder on the front page of the local paper. For this I paid First £6.30 to get there and £6.30 more to get to Carlisle the next day...

More on John Lucas, and Beeston International Poetry Festival

Sixty people came to the Nottingham Bromley House Library launch of John Lucas' Next Year Will Be Better and Things to Say (see postings passim). Two more events to go, London and Edinburgh. John Lucas and most of the guests are out of the picture, which is probably where he, at least, prefers to be. John is also the organiser of the Beeston International Poetry Festival, starting 16th of this month. That's Beeston in Nottingham, and yes, it is international, with Greek, Australian and various other international poets as well as home grown. The full programme is on http://tiny.cc/beestonpoetry, but you do need to scroll down to reach the programme, past a worryingly blank page. There is also a Facebook group:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=121458364576549#!/group.php?gid=129081423811358.

Those who know John will know that he is responsible for neither electronic medium!

Next Year Will Be Better: a memoir of England in the 1950s

"And yet, although the band itself was no great shakes, the atmosphere was so thrilling, so heady with a sense of liberation, that the musical inadequacies didn't matter. At one point in the evening I wandered over to the far side of the rackety old ballroom, my back to the whirl of bodies, the jeans and check shirts, dirndl skirts, flying beads and pony tales, and looked from a smeared window as light faded above elms and, below, the Thames, glistening in oblongs of light cast by the hotel, made its way toward London. Behind me, the sprung floor shook and thumped to a number that may have been 'Muskrat Ramble'. New Orleans on Thames I thought. And on later occasions, when on a packed, sweaty Saturday night I heard Sandy Brown's band in full cry, the thought turned to something like ecstasy."

We will be launching John Lucas' new book in Nottingham, this Saturday 2.00pm at Bromley House Library, Monday 1st November at Bookmarks Bookshop in London at 6.30pm and on Saturday 20 November 3.00pm at the Scottish Poetry Library. All free, refreshments provided.

Signed copies of John's book can be ordered via http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/next_year_will_be_better_john_lucas_i020900.aspx

John Lucas, Easter 1944

Details of John's latest book (see last post) will follow next time, since we need to make space to mention his previous book, Things to Say, or rather point people in the direction of the Guardian on-line discussion of one poem from the collection, "Easter, 1944". At time of posting there are 105 comments added to the poem. Thanks to Carol Rumens for including it and starting off the discussion.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/sep/27/poem-of-the-week-john-lucas?showallcomments=true#start-of-comments

Next Year Will Be Batter, no, Bitter, no Better

There are few things worse in publishing than receiving a newly printed hardback book - nice paper, cover illustration has worked out well, numbers looking good for launch events, talk of reviews in the air - then someone notices a horrible mistake on the cover. The cover that has been checked 47 times. The title is wrong on the spine. And look, is that really how you spell Alan Ginsberg on the back ? (No is the answer.) Will anyone notice the latter? Maybe the odd reader. Will anyone notice the former? Everyone. And have the advance mail order copies gone, and has the printer dispatched the trade copies to the warehouse? Of course. So, John Lucas's Next Year Will Be Better (or Next Year Will Better if you believe the current spine): a memoir of England in the 1950s has a rocky start. No problem though, the printer will reprint the cover at once, the distributor will rejacket their copies, the mail orderers will be sent new covers, the office stock will be rejacketed. All for the sake of two missing letters. John is fine about it. A publisher himself, he once printed a book with nothing on the spine at all, not noticing until a bookseller pointed it out. Or there was Arc, which printed one of their Ivor Cutler books with a seven digit ISBN on the back so no bookshops knew how to re-order it ("We wondered why that one always sold less than the others"). Oh how we laugh about these things.
Next posting, something about the book itself, and details of launch events.

New John Lucas poetry collection

This is my 100th blog entry, the system tells me. And a good way to celebrate is by announcing John Lucas' new poetry collection. Copies are available now via the long website address at the bottom. Don't be confused about the different cover currently on the Inpress website, that was our first, draft cover, before we used the one you see here. John Lucas is a great friend of Five Leaves but this is his first solo collection with us. John is one of the few modern poets who combines politics, class, love and art in his work, combining them all with great technical skill. His fans will be pleased to know that his alter ego, Thorn Gruin, makes an appearance. Many of these poems reflect issues taken up at more length in his Next Year Will Be Better: a memoir of England in the 1950s, due later in the summer. http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/things_to_say_john_lucas_i020898.aspx

"Keep beavering away" - Stanley Middleton 1919-2009, a celebration

Tamar Hodes, one of the speakers at the Nottingham celebration of the life of Stanley Middleton repeated this (a variation on the less polite army version), his advice to her as a young writer some 27 years ago, in describing how Stanley took her under his wing in Cambridge, leading to so many years of correspondence. Various of us read from or commented on his literary work, or talked about his life outside of the book world. Paul Binding gave a critique of some titles, which will certainly drive me to read or reread the ones he discussed. We were accompanied by songs from Caroline Danks, one of his grandchildren. The highlight of the day for me though was Philip Davis reading a section from Stanley's last novel, A Cautious Approach, to be published this August by Hutchinson. Philip read, wonderfully, a very moving passage about a son and father relationship, a difficult relationship. I hope the rest of the book, Stanley's 46th I think, will be as good. The event was largely organised by David Belbin and supported by both Nottingham universities, Five Leaves, Writing East Midlands and The Bookcase. The celebration was fully booked, the audience largely from an older generation of readers and those who had known Stanley from his teaching days and from his church as well as from his writing. A very fitting occasion.

Stanely Middleton 1919-2009: a celebration

The handsome chap with the sideburns and the book collection is Stanley at the time he was joint winner of the Booker Prize for Holiday.
Five Leaves and others, in cooperation with the Middleton family, are organising a celebration of his life, 2.00-4.30 on Saturday May 8th at the Djanogly Lecture Theatre, Lakeside, University of Nottingham NG7 2RD.
Stanley lived in Nottingham all his life, save for his war service. He worked as an English teacher yet still wrote a published novel nearly every year from 1958 onwards.
The celebration will include live music from Stanley's granddaughter, the soprano Caroline Danks, accompanied by Nicholas Danks on piano. There will be readings from his published work, unpublished letters and his poetry.
For a period Stanley's Holiday was on Five Leaves' list before reverting to Hutchinson. We had re-issued it for his 80th birthday together with the festschrift Stanley Middleton at Eighty. There are still a few copies of the latter available. Only on typing this did I realise that all the speakers and readers at the celebration have been regularly or occasionally published by Five Leaves, including David Belbin, John Lucas, Sue Dymoke, Barry Cole, Philip Davis and Tamar Hodes, while Paul Binding is currently working on a commission for the press. That is rather pleasing.
For further information and to reserve a place see http://tiny.cc/middleton. All are welcome to attend. There will be refreshments and the event is free.

The names of the forgotten

Penniless Press is a literary journal appearing roughly quarterly, but so roughly quarterly that about once a year I think "Hang on, has my sub run out or has it got lost in the post?" This time, wandering through its website (http://www.pennilesspress.co.uk/) to check - and, dear reader, allow time for a wander as the route is not linear - I found The Penniless Press Reader, available for £8.18 (sic) plus postage. The book is printed on demand from Lulu and arrived in about four or five days. No ISBN so this seems the only way to obtain a copy. But well worth while. Penniless Press is produced in the most basic format, but includes excellent writing including important essays by John Lucas and that small press hero Jim Burns. The best essays and some poetry from issues 1-26, from 1995-2008 are included here, good value at over 400 pages.

I've lifted a chapter heading from the book as the subject of this post in gentle admiration not scorn that the Reader includes chapters on many people who are less well known than they once were (like Irving Howe) or the barely remembered at all (come in Maxwell Bodenheim).

Five Leaves' writers John Lucas and Andy Croft are well represented (and from our Nottinghamshire base the late Leslie Williamson writing about DH Lawrence's friend Willie Hopkin, who Les knew well in Eastwood when he was young). With the possible exception of S. Kadison and the certain exception of Elizabeth Howkins all the contributors to the book are chaps, unusual these days in a literary mag.

If I could describe Penniless in a sentence it would be (from an editorial in issue three) that "Literature should be written for enthusiasts by enthusiasts, and when someone ask you about a writer, talk about the writing and ignore the prizes."

Alan Dent, the editor, is known to have his heart on the left, which adds something to his use of inprint.solutions@brothersofcharity.org.uk as printer of the last issue of the magazine found on my shelves. And that reminds me that the late Poetry Nottingham used to be printed by the Christian Duplicating Services. I hope they only duplicated sheets of paper.