tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41986052410107413572024-03-14T03:58:53.067-07:00Planet-Shaped HorseWhere Luke Kennard Posts ThingsLuke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comBlogger61125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-56968644303196437512016-05-25T01:19:00.000-07:002016-05-25T01:19:42.171-07:00<img height="320" src="http://yarinneolacak.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/metatrons-cube.jpg" width="291" /><img height="204" src="http://www.swisseduc.ch/glaciers/glossary/icons/bergschrund.jpg" width="320" /><br />
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<img height="185" src="http://images.animalpicturesociety.com/images/es/img_1898.jpg" width="320" /><img height="640" src="https://ton.twitter.com/1.1/ton/data/dm/735383480331317251/735383480356462593/UiYhYuIV.jpg" width="480" /><br />
<img height="228" src="http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NTcwWDc5Nw==/z/9ikAAOxywh1TC8Sz/$_1.JPG" width="320" /><img height="400" src="https://ton.twitter.com/1.1/ton/data/dm/735383495560855555/735383495585959937/qpmnPDMc.jpg" width="307" />Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-83907901554775105612016-04-18T03:18:00.001-07:002016-04-18T03:18:31.695-07:00I'm going to be posting two or maybe three things on here in the next couple of months because I HAVE A PRODUCT TO SELL and that product is my 5th collection of poetry, <i>Cain</i>, due in June from Penned in the Margins.<div>
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There is a big old launch in London on June 6th, 7pm.</div>
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https://www.facebook.com/events/540459899458172/</div>
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There is also a pre-launch launch in the Birmingham branch of Waterstones on May 26th, 7pm.</div>
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https://www.waterstones.com/events/luke-kennard-poetry-book-lunch/birmingham</div>
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You are invited to both.</div>
Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-84356757863604319682014-09-11T12:36:00.000-07:002014-09-11T12:37:15.943-07:00see the whole thing as a small cog<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Feels silly having an announcement that I’m taking a
long-term break from poetry as the last thing on this blog, so although there
are lots of other things I could be doing (I could get on with some admin, I
could borrow my Nintendo DS back from my little brother and play Chocobo Tales
for a few hours, I could file my tax return, a sensible thing to do before the
birth of my next child which is in about five days, probably) I am writing a
blog entry about the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/11/next-generation-20-poets-poetry-book-society-kate-tempest">Poetry Book Society's Next Generation Poets List</a></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> which I'm childishly excited to be a part of.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">And now that I come to check,
the entry saying I was taking a break from poetry was almost exactly a year
ago. So, what, a YEAR isn’t long enough for you? I hope I never have to go for
lunch at YOUR house and wait a month and a half for you to make some cheese on
toast, that’s all. It’s not like I’m Billy Corgan. And yeah, I know I said “perhaps
forever”: I was tired and sad about my publisher announcing it was no longer
going to publish any single-author poetry collections and just generally in a bad
mood and I had to get on with finishing my novel which I still haven’t
finished. And don’t you know what the word “perhaps” means? Right. So nyeh. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I think anyone would have lots of conflicting
feelings about something like this, even in terms of how your own friends react
to it because you’ll have friends who are simply innocently happy for you and
friends who see the whole thing as a small cog in the neo-liberal conspiracy and,
like most of us who took it up around 2007 and hard-wired it into our psyches, I
now basically use Facebook as a baby scrapbook anyway. I remember after the Times
did a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Facebook Poets </i>feature a
few years ago (the title wasn’t run by any of us), a friend of mine was all, “Why
the hell would you agree to that? What were you thinking?” And I was like, “Why
not, homes?” (his surname was Homes) “I like being in magazines!” And he was
all, “Yeah, well, you look like a tit in that cardigan.” And I was all, “You’re
just angry because you feel attracted to me and you don’t know how to process
that.” And he was like, “Shows what you know.” I blew him a kiss, he tore it
up, we haven’t spoken since.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihcUD11VkznzO7ce3ov5UgqdRseFTn8OdmGdCtM0aeKRnweywjFcXF7_vJoiqB7XrmIUrtLAtC0DAd-rjETzjlQaWPQoPz-cn0Ie808TbAa8AZnk6KV9XQZzqUIw3uVtqEtRQaNSgGZiGG/s1600/February+2014+142.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihcUD11VkznzO7ce3ov5UgqdRseFTn8OdmGdCtM0aeKRnweywjFcXF7_vJoiqB7XrmIUrtLAtC0DAd-rjETzjlQaWPQoPz-cn0Ie808TbAa8AZnk6KV9XQZzqUIw3uVtqEtRQaNSgGZiGG/s1600/February+2014+142.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">So yeah, naturally, none of us has any business entering
a debate part of which may circle around whether you’re any good or not. I keep coming up with my list of, say, Deep Space Nine Poets or Voyager Poets, but even casually making a list of poets whose work I really like feels kind of divisive. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I
had some practice in the whole area of not entering debates (or 'eBates' as I call them) when I was shortlisted for the Forward
Prize which maybe I never told you about apart from saying, “I’ll stake my Forward
Prize for Best Collection shortlisting on it!” every time I’m fairly certain
about something. This was early 2007 and only really, really cool people had
even </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">heard </i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">of Facebook and there was
no Twitter and we had to make our own fun by rubbing two sticks together and
MySpace and Bebo. Really the only means people had of lashing out was in the
comments fields under newspaper articles. So after the initial glee at being shortlisted
for something I went into a genuine “slough of despond” (a/c my GP) because
under every article about the shortlisting there would be upwards of 450
comments of bilious rage. I know, I know, “pathologically oversensitive”, but
still: imagine – you work at something for several years because you love it,
you’re extremely lucky that someone else sees something worthwhile in it and
then you get a big break and you have a few days feeling so overjoyed at your
work potentially reaching a larger audience and then you realise that 1. It is
and 2. They want to kill you. All of them. Without exception.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Anyway, this time it’s different. Not because I’m
older and wiser, but because I got a posse. And maybe it’s marginally more
likely that I’ll end up editing a respected journal so you’d better not say
anything to offend me because so help me God, I will find out who you are
behind your hilarious made up name and I will black-ball you, sir, I will
black-ball you and everyone you care about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">And, as the irreplacable Groucho Marx once said, “I
wouldn’t want to be part of any list that didn’t have me on it and also it’s
too dark to read.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Love love love love love,<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Luke<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">x<o:p></o:p></span>Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-11647473112511070402013-09-03T14:05:00.002-07:002013-09-03T14:05:58.649-07:00Unemployed In Bristol I ThinkOh, golly, has it really been SEVENTEEN YEARS since I posted anything on here? How remiss.<br />
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*<br />
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I ummed a lot about writing this because it felt like a kind of 'The Seamus Heaney I Knew' thing, but I've decided that if I can make a great loss in some small way <em>about me</em>, I'm okay with that. In 2005, at the beginning of my PhD thesis, I wrote to Seamus Heaney c/o Faber & Faber asking him some questions about <em>Stations</em>, a pamphlet of prose poems from 1971 published by Honest Ulsterman. (Six of them were later anthologised in the <em>Selected</em>, but they're better taken together - it's a beautifully crafted sequence). I also asked about his opinion of the prose poem form in general, adopted a tone somewhere between toady and impertinent and failed to address him as Professor. I wasn't really expecting to hear back, and neither should I have done, especially since I barely answer emails from my own family. But I received a six page letter from him a week later with exceptionally detailed answers and some recommendations for Continental prose poets I hadn't read or even heard of at that point, all of which was extremely helpful for the chapter I was working on, not to mention the thesis as a whole. Given that he probably got hundreds of letters, questions and requests from students a week (and, I can only infer, answered the whole damn lot of them with the same generosity), I was really touched by that.<br />
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*<br />
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I'm reading Timothy Donnelly's <em>The Cloud Corporation</em>, which I like a lot. If there were two of me I'd like to put a module together on 21st century American poetry. There are [is] not two of me.<br />
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*<br />
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I was looking through the files I salvaged from an old PC and came across my first attempt at a prose poem, written in the Autumn of 2003 when I was unemployed in Bristol. I think it was the week I tried to get a job in Orange's call-centre and in the interview they asked me what I would say if someone threatened to leave Orange and I said I'd tell them to take a long, hard look at themselves in the mirror and ask their reflection if they were really even worthy of Orange. My first draft manuscript of <em>The Solex Brothers </em>contained a whole bunch of trad-length prose poems in between the chaptered ones, but they were cut on grounds of being kind of weak. Check it out for my cutesy definite article posturing, faux-naif / menacing / slightly irritating tone and all the other leitmotifs which have defined my career 2005-2013. I'm taking a break from poetry for a while, PERHAPS FOREVER, so it felt like an appropriate last thing for a bit.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">HE TURNED IN TERROR FROM THE
SCENE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I found nothing disagreeable
in my memory, but wrote to request a history of my recent actions and received
terrible news. The postman punched me right in the mouth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">‘I was raised in a pit of
snakes,’ I spat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">‘When I found you, I threw
in more snakes,’ he replied.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">At dinner I have to sit at
the table with a woman who killed both her sisters. I keep saying, ‘I don’t
want to sit with this woman.’ But nobody listens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Amber light from the
cartographer’s shack. She clips the padlock to the door and sets off after the
spies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">‘I love your maps!’ I shout
– she looks back and smiles, letting her hair fall over her face like a tree
full of crows disturbed into sudden flight by a passing taxi bearing me to the
station later that week. Her style reminds me very much of yours – and her
manner of thinking is identical.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I follow the cartographer,
but the camera lingers on my cigarette, smouldering in the wet grass of the
cemetery. A single raindrop extinguishes the cigarette and night falls. The
camera remains on the cigarette for the rest of the film.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-20494644594403319142013-04-01T02:55:00.004-07:002013-04-01T02:55:54.562-07:00mercurial sphynx-like unknowableI think I'm going to do NaPoWriMo again. I'm in a bit of a cul de sac (or maybe even a whole tranche of culs de sac) after finishing a few projects and it'll probably sort me out. If I manage to I'll post the first later.<br />
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In the mean time, FOR THIS WEEK ONLY, my novella <em>Holophin </em>is FREE! on the Kindle. <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Holophin-ebook/dp/B00AITXR1C/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1364807982&sr=8-1">Get it by clicking here!</a> If you don't have a Kindle, why don't you download it anyway and then one day maybe you will have a Kindle - because God knows what <em>else</em> we're supposed to get you for your birthday, you mercurial, sphynx-like unknowable! - and you'll have <em>Holophin</em> waiting for you for free? I know, I know, because you "don't want to", etc. Gee whiz, I was only trying to help.<br />
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This is a picture of my potato brush. It was supposed to be a nail brush, but I use it for scrubbing potatoes. It also looks sort of like a Holophin being born in some kind of primordial blue ooze.</div>
Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-22073218612912736952012-11-25T07:44:00.002-08:002012-11-25T07:44:53.194-08:00This is Not a Book Blog<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
You okay? You're okay, aren't you? I hate thinking of you not being okay. Here's a new post about some poetry. And an announcement that I have two readings in London coming up, largely to read from the new poetry collection. One is for Broadcast in the Betsey Trotwood, details <a href="https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/360929754001937/">HERE!</a> The other is for Goldsmiths, details NOWHERE! I think it's probably just for Goldsmiths students. In the latter I'll read a bit from Holophin too. We're down to the last seven copies of Holophin, I have three of them and my mum is threatening to buy the last four in order to improve the eBay resale value. </div>
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Nobody with a pulse needs me to tell them to read Matthew Welton. I know this because whenever anyone asks me which poetry I've been enjoying recently and I say, among other names, "Matthew Welton," they say, "Well, <em>obviously </em>Matthew Welton," and roll their eyes like I just retweeted a major news story. What you may need telling is that Welton has a ltd edition chapbook out with F.U.N.E.X., a subsidiary of Eggbox Publishing. And also that it is one of my favourite things he has ever done. It is called <em>Waffles</em>.<br />
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You want me to tell you <em>WHY</em> I like it so much? What is this, a fucking A-level English exam?<br />
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Ok, first off Welton's sense of rhythm is so strong it's like Art Blakey is using your head as a bongo. This is the first time I have ever encountered an ear-worm in poetry: I read it <em>once</em> and its lines were already swirling around in my head for the rest of the day. It is the funniest, wisest, saddest portrayal of psychological dissonance this side of 19th century Russia. As with a lot of Welton's work, the process is telegraphed pretty clearly, but where most of us are happy to attempt a process, make ironic reference to that process and shove thre resulting pile of matchsticks to our editors with a desultory sneer, Welton builds a fleet of goddamn schooners. (Process in this case being a looping, reincorporating pattern of words and themes, the waffles acting as a grid, a licence to ruminate, a two-way symbol for meaning and meaninglessness). So basically it's like art, but GOOD. <br />
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It can be acquired from Eggbox <a href="http://www.eggboxpublishing.com/articles/show/funex_01__waffles">TOTALLY JUST HERE YOU CLICK HERE AND YOU GO THERE OH WHAT A WORLD!</a> I have no. 160 of 300, so hurry the hell up, y'hear? <br />
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And now a collection by a poet whose work you may not be familiar with yet (maybe I'll make this into another regular feature I do once and never return to again), but whose work I've been enjoying just as much these last few weeks, Neil Fraser Addison's <em>Stealth. Exile. Inventory</em>. This is another beautifully produced boutique publication, this time from OWT Press and you can try to acquire it <a href="http://www.gosubsist.com/stealth-exile-inventory/">FROM THIS PLACE!</a> I think I'll just cite three bits I love from this substantial collection so as not to just type out the whole thing:<br />
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"Time is a thunderstorm of dunce caps, one season long."<br />
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*<br />
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"There is always somebody<br />
appalled by death alone,<br />
insisting on the clutter of damnation<br />
<br />
as if it represented<br />
full-employment for God..."<br />
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*<br />
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"Of course, what the world<br />
needs now<br />
is another pantheon of immortal hicks<br />
slaying their every escape-route."<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Okay, must go. There are piles of paper to file from the whole of this year and it's already drinking hot alcohol in public season again.Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-60268261800827695682012-10-13T06:39:00.000-07:002012-10-13T06:39:11.891-07:00Everyone Gets Bupkiss<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN6JsTiGelGSr0Gm2W2YChmtGgNOq911vYaTn7tVvT5TAIlyEhfFgtFsd_YhtQAVKBPdd02xe3fkugPT2Bo7edQyY4uDYDP_BRgJytWYg1TK32RZZDizfrDNWc5f19Glo0-BO4I7M2JDG6/s1600/alostexpressioncover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN6JsTiGelGSr0Gm2W2YChmtGgNOq911vYaTn7tVvT5TAIlyEhfFgtFsd_YhtQAVKBPdd02xe3fkugPT2Bo7edQyY4uDYDP_BRgJytWYg1TK32RZZDizfrDNWc5f19Glo0-BO4I7M2JDG6/s1600/alostexpressioncover.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">0.1 So I was visiting my folks and a good friend of the
family dropped by, got given a copy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Holophin</i>
by my mum, admired the book and said, ‘So how much money did you have to pay to
get that done then?’ I could have been (and would have been if I didn’t love
this guy) mildly insulted at the implication that I had self-published a work
through a vanity press, like an old man with his war memoir in the early 90s
who loses his savings on the endeavor and has to keep 6,000 unedited,
unsellable copies in his attic like a literalisation of unprocessed trauma in,
oh, for goodness’ sake drop the extended metaphor. But: I’m a hypocrite who
wants recognition from everyone but who doesn’t go on and on about his achievements
absolutely all the time, more’s the pity as if I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">did </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>people would have a more
accurate idea of what I am. Fact is, if you’re shifting a few hundred to a
couple of thousand poetry books why would you expect a lovely friend of your
family to be aware of your prior literary endeavours? You wouldn’t, is what. Now,
I could also have felt hurt by the implication that I’d somehow magicked a
private income which lasted beyond paying rent, bills and groceries to afford
to have my own books printed to such a high standard as PitM achieves, thus
making me a killer cocktail of delusional, entitled and privileged. But what
can I say? I’m magnanimous enough only to whinge on a blog about it.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">0.2 So I mumbled about how it was a London-based indie press
(I may have said small, in italics) and that I didn’t have to pay anything. I
could have gone on to say that the London-based press had also organised and
paid for a launch event which was by far the most well-run, thoughtful,
thoroughly promoted and advertised lit event I’ve had the pleasure of being
involved with. And that, no, I didn’t pay for it out of my imaginary trust
fund. PitM paid for it because they’re a business and they’re very good at what
they do. Instead I muttered something further about acknowledging my mother as
a distributor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">1.0 But it got me thinking about the implications of our
current models of cultural distribution again, the fact that there are a whole lot
of good writers, with small and large presses, and also plenty who <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i> self-producing work of real quality
but where, nevertheless, supply outstrips demand by several orders of magnitude.
Ways of not being assholes to one another, is I guess what I’m interested in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt 18pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.1.<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>The
very worst present you could <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ever</i>
give to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anyone</i> is a copy of your own
book. I think I’ve even done this on two occasions in the last 15 years and
would hereby like to offer the people I did this to a replacement present of
some wine or a record they might like.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">1.2 C.f. paragraph 2, that I mean to say I didn’t have to
pay anything unless you count occasionally buying copies of the book myself to
sell at readings, aside from the stack of complimentary copies PitM give to
their authors. But I’m pretty sure even Maya Angelou has to buy copies of her
own book if she wants to give a bunch of them away to friends and family. I’m
assuming when she reads in public there’s a bookseller on hand to provide books
to the audience because this even happens to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">me</i> sometimes, including at the aforementioned launch. (NOTE: Sub,
please check with Maya Angelou).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the
former is really just another way of getting the book out there, circumnavigating
the internet. Once you’ve bought ten, you sell ten and then use the money to
buy ten more and, perhaps, some beer and a pie. I guess one upshot of the
wonderful increase in small-print-run technology is that there are plenty of
publishing models which rely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">solely</i>
on the author buying their own books and foisting them on friends and family or
some imaginary “community”. We can call this the Utopian Bullshit model of
publishing [See 1.8].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">1.3 That there is a kind of low-level “artist shaming” which
even genuinely nice people like to indulge in, and that it has to do with pre-emptively
keeping anyone who thinks of themselves as an artist or writer’s “feet on the
ground” just in case they were going to swan around the place thinking they’re
special.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">1.4 Is “artist shaming” a peculiarly British thing? At least
under Stalin you got to swan around thinking you were special for a year or two
before they reinterpreted your work and called in the firing squad.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">1.5 That I feel so uncomfortable with the whole thing that I
even cringed to write “artist” (in inverted commas) in 1.3 as it feels like I’m
making grandiose claims for myself. Which is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my </i>attempt to pre-emptively strike (via self-deprecation, in this
case internal) against the well-meaning poltroon in 1.3. Why would you want to
shame me? I already think I’m a charlatan! [lies on back to expose belly and
whimpers.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">1.6 Treatment for a movie in which a war is fought using
pre-emptive self-deprecation as the weapon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">1.7. There is no right of reply, a review is a review and
you take it on the chin, even if you have kind of a weak chin, but there was a
fairly trouncing review of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Migraine Hotel
</i>in one of the major poetry reviews by a reasonably well-known poet a couple
of years ago which has stuck with me. The reviewer quoted at length from my
About the Author page. It was a silly About the Author page, which had actually
been cribbed (in, I swear, a proofing error) from my first collection, the 2004
version of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Solex Brothers</i>,
without my realising it. It was a mistake: I hadn’t provided a new AtA, an old
one was put in as a place-holder and we forgot to change it. Meaning that it
was 5 years out of date in terms of content as well as register; in fact it
didn’t even mention my previous collection being shortlisted for the Forward
Prize, which, all dissembling aside, was clearly the foundation of my career,
an accolade I was very fortunate to receive, and not something I’m falsely
modest about. I’m not going to reprint it here because the whole thing is too
irritating to me to this day; I’ll leave it at stating the AtA in the first run
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Migraine Hotel </i>was excessively
self-deprecating and overly wordy in a manner I thought to be funny (a register
I have come to call “fucking dickhead”). It’s hard to explain why I thought
this was okay, especially if you’re younger than me and you’ve grown up in a
country and a culture where literally everybody, from the fake Big Issue seller
with his “last copy” to the local radio DJ, to your mum, to the member of
parliament, to the meter reader, to the teacher, to the singer songwriter
thinks they’re an edgy stand-up comedian. Post- Innocent Smoothies, jocular
product descriptions and About the Author sections are the orthodoxy, are
ubiquitous and are about as funny as a root canal. So it’s rare to open a book
without finding:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: yellow;">Benjamin Something pokes honey
badgers with spoons and when he is not doing this he can be found oscillating
gently in a blanket of crepuscular mouthfaces. Prendergast! Prendergast! He
works as a Cornetto for eleven burly Manchurians and is married to the fucking
sea. Lick his knee and taste a whirlwind!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">off the top of my head, but I want you to think back to
2004, when I was in my early twenties and there was no Twitter or Facebook and
none of us had realised how mindlessly unfunny we were. Jocular About the
Author sections, especially in the dangerously unselfconscious field of poetry,
still seemed kind of edgy. (They <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">weren’t</i>,
of course; I’m just asking you to accept that they seemed that way to me). So
the critic quoted at length from my AtA and came to the conclusion that I was
an evasive hypocrite who wanted admiration for my accolades which I didn’t even
have the guts to mention at the same time as posing as someone who is above
that kind of thing. Not content with spending 200 words of a 300 word review
talking about the front papers, the critic also went in for a little am-psych:
“Kennard clearly cares very deeply about his achievements [the AtA <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">did</i> mention the Eric Gregory Award and
some other stuff], as well he might, but read between the lines: He wants us to
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">think</i> he doesn’t care about it.”
(paraphrase – it’s not to hand), inviting the reader to come to their own
conclusions about what an intolerable wanker I must be. Which, well, fair
enough, but to this day, to this hour, my feeling is still: well, perhaps I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i> feel genuinely conflicted about the
whole thing. Don’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i>? Perhaps
anyone halfway CROSSOUTnarcisisitc personality disorderCROSSOUT thoughtful
would and ought to feel conflicted about it. And maybe what you’re responding
to is your own disproportionate esteem for awards, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">1.8 Oh, yeah, so on the Utopian Bullshit model and why I’m
being dismissive of it… What it is, see, is that it’s presented to us as<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the ultimate democratisation of culture.
Suddenly all of us can publish, and the books can look either equally lovely
(courtesy of aforementioned small print-run tech) or equally neutral/crap
(courtesy of eBooks). I want to argue the exact opposite for a couple of
paragraphs, i.e. that the “studio” model we’re supposed to be celebrating the
dissolution of in the name of egalitarianism, where a big publisher gives you
some money and gets behind your book in terms of production, promotion and
distribution, is actually a buttload more egalitarian. (Granted, this involves
accepting that 75% of embittered whinging about trad publishing being a closed
circle is what I just described it as, which it is.) And it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is </i>more equal. Because, showman or agoraphobic,
you’d benefit from the same robust system of distribution and promotion. The
really small-press model, you could argue, has its own negative equality –
everyone gets bupkiss – but let’s return to our false dichotomy: two poets who
don’t exist publish a collection with the same small press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: yellow;">Subject A is a well-connected garrulous millionaire who
lives in London; he buys 100,000 copies of his book and organises a tour in a
hundred provincial theatres where he not only gives copies of the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>book away for free, but gives people free
booze too. National treasures write blurbs. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="color: yellow;">Subject B is a low-income socially awkward malcontent who
lives in rural Wales miles from the nearest train station. He isn’t Welsh,
which only adds to his problems. He can barely afford to buy a couple of copies
of his own book, has no connections to organise readings or launches and/so
although his work is exceptionally powerful and beautiful and formally interesting,
nobody ever gets to hear about it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I’m not even sure what I’m arguing here. Just that it would be
nice if Subject B was able to exist as a writer too, and I’m not sure he<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> is</i> under the Utopian Bullshit model.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">1.9 Oh, and please don’t contact me to discuss this: I’m absolutely
not trying to start a dialogue and I genuinely have no interest whatsoever in
your opinion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">2.0 Please buy my new collection of poetry <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Lost Expression</i> from Salt, available
this week.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span>Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-15234736298165763242012-09-28T09:29:00.001-07:002012-09-28T09:29:14.062-07:00The Kindest Bookmark<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiHHgipofbIQDut8ZTItt_t1fFvIAOQSrNM5J5F9V5sbkCNBPfa4MHXg0oBmXnMxTUEVpjkx-HA1toe1hWHcY1Yd2Um9mpSOig1A3uDLJmUo_RIBN65T2l5nIsY-ftyw4i_3UMLqqKbiuT/s1600/kindest+bookmark.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiHHgipofbIQDut8ZTItt_t1fFvIAOQSrNM5J5F9V5sbkCNBPfa4MHXg0oBmXnMxTUEVpjkx-HA1toe1hWHcY1Yd2Um9mpSOig1A3uDLJmUo_RIBN65T2l5nIsY-ftyw4i_3UMLqqKbiuT/s320/kindest+bookmark.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-42483608721703911632012-09-03T03:53:00.000-07:002012-09-04T02:36:02.364-07:00Free Holophin!<span style="color: yellow;">UPDATE: [To small dog in the doorway.] "The position has been filled."</span><br />
<br />
This mercifully brief post will contain details of how you can win ONE FREE COPY of Holophin if you respond - through a single Tweet - to my request by 5pm today. Rules: if you <i>already have</i> Holophin, it is mean to enter this competition. If nobody responds I will <i>burn</i> one free copy of Holophin, making it a limited edition of 299 and thereby increasing its resale value.<br />
<br />
I hate it when one side of my collar folds out over the collar of my jacket and simply <i>won't</i> tuck back in, like it thinks it's a tuft of hair on a 19th century schoolboy. I really, really hate it. Yeah, I know: <i>starch</i>. Thanks for caring. I'll let you know when I get back from the apothecary.<br />
<br />
<i>Holophin</i> is officially available now <a href="http://www.pennedinthemargins.co.uk/index.php/2012/08/holophin/">from Penned in the Margins</a> and I am avidly putting together a mix-tape for the launch party on Saturday (Sept 8th), which<i> genuinely is</i> in the place where they film <i>Dragon's Den</i>. Frankly I'm surprised you don't want to come along just to see the space. And Franklin, I'm surprised at your trying to make daily prayer constitutional - this is 1787, sir!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1PKSyxtYaNxQzungvGSaW01jotlOcaKPfrjQHy9UYI4BeTxO3ayylK4k_G9W0202Q_XDYunK71ETtHPThAdpQ1Q8JwkYCifd2a3mcsGxlq_Xn9J_T7Om_kFogri9W8KmrgfeZgyC4x2hL/s1600/Holophin+Launch.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1PKSyxtYaNxQzungvGSaW01jotlOcaKPfrjQHy9UYI4BeTxO3ayylK4k_G9W0202Q_XDYunK71ETtHPThAdpQ1Q8JwkYCifd2a3mcsGxlq_Xn9J_T7Om_kFogri9W8KmrgfeZgyC4x2hL/s320/Holophin+Launch.JPG" width="208" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
It is also the launch of Ross Sutherland's sophomore poetry collection <i>Emergency Window</i>, which I have and it's wonderful. Don't we both look windswept?</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
Oh, so, yeah, the giveaway. It relates to the mix-tape I'm making. So far I have selected songs which have some resonance with behaviour/sensory modification (Deerhoof's 'The Perfect Me', XTC's 'Senses Working Overtime'); dolphins (The Byrd's 'Dolphin's Smile'); parentage (The Dirty Projector's 'Offspring Are Blank') and some stuff to do with folk-tales and scary technology. So what I'm looking for is a suggestion of ONE SONG, via Tweet, which I can include on my Holophin mix-tape to be played on the night. And my favourite one will receive a pristine (or only very slightly damaged) copy of Holophin with FULL POSTAGE AND PACKING AND LUKE WALKING ALL THE WAY TO THE FUCKING POST-OFFICE absolutely gratis. I Tweet as @Lukekennard because I didn't notice you were supposed to come up with a swell pretend name.Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-49172515241556457052012-08-10T01:04:00.000-07:002012-08-10T01:04:13.366-07:00Ha ha oh<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrKwO9g-MT87jj3scZWFvYJEYoZXVUJF_kPQWip2fBW5QkZaFnoTn27RIgudx5yTzEaPSlvXmID63I1CGLe8mISuPwmx1j6zIHga6JZoLVJ9tLa8h4_4KriseXTexQ7PwOL2IrqCJzSEpN/s1600/holophin+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrKwO9g-MT87jj3scZWFvYJEYoZXVUJF_kPQWip2fBW5QkZaFnoTn27RIgudx5yTzEaPSlvXmID63I1CGLe8mISuPwmx1j6zIHga6JZoLVJ9tLa8h4_4KriseXTexQ7PwOL2IrqCJzSEpN/s1600/holophin+cover.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At school everyone used to say, "Purple is the colour of sexual frustration. You are wearing purple, therefore you are sexually frustrated. Let us all laugh at a plight we will only ever come to understand twenty years into a chaste, joyless marriage we are keeping together for the sake of our kids. Ha ha oh."</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
My weird prose-poem-science-fiction novella, <i>Holophin</i>, is being published by Penned in the Margins on September 1st in a delightful hardback ltd edition. This isn't like those Kinder Surprise Teeny Terrapins ltd editions, which were limited to 1.6 billion per continent. This is a ltd edition of 300. And the 2nd edition will be GREY instead of purple, so everyone will know you are a slacker who couldn't get out of bed in time to catch the first edition, even though it took over a decade to sell out. But some time later it will be available as an E-Book, for those of you who enjoy dropping electronic devices on your upturned faces at night. Here is the catalogue blurb:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">It is 2031 and the must-have gadget is the Holophin: a tiny,
dolphin-shaped microprocessor which cures your worst impulses and
phobias, comforts you in your grief or boredom and makes everything look
much, much prettier.<br /><br />Hatsuka and Max are students at the Takin
International School, a learning institute so magnificent it produces
Holophins as a by-product of its own projects. The billionth device has
just been sold, but when Takin’s best students are stalked by a shady
rival manufacturer, Holophin’s monopoly, and the narrative itself,
begins to unravel – with unexpected consequences.<br /><br />This
hallucinatory and darkly funny sci-fi mystery is the debut novella by
acclaimed poet Luke Kennard, a refracted meditation on identity,
technology and the imagination.</span></blockquote>
<br />
So there. I always threatened to write a sci-fi story and now I have. There will be a big trendy London launch party where people have METAL HAIR and PHILANTHROPIC IDEAS directly proportional to their PRIVATE INCOMES and I highly recommend you attend. This will be on September 8th in the place where they film <i>Dragons' Den</i> - that great show about dragons who have a party but none of the other dragons turn up so they have to build a pirate ship and fire moonbeams in the dragons' eyes to make them bewitched and then they come to the party and the first dragons say aha! and breathe fire on them and make them into burnt dragons. I'll confirm.<br />
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In other news <i>The Necropolis Boat</i> was selected by the Poetry Book Society as their Autumn (I think - maybe Summer) Pamphlet Choice. This is an extraordinary turn of events and has caused me to rethink its position in my oeuvre, i.e. it is now the best thing I have ever written.Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-84179282388954708252012-08-10T00:40:00.004-07:002012-08-10T00:40:36.615-07:00Claims Statements Were<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIY7B5z-DT9r7q4MiafUDZX_r28-Tg4MvzdYfXLEYrLJHwVpggxtnoigoXv30-cPkRrKho4LZXPZrW6cbs7C-nIviAWd1dpNXNL7NapseoNAeUCdz2k4Hl4Gjz2uQ690icnK6igg9XKJaa/s1600/august+2012+066.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIY7B5z-DT9r7q4MiafUDZX_r28-Tg4MvzdYfXLEYrLJHwVpggxtnoigoXv30-cPkRrKho4LZXPZrW6cbs7C-nIviAWd1dpNXNL7NapseoNAeUCdz2k4Hl4Gjz2uQ690icnK6igg9XKJaa/s320/august+2012+066.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
--Claims statements were "experiment to see how quickly all followers could be lost on Twitter."<br />
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--Claims statements were "satire of own dearly held liberal ideals."<br />
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--Claims statements were "commentary on a hypothetical bid for notoriety in the form of said bid for notoriety."<br />
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--Claims statements were "control group in market research project bigger than any of us."Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-12715766555873426962012-05-31T02:30:00.000-07:002012-05-31T06:43:38.162-07:00Fame - Half Price!What is the deal with having such soft feet? I wore some man-sandals when it was unseasonably hot out five days ago, walked a couple of hours total and the left one tore an absolute <em>lesion</em> in the top of my foot which didn't stop bleeding until yesterday, responded neither to bandages nor plasters, kept me awake at night by actually <em>throbbing </em>like, I don't know, a <em>gunshot wound</em>,<em> </em>and has left me walking around shoe and sockless with one trouser leg rolled up waiting for it to even start to heal. This is completely out of proportion when I only wore the sandals on a whim. I've written to my MP.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMBIfgiEXSq8TMArgDiltsutLGMyx1_FyB5BYYgWJNVd5kbyrEea_1-HOISL2lM6ykjTet4rsa9aTKJKqB5LhzBOI7o6k6iae8JFqAp0S52rpV0jcCZ5DvILWQ7wGoVOhJr053ObD5KViB/s1600/haddon+p138.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMBIfgiEXSq8TMArgDiltsutLGMyx1_FyB5BYYgWJNVd5kbyrEea_1-HOISL2lM6ykjTet4rsa9aTKJKqB5LhzBOI7o6k6iae8JFqAp0S52rpV0jcCZ5DvILWQ7wGoVOhJr053ObD5KViB/s320/haddon+p138.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
Anyway, this (left) is currently making me very happy: it is a fictionalised mention in Mark Haddon's new novel, <em>The Red House. </em>It is on p. 138 and the paragraph in question concerns a character who doesn't like contemporary poetry, especially free verse. She picks a book off the shelf at random and it is translated by me, which is not something I know how to do in real life - I'm generally too busy looking for my own name in print to master a second language - but it's pretty cool nonetheless. It could, of course, be the promising young Ohio basketball player Luke Kennard whose impending success I'm still trying to work out how to capitalise on. I had been planning to pick up <em>The Red House </em>anyway after reading a couple of reviews, but one of my MA students mentioned my mention to me so I ran straight to the campus bookshop to pick it up. The whole thing reminded me of my favourite scene in Martin Amis's <em>The Information</em> when Richard Tull anonymously sends Glyn Barrie a copy of the LA Times with a post-it attached reading "Glyn, something to interest you here - the price of fame?", knowing that Glyn will have to spend days sifting through the entire paper and all its supplements looking for his own name. (In a Road Runner / Wile E Coyote type twist, Glyn later tells Richard that he found the relevant mention within a few minutes).<br />
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Surely, <em>surely </em>this counts as some kind of Impact or Knowledge Transfer in the upcoming REF? Next week I am hoping to somehow turn up dead in a posthumous Roberto Bolano. He's the Tupac of contemporary literature in translation.Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-64388672223593405072012-05-28T07:05:00.002-07:002012-05-28T07:05:32.491-07:00Prequel or Whatever<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: yellow;">Holdfire Press Launch - Thursday May 31st - Including a New Pamphlet by Me</span></div>
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Elated to be reading at this on Thursday night (May 31st, 8pm). Holdfire are a brand new small press based in Liverpool and the editor, Michael Egan, has put together a really exciting first sequence of pamphlets. Also beautifully designed (see below) but not good for getting the hearth going (see bellow).</div>
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My pamphlet, <i>The Necropolis Boat</i>, takes place within one of the lines of a poem from <i>Planet-Shaped Horse</i>, so could be considered a sequel or prequel or whatever you call a follow-up sequence the narrative of which occurs within one of the lines from the preceding work. A nested sequel, is what I'm going to call it, I think. But you don't have to have read <i>PSH</i> to enjoy it! It stands alone! Like a man! On a jetty! On his own!</div>
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I hate the word jetty. I could have said <i>anywhere </i>and I went with jetty.</div>
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I may work out some kind of special offer whereby I sell <i>PSH</i> half-price if you purchase a copy of <i>TNB</i>. But really you should buy it directly from Holdfire, and in fact probably you should probably buy all of the other pamphlets too.</div>
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One day I'll write a third part and publish it with a <i>different</i> pamphlet press, thus atomising my already meagre readership across three small presses. But by this time I'll be really famous and a major publisher will write to me and say, 'Hey, why don't we put out all three of your pamphlets from the last decade as a lovely complete book? Maybe we could market it as a "novel in verse" which bizarrely seems to sell better than poetry collections, fuck knows why?' And I'll be all like, 'Oh, thank you major publisher, where do I sign?' And they'll be like 'PSYCH! I am your mum all along! Why have you not made more of your life?' And then the heat-death of the universe. Hope to see you there. I will be drunk.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF6gVWckiRvNZN76iDCiEYBZYU3OJkP0eOmHx7B8_b9NUa_63VboSKFGtAg6PV4oFNVgEnJnyKxXU6rKwFb98hnElgnCLClFOD8nXAgpZVgTZvJciSg0BJ7kyDmcWpAEUF4B9DhE7UElhc/s1600/kennardfc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF6gVWckiRvNZN76iDCiEYBZYU3OJkP0eOmHx7B8_b9NUa_63VboSKFGtAg6PV4oFNVgEnJnyKxXU6rKwFb98hnElgnCLClFOD8nXAgpZVgTZvJciSg0BJ7kyDmcWpAEUF4B9DhE7UElhc/s1600/kennardfc.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-36360924532581662022012-04-27T01:06:00.000-07:002012-04-27T01:06:40.290-07:00What I Did On My Holiday pt. 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi55eqcqNlPkGonMxiE7F-9MEV43GYraqPXPs7lbitzZu8DJqdYsSoyLyg__9Yf0iYaQXSXEWeJxPCDb_fEWMwwoyNXNcNUEG9HK0ppZ9V6u_FL7OUbb2rtmSAYXmDtIoFRH8a1pfweWUAq/s1600/gibson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi55eqcqNlPkGonMxiE7F-9MEV43GYraqPXPs7lbitzZu8DJqdYsSoyLyg__9Yf0iYaQXSXEWeJxPCDb_fEWMwwoyNXNcNUEG9HK0ppZ9V6u_FL7OUbb2rtmSAYXmDtIoFRH8a1pfweWUAq/s200/gibson.jpg" width="134" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinWVvW0YAlGQUomFNVxaVBAiMHzi09_yK5aWoWaAcHSKFEhlaUELdfJSRjtSpUvAP1okuiqmU54TyObp1SsRE_JOcgbtK8KywKovfBg-9ysPGuDke6F9PZI991mtxGGtN6rUJ1DLYlusvG/s1600/auden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinWVvW0YAlGQUomFNVxaVBAiMHzi09_yK5aWoWaAcHSKFEhlaUELdfJSRjtSpUvAP1okuiqmU54TyObp1SsRE_JOcgbtK8KywKovfBg-9ysPGuDke6F9PZI991mtxGGtN6rUJ1DLYlusvG/s200/auden.jpg" width="132" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVZVs6ycwkYjoTBSzW3y9jwA12z2XEwFfhTYQW0Z1f1mRT2VFGccQXWSAyDuSeZhyphenhyphenj6WPAhvOQ2uaAfuJBG5cKtbVFAztv18QxUIV874k9JtDEnpFdp-oFSHJ889Pebbt95ZynMsBSCxTP/s1600/kennard+card+fighter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVZVs6ycwkYjoTBSzW3y9jwA12z2XEwFfhTYQW0Z1f1mRT2VFGccQXWSAyDuSeZhyphenhyphenj6WPAhvOQ2uaAfuJBG5cKtbVFAztv18QxUIV874k9JtDEnpFdp-oFSHJ889Pebbt95ZynMsBSCxTP/s1600/kennard+card+fighter.jpg" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5Hq9Jdqr7Yks5BjDkX4Ud1YlmWMi-iyK7lEL5RMK2gw-PyqfwPCL-JcnjJJtHMDNN4z-nPGDBzS2jYfnHlUA9jfo5yq9h1KS-X8w8ITynSc7WnJbQpLSvmeBr0Peb1KhVUIJtTR2jrEAO/s1600/tejucole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5Hq9Jdqr7Yks5BjDkX4Ud1YlmWMi-iyK7lEL5RMK2gw-PyqfwPCL-JcnjJJtHMDNN4z-nPGDBzS2jYfnHlUA9jfo5yq9h1KS-X8w8ITynSc7WnJbQpLSvmeBr0Peb1KhVUIJtTR2jrEAO/s200/tejucole.jpg" width="132" /></a></div>
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Some fear death, some that there are people needlessly suffering in the world and yet others' fears are essentially unnameable. My principle fear is that I mightn't receive enough recognition for the things that I do. My principal fear, on the other hand, is a cold dread of head masters. So here is a limited series of blog entries linking to some stuff I've been involved in over the last year or so which I can't help but think you might have missed. Starting with some criticism.</div>
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<a href="http://www.poetrylondon.co.uk/magazines/70/article/a-warmth-that-wasn-t">Here's me on W. H. Auden's Age of Anxiety</a> in Poetry London last Autumn.<br />
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<a href="http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/william-gibsons-zero-history-is-a-pocket-opera">This is me reviewing William Gibson's Zero History</a> in The National.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5Hq9Jdqr7Yks5BjDkX4Ud1YlmWMi-iyK7lEL5RMK2gw-PyqfwPCL-JcnjJJtHMDNN4z-nPGDBzS2jYfnHlUA9jfo5yq9h1KS-X8w8ITynSc7WnJbQpLSvmeBr0Peb1KhVUIJtTR2jrEAO/s1600/tejucole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><div style="text-align: left;" unselectable="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg90qykASEL2fbI7d4X8HsOuJCns4Yhv8ZfHDakgWqXxeJ3Cx9JYuE0Xgs4ySV-znvW1rQamOJcDZG7xmasWo-YpSFUM_feeEoSV14dPEos57mr9aX92X2gk5v0buIxgp7QT2oOZ309v3KO/s1600/sayles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg90qykASEL2fbI7d4X8HsOuJCns4Yhv8ZfHDakgWqXxeJ3Cx9JYuE0Xgs4ySV-znvW1rQamOJcDZG7xmasWo-YpSFUM_feeEoSV14dPEos57mr9aX92X2gk5v0buIxgp7QT2oOZ309v3KO/s200/sayles.jpg" width="134" /></a><a href="http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/teju-cole-not-all-who-wander-are-lost">And Teju Cole's Open City,</a> also in The National.<br />
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<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsLOOy8K2PP90OMI1eXQEUewUZzNEW4z90smXEdHO57Tdie438z-ui5alg9kvYGLyqVwT3ZCH2nCzLmcjr12lcOoRWii0Wgq9an07oMGIED6AkB_tBfTvsh_jkDK5anfzB-Vw4gb30pUO_/s1600/harbach.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsLOOy8K2PP90OMI1eXQEUewUZzNEW4z90smXEdHO57Tdie438z-ui5alg9kvYGLyqVwT3ZCH2nCzLmcjr12lcOoRWii0Wgq9an07oMGIED6AkB_tBfTvsh_jkDK5anfzB-Vw4gb30pUO_/s200/harbach.jpg" width="129" /></a>And finally <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/a-moment-in-the-sun-contender-for-the-great-american-novel">John Sayles' A Moment in the Sun</a> and <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/the-art-of-fielding-the-long-story-of-a-shortstop">Chad Harbach's Art of Fielding</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinWVvW0YAlGQUomFNVxaVBAiMHzi09_yK5aWoWaAcHSKFEhlaUELdfJSRjtSpUvAP1okuiqmU54TyObp1SsRE_JOcgbtK8KywKovfBg-9ysPGuDke6F9PZI991mtxGGtN6rUJ1DLYlusvG/s1600/auden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinWVvW0YAlGQUomFNVxaVBAiMHzi09_yK5aWoWaAcHSKFEhlaUELdfJSRjtSpUvAP1okuiqmU54TyObp1SsRE_JOcgbtK8KywKovfBg-9ysPGuDke6F9PZI991mtxGGtN6rUJ1DLYlusvG/s1600/auden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinWVvW0YAlGQUomFNVxaVBAiMHzi09_yK5aWoWaAcHSKFEhlaUELdfJSRjtSpUvAP1okuiqmU54TyObp1SsRE_JOcgbtK8KywKovfBg-9ysPGuDke6F9PZI991mtxGGtN6rUJ1DLYlusvG/s1600/auden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><div style="text-align: left;" unselectable="on">
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</a>And at the top is me as a Card Fighter illustrated by the multi-talented, soon-to-be-immense poet, Jon Stone.<br />
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Wow - putting more than one image into a blog entry is <em>no fun </em>whatsoever<em>! </em>No wonder I don't do it more often.</div>Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-13585226338428603522012-04-26T03:09:00.004-07:002012-04-26T03:09:53.474-07:00Wait a Minute: That's Not the Wallet Inspector!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCNWZSIAt59mYqWwPkIYpAMs0seUhavPU_TckOhCGwcMR1RALRNQbrhtq7M4cXwi5V_SrvJ9qMWipFUjE6uKxC5UVaOn_rZ4W6nQBUsSr4xyN3JrnMf367hK_I2QuLX3d6yoO49mrzBJ_F/s1600/wallet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCNWZSIAt59mYqWwPkIYpAMs0seUhavPU_TckOhCGwcMR1RALRNQbrhtq7M4cXwi5V_SrvJ9qMWipFUjE6uKxC5UVaOn_rZ4W6nQBUsSr4xyN3JrnMf367hK_I2QuLX3d6yoO49mrzBJ_F/s1600/wallet.jpg" /></a>The night before last I fell for a phishing scam after a lifetime secretly thinking 'How could <em>anyone</em>, <em>ever</em> be stupid enough to fall for a phishing scam?' Well I fell for it: 1. Because I'd had a couple more glasses than I'd meant to of this really delicious Riesling; 2. The debit card attached to my iTunes account <em>really is</em> going to expire in three days time and by sheer smiling, damn-ed coincidence this was exactly what the scam-email told me; 3. The scam-email was, according to experts, "well designed"; 4. I opened the e-mail on my phone where the reduced email server <i>didn't</i> highlight it as suspicious and presented it in such a way as to be totally indistinguishable from an actual email from Apple (when I checked on the PC it was clearly, visibly a fake); 5. There's not really any other excuse - I know very well that no company ever, <em>ever</em> sends you an unsolicited email with a link that prompts you to enter your username and password, especially when that username and password are attached to your bank details, and it took me exactly 0.6 of a second to recall this, which happens to be exactly as long as it takes me to type my username and password. So I guess all I'm saying is if you're in the Balkans and you meet someone claiming to be me, tell him to give me my money back. And, if he's well turned out, ask him if he wouldn't mind selling a few poetry books. Yet to achieve much market penetration on that part of the globe.</div>
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Mean time, before flooding the market with new projects I thought I'd mention a couple of books I've enjoyed recently. It's kind of like doing the penance before committing the sin. The first two <em>very </em>recently. I've been hesitating to talk about other books (there are <em>other </em>books?) here because I don't want this to turn into a book reviewing blog. Mainly because I usually get <em>paid</em> for writing reviews and you can go whistle if you think I'm going to start undermining my own livelihood by giving it away. I need that money to pay for my evening class in How To Come Across Less Arrogant On-line. And also because I blurb a lot of books and once you've blurbed something <i>ever speaking of it again</i> is frowned upon. Like, you know, if someone you're in love with is going for a job interview and you're on the panel and you're like, I think we should give it to him/her because I'm in love with him/her, and your colleagues are all like, sharp-intake-of-breath. (I have, I'm proud to say, in seven years of blurbing, never used any bullshit formulations like "X is the only poet writing today you should bother with" or "Y is the defining poet of her generation" and if I ever do may I be hit by the taxi I'm hailing. I <i>have, </i>now that I think of it, used plenty of other bullshit formulations like "simultaneously BLANK and ANTI-BLANK", but what are you gonna do? Try to actually physically stop me from writing ever again by breaking my fingers? I'd like to see that! I don't think you'd even have the guts to be <i>sarcastic</i> to me face-to-face).<br />
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And also because, you know, where do you stop? Before you know it you're having to write about <em>every book in the world</em> or else risk looking disastrously narrow. I've seen it happen to better blogs than this. But yesterday I woke up thinking I'd really like to write some mini-reviews of things that I've enjoyed and maybe even make it into a regular feature of this blog. Once every fort-month, say.<br />
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When I was at primary school and had roughly six "friends" (as a child I was too solipsistic to even be that<i> aware</i> of other people's existence, let alone be friends with them) we were totally obsessed with ghosts. We used to sit on a particular bench in the playground and take turns trying to scare the hell out of each other. Every small town had at least eight video rental stores, VHS machines had <i>just </i>become affordable to the lower-middle classes, and if you were like me you spent a lot of your spare time in these stores, in my case renting <i>The Naked Gun </i>and <i>Back to the Future </i>movies over and over again for 50p a night. TNG films were 15-certificates, but my parents made a rare exception for them. You would also get to look at the covers of a hundred dodgy horror films (different in each shop, as if they had been made especially) and sometimes, at another kid's house, get to watch them and shore up some more material for the ghost story sessions. This possibly continued into secondary school, but by that point I had no friends whatsoever for about five years [<i>violin</i>] so I can't, with any accuracy, comment.<br />
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<b>Bobby Parker's <i>Comberton</i> (knivesforksandspoons press, £7) </b>is a bravura prose poem sequence exploring faith, sex, anti-faith, drugs and booze, love, mental disturbance, the supernatural and the face-down-on-the-pavement natural. I say "exploring", but that's one of those bullshit blurb formulations I reach for too often. What Parker does, with Dostoyevsky-level-darkness (and the same aching, face-in-hands laughter) is treat them as one and the same subject. Parker gets compared to Bukowski a lot and I think it's always well-meaning when people say that, but I think it's also because the interlocutor hasn't read an awful lot apart from Bukowski. If I had to pick something <i>Comberton</i> reminds me of on the surface it would be Joe Brainerd's <i>I Remember</i>... series, except with more of a narrative (and therefore more awesome). The recollections ("We went crazy for sticking crushed cans into the back wheels of our bicycles so they made a rasping sound close to a miniature motorbike as we rode them") have the same hallucinatory clarity.<br />
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But this is only half of it, and I don't have enough time to properly extend my thesis here (will do some day soon). In the flashbacks Parker's characters get beaten up by their siblings or parents, they punch each other in the stomach and drink beer, but the key thing is a total obsession (and a very familiar one) with transcendence. But transcendence via the nasty stuff, the Ouija boards and cruelty to animals, the ghost stories and strange rituals, the conviction that your room is haunted, the persistent nightmares that bleed into your daily life. Every page is beautifully crafted - every verset showcases how well this guy can write. The engagingly ugly stuff is undercut by the version-of-Parker-presented-to-us-in-the-poems's current life, with a wife and daughter. The attendant fierce protectivity, love and sadness depicted with unflinching intimacy. (E.g. the following middle-of-the-night breast-feeding scene: "'Don't tell me about your dreams,' my wife sighed sleepily, her head nodding forwards and backwards, in and out of the dark. 'Your dreams are messed up. They give me horrible nightmares.'")<br />
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I love Bobby Parker's writing<em>. Ghost Towm Music </em>was one of my favourite things of last year. He could easily have produced a second vol. in the projected trilogy which offered more of the same - an endlessly engaging mix-up of artifice, diary, fury, confessional, surrealism/cubism, art and photography. The post-it notes in <i>Comberton</i> are brilliantly funny, thought-provoking and sad ("WE WALKED AROUND AT NIGHT IN THE SUMMER LISTENING FOR COUPLES HAVING SEX WITH THEIR WINDOWS OPEN"), giving it something in common with the first. But it goes further. It's a collection of poems whose narrative outstrips most novels for depth, mystery and staying power.<br />
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Well, that wasn't really the half of what I wanted to say, nor one tenth as clear, but it'll do for now. And a giant tower of dissertations has just landed on my desk, so I'm going to have to write about the next two books later. Maybe about two weeks later, but here they are.<br />
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I read with Phil Brown last Saturday at Cheltenham. <b><i>Il Avilit</i> </b>is his first full collection and it is beautiful. MORE TO FOLLOW.<br />
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Ameerah Arjanee was one of the winners of the 2010 Foyle Young Poets Prize when I judged it. She is an extraordinarily precocious talent and this is her first collection. I think at the moment it's only available in Mauritius. MORE TO FOLLOW.</div>Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-3218882802480417972012-04-18T07:05:00.003-07:002012-04-26T02:10:17.915-07:00Cassettes, Tori Amos and Cultural Consumption: Towards an Understanding of my Fetishisation of the Box-Set<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzOrHKadU_Oi34yV62hflric2IPzA4fqfVPi4gzHXacax7YHKNzklfCsoTbA2Mnqh8U4TgjYSKFKx7Ct4U0xyDkljN9w9L2aPYK80gYU_0L30hWuKs_aA5XK5JEtT41JByHRVJk8rg5HSq/s1600/hard+to+put+into+words+how+much+I+loved+this+thing.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5733032518366872274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzOrHKadU_Oi34yV62hflric2IPzA4fqfVPi4gzHXacax7YHKNzklfCsoTbA2Mnqh8U4TgjYSKFKx7Ct4U0xyDkljN9w9L2aPYK80gYU_0L30hWuKs_aA5XK5JEtT41JByHRVJk8rg5HSq/s320/hard+to+put+into+words+how+much+I+loved+this+thing.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 142px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px;" /></a>I've been buying cassettes on eBay to play in my car. This is dumb when I could just buy one of those cassette-shaped adaptors to plug my iPod into my car stereo (<em>Or a car with a CD player, you PLEB! - </em>Wealthy Ed.), but:<br />
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1. Wires hanging around the gearstick! AAAAGH! [Crash! Tinkle!]<br />
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2. iPod sliding around on the dashboard or perched in the what-is-this-a-drinks-holder?-it's-not-even-round! where it falls out or in my lap so that it falls under my thigh and the wire connecting it to the car stereo unplugs and the OH MY GOD IS THAT LORRY OVERTAKING?!<br />
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3. Service and petrol stations seem to have stopped selling them [Possibly because see 1. and 2.]<br />
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4. There are albums I owned on cassette as a teenager which I never got around to buying on CD, and CDs are now obsolete and I've lost the cassettes, and sure, I could just dowload them onto my iThing (and being 31 I'm at exactly the generational cross-over point where that feels like buying nothing), but see points 1. and 2. again; what am I supposed to do? Listen through <em>headphones </em>in my <em>car</em>? What if there's an ambulance? What if someone else in the car wants to tell me something like 'JUUUUNNNNCTIOOOOOOOOOOONNNN! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!' which is by no means rare.<br />
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5. In my experience the volume control between the music storage device and the car stereo is so wildly out of whack (because let's remember this is a headphone socket rather than a line-out, tech fans), that the music sounds kind of shitty anyway, all high end noise or hiss or bass throb, veering between inaudible and ear-splitting, and attempting to correct this is like working old shower controls, i.e. fiddling with the wibbly touch-screen volume control on the iThing and the rubbery nub on the car stereo and hitting the curb and careening into the central reservation.<br />
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6. If I have to put "Was trying to skip ahead to 'Starlings of the Slipstream'" on <em>one more insurance form.</em><br />
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Anyway, this is a way too lengthy intro to a way too lengthy blog post. The cassettes I've just purchased for 49p and 68p, respectively, are REM's <em>Green</em> and Tori Amos's <em>Boys for Pele</em>. I love both of these records. Perhaps part of the reason I never bought them on CD is that they're permanently scored into my auditory centre and I can play them back in my head with halucinatory clarity. And the reason for <em>that</em> is because I listened to them on very heavy rotation, several times a night, on every childhood car journey or coach trip. I played them on my Panasonic double-tape deck at home and on my Sanyo persoal stereo on journeys. The headphones, you remember, on personal stereos were joined by a thin metal alice band, which had the dual benefit of keeping your flopppy fringe out of your bloodshot eyes. And the reason for that heavy rotation is that I was a kid, I was too lazy to get a proper Saturday job (the very <em>thought</em> of missing Muppet Babies and The Chart Show just to make a few measly quid was, and still is, anathema) and cassettes were expensive. <em>Green </em>and <em>Boys for Pele</em> were two of about 10 cassettes I collected over several years and I listened to those ten cassettes until I knew every backing vocal melody, every bridge section, impromptu clarinet solo and/or studio chatter backwards and forwards.<br />
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It probably makes sense, if I'm going to consider my present role as consumer, to go into the economics of it (but not in such a way that involves me doing one iota of research). In the 90s, cassette albums cost on average £13.99. i.e., although we're talking about almost <em>two decades</em> ago - not even factoring in inflation and the "hilarious" thing that's happened to house prices within that time - two decades! TWO! - music was <em>way more expensive than it is now</em>. (That's assuming you now elect to pay for music at all). I tended to spend my pocket money on a monthly computer magazine and sweets (I ate a lot of sweets, and computer magazines weren't cheap either), so my indolence combined with a chronic (lasting) inability to save money meant that getting a new cassette album was a Christmas and birthday type affair, and being a summer baby this meant every new cassette album had a six month induction period as my <strong>new record</strong>, played-to-heck-and-back-and-to-heck-again. Now what I want to suggest - regardless of whether you shared my musical taste - is that being drip-fed music by economic necessity was a <em>good thing</em> because it meant that I really, really appreciated the records I had. (N.B. It also gave me a life-long loyalty to those recording artists which includes slavishly buying all of their weak late stuff and listening to it about twice, however much my taste in music has broadened and deepened since). It meant I appreciated the songs in and of themselves with an attention to detail completely alien to me now, but also appreciated them <em>as albums</em>, as carefully sequenced collections of songs. Yeah, I know, shut up granddad - and hurry up or you'll be late for our trip to the electric lake to worship the giant robot.<br />
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Which brings me to my central thesis: I can't be bothered to actually look into it, but I'll wager that the main audience for DVD box-sets is late-twenty-to-thirtysomethings. And the reason for that is because we're completely astonished by them. When we grew up the only thing on TV was the X-Files, and if you were enough of a fan to want to <em>own</em> some of it, you had to spend £14.89 on a VHS tape of <strong><em>2 EPISODES</em></strong>. And that was if you had an ID card to prove you were over 12, which I totally didn't. And it was also dependent on the video machine in your house not being on the fritz and chewing the tape up. To own a whole season of the X-Files would have cost £178.86. That you can now get whole seasons of much, much better shows for a tenner (which in early 90s money would have got you a jumbo size Yorkie bar) is something we'll never quite get over. I even buy box-sets of shows I <em>know I'm going to hate</em>.<br />
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Just holding the cassettes I bought on eBay is a total nostalgia fix in itself: the metallic grey wash that marks commercial releases from blank tapes, the way you have to wind the tape back in with a hexagonal pencil, the tiny floating sponge underneath the tape itself. Playing them in the car, though, was a revelation. Cassettes have a warm, bold sound which is <em>perfect</em> when competing with a car engine, a blow heater and the conversation of your passengers. Many's the time I've brought along a CD to play in someone-more-successful-than-me's car which I thought they might like, only to hear it reduced to thin, barely audible ear-gruel with all of the hooks and harmonies shaved off by background noise. And they're like, 'Nice record. Sounded kind of like nothing.' Cassettes are amazing and we should never have stopped making them. I'd be the first to admit that <em>Boys for Pele</em> isn't the best driving music. It's full of time-signature changes, volume fluctuations and shifts in style and delivery. Some of the songs are solo <em>harpsichord</em>, for the love of mike, but on cassette I catch every cherished, well-remembered note.<br />
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Including that jaw-droppingly wonderful moment in 'Mohammed My Friend' when she sings about getting a spot on a TV show and this saxophone breaks in for two bars, seamlessly weaving in and out of the gorgeous piano line and suddenly <em>Wasteland</em>ish lyrics <em>whilst simultaneously</em> sounding like the tacky theme song of a daytime talkshow. There are about nineteen other utterly sublime bits like that, which are probably best recorded in another post.<br />
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Oh, I'm reading at the <strong>Cheltenham Poetry Festival</strong> this <strong>Saturday April 21st at 5pm</strong> and it has a kind of jukebox theme, which is kind of what made me write this in the first place. It is with the brilliant Phil Brown and Daniel Sluman, who will clearly blow me out of the water like so many rubber duckies. Details here: <a href="http://www.cheltenhampoetryfest.co.uk/">http://www.cheltenhampoetryfest.co.uk/</a>Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-58707523897449593282012-03-27T13:09:00.004-07:002012-03-27T13:24:16.490-07:00Audience Reports<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3M7IBzUbwftOaEavDTn7tVOyfkv3l2im1IyjBXphYVf659s9qmh-HT9dmunCeMkmn4fitpJp45v6aOqXc6661v_egNMpIUYimDpJCT224e1AgulPpCZhvva5xqxhqgtKIAxbykwt0nNvt/s1600/teatowell.png"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 320px; height: 180px; float: left; cursor: pointer;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5724675091549548898" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3M7IBzUbwftOaEavDTn7tVOyfkv3l2im1IyjBXphYVf659s9qmh-HT9dmunCeMkmn4fitpJp45v6aOqXc6661v_egNMpIUYimDpJCT224e1AgulPpCZhvva5xqxhqgtKIAxbykwt0nNvt/s320/teatowell.png" /></a><br /><div># Sat there with tea towel over head during other readers' sets. Refused to face audience when his turn as "might spoil magic".</div><div> </div><div> </div><div># Tried to sell six dozen 25g packets of Cutter's Choice imported from Turkey. Became demonstrative.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div># Looked awkwardly at my mother whenever poem contained swear word.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div># Repeatedly sniffed nosegay.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div># Sang the line "Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" in isolation one hundred and twenty times. Claimed 'secular ascetic practice'.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div># Did not, as claimed, seek a theme and search for it in vain; did not even try.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div># Took medication in public.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div># Ate whole tray rice crispie squares.</div><div> </div><div> </div><div># Introduced one poem by saying, 'Well, so this is... I usually think of something funny to say about this poem, but I haven't had the chance today because... So that's a bit awkward.'</div><div> </div><div> </div><div># Claimed apostolic succession.</div>Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-18934346329922325112011-12-18T03:27:00.000-08:002011-12-18T05:13:52.756-08:00On Messages<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY5P3S8bj5dmPQjMqP-EpPvDxGRiRVoVT6Np7fkpGoKPhD60BqbYJyiahrW3H-pfXstxLBctW5t__tlHxx6izSLP2YpnsS26slLvgIS1AlJ38w5SMArsM2ZgrXHCFSYpeTXh-I9Ta1Xrpc/s1600/you+know+what+forget+it.bmp"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY5P3S8bj5dmPQjMqP-EpPvDxGRiRVoVT6Np7fkpGoKPhD60BqbYJyiahrW3H-pfXstxLBctW5t__tlHxx6izSLP2YpnsS26slLvgIS1AlJ38w5SMArsM2ZgrXHCFSYpeTXh-I9Ta1Xrpc/s320/you+know+what+forget+it.bmp" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5687454898414494018" border="0" /></a>What with all the novels and poetry I pour into my face, I only have time for one newspaper a week, and that newspaper is the Saturday Guardian, which I read in the bath on a Saturday night. At this point it's customary to say something like, 'the fun never stops round my way' or 'that's about as exciting as my life gets', as if to imply that reading a newspaper in a bath is somehow an unacceptable thing to do on a Saturday night and that you need to get ironically defensive about it.<br /><br />Now, the letters page has always been pretty annoying, sometimes rubber-ducky-kickingly annoying. In fact, my favourite thing in the last few years was the epically sarcastic column that answered the letter writers' rhetorical questions with withering precision. It was retired after a few weeks, presumably because the letter writers didn't like it. (Everyone else - i.e. 96% of the readership - did, but we had the good grace not to write in about it, more fools us, I guess). But I can't stop reading them. If anything just to make myself feel better: I may be kind of a dickhead, but at least I don't write in to newspapers with my opinions about stuff. It still leaves me feeling kind of gross, but I read it in the same way I eat popcorn: ravenously. I once accidentally picked up and bit my wife's hand because it was in a bowl of popcorn.<br /><br />To make matters worse, The Guardian have now started printing online comments <span style="font-style: italic;">as if they were letters</span>. Say what you will about letter writers, at least they have to go to the bother of finding a stamp and trudging to the post-office (or opening their email account, looking up the paper's email address and... snore....) an exercise during which the decent human mind settles like an unplugged lava lamp and thinks, <span style="font-style: italic;">You know what? Forget it</span>. If those five words were available in pill form, internet discourse would be a whole lot readable-r.<br /><br />But the commenter has no such time to take stock. I've never met anyone in real life who comments on articles. Most people I encounter seem pretty happy with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, that kind of thing. A forum where you can share your sometimes awesome, sometimes crappy, sometimes insightful, sometimes petty, sometimes generously outward looking, sometimes pathologically self-absorbed views in a manner which isn't as annoying as a complete stranger appearing from under your newspaper and saying, 'They had it coming, you know,' after you've just read an article about some sad murders which has made you feel sad. And if you think I'm taking the lowest form of commenter as a straw-man here, let's say that the <span style="font-style: italic;">highest</span> form of commenter is someone trying to prove that they're more reasonable and intelligent than that straw commenter. Which, if that isn't self-evident enough that you don't feel the need to point it out to millions of members of the public, is just palpably untrue. You're just as much of a dick. It's easy enough to avoid this online - just don't scroll down below articles. But I can't stop reading the letters page. I'm too weak.<br /><br />Anyway, I was anticipating some classic bilious rabidity after last week's article about young "over-achievers" and was vindicated to find this, from rah90, about someone or other who had overachieved in some field and put it down to working hard. I don't know the young achiever in question or what he's like, but what had gotten rah90's dander up was over-familiar. "Tristram Hunt," they averred, "says his success is down to hard work, then goes on to describe his upbringing."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">"It's the typical delusional contradictions of the privileged middle class. What's opportunity, stability, love, support, healthy role models and a sense of entitlement got to do with it?" - <span style="font-style: italic;">rah90</span></span><br /><br />As I've explored elsewhere, I have a posher accent than I am posh, and this puts me in a unique position of getting frequently accosted by strangers in pubs who take great amusement in making me swear and use contemporary vernacular like "innit" and so forth. This has been going on since primary school, so I'm able to take it with the grace only available to people who were picked on at school. Furthermore, after 8 years of being the posh-voiced kid at school, I encountered people at university who found it kind of funny that they let people who'd been to state school into university at all. (NB: I also met just as many privately educated people who laboured under no such idiocy, which I guess taught me that you should judge people, if at all, based on what they're actually like and the things they think and do, which is more or less what every moral tale tells us).<br /><br />My point is I've been conditioned to bristle at unexamined class bullshit whichever way it breaks, and this manages to break both ways. Why exactly I'm so upset about this, why it's taken on a kind of metonymic weight for me, is maybe 1. I'm a narcissist and 2. maybe something to do with starting a family and pre-emptively striking against comments like, "Ooh, look at that middle class dad, raising his child so middle-classly with his posh accent and his <span style="font-style: italic;">precisely nothing that I know about his life and his background apart from that</span>." (Unfortunately the moral tale I never listened to was that Aesop's fable where we're taught not to care about others' opinions lest we drop our donkeys in the sea).<br /><br />Now, I can get behind being pissed off at a sense of entitlement and opportunity, sure. The arts are positively dynastic with them. There <span style="font-style: italic;">are</span> opportunities if you can afford to live rent-free in London for a year, and significantly fewer if you can't. I get it; that sucks, and if you benefit from it the dignified thing to do is to acknowledge that rather than pretend you've gotten where you are through hard graft.<br /><br />But LOVE? Seriously?! LOVE is middle class now? Ooh, look at that middle class person treating his fellow human beings with LOVE. Feh! Makes you sick, doesn't it? Can you imagine how privileged his upbringing must have been in order to condition him to treat people with kindness and respect? What an irredeemable cunt.<br /><br />Tell you what, why don't you fuck off, rah90, IF THAT IS YOUR REAL NAME, WHICH IT DEMONSTRABLY ISN'T. Fuck off and start a family and raise them <span style="font-style: italic;">without love</span> just to <span style="font-style: italic;">prove a point</span>. Criminy. And I'll be like, Ooh, there goes good ol' Rah90, treating his kids and everyone he meets like dirt. How VERY AUTHENTIC OF HIM.<br /><br />Happy Christmas, all.<br /><br />LxxLuke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-84286606930304102802011-12-15T06:19:00.002-08:002011-12-15T06:20:33.138-08:00Ambassador Thumb 1<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvIFAzCaSEurfyAdIZSavrayX_wpGPkFhJB4-Qkz4my7utPMyN0VU7aLhQpjH0Lm87XwQJsZkvtNlHbM2v3u5_GSN2_6-BHz0GtLvG00rhZ9jtrHJqUdshOAnbL4fbAcfuadjhQl6vk1uO/s1600/Thumb+1.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvIFAzCaSEurfyAdIZSavrayX_wpGPkFhJB4-Qkz4my7utPMyN0VU7aLhQpjH0Lm87XwQJsZkvtNlHbM2v3u5_GSN2_6-BHz0GtLvG00rhZ9jtrHJqUdshOAnbL4fbAcfuadjhQl6vk1uO/s320/Thumb+1.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5686359860320431010" border="0" /></a>Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-59862605860237115612011-12-15T06:19:00.001-08:002011-12-15T06:19:46.742-08:00Ambassador Thumb 2<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2HzkhQA9xh8ckk4FUH_8IswU4i1MM_TE0C9KWbu6CwftJ4vjEjU0klP7N00pzUMyHuEhb8kYeYiQWvzfujCliPHUuMs2lNpKa3KDdVk_QxOekODCxpfJGFxPiEN7_HNeK3yguG9tFzn5w/s1600/Thumb+2.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2HzkhQA9xh8ckk4FUH_8IswU4i1MM_TE0C9KWbu6CwftJ4vjEjU0klP7N00pzUMyHuEhb8kYeYiQWvzfujCliPHUuMs2lNpKa3KDdVk_QxOekODCxpfJGFxPiEN7_HNeK3yguG9tFzn5w/s320/Thumb+2.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5686359658012873650" border="0" /></a>Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-87870906144786624522011-12-15T06:18:00.001-08:002011-12-15T06:18:59.257-08:00Ambassador Thumb 3<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5BN_bhtAWm9_522HnOxqlGQZGQVVmXjF98ww3FJ5BVN8m0yyDuPgiUgKiNLGG3yYGdtIHdkQFd9B2X-yFcrb2i1kPCBcWwRnJZq2KsDuwoBc1YxaJEZfEExFszbbJnFlyWdKS7Qdwmqhv/s1600/Thumb+3.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5BN_bhtAWm9_522HnOxqlGQZGQVVmXjF98ww3FJ5BVN8m0yyDuPgiUgKiNLGG3yYGdtIHdkQFd9B2X-yFcrb2i1kPCBcWwRnJZq2KsDuwoBc1YxaJEZfEExFszbbJnFlyWdKS7Qdwmqhv/s320/Thumb+3.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5686359469337450402" border="0" /></a>Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-15009688115271681922011-12-15T06:17:00.000-08:002011-12-15T06:18:13.976-08:00Ambassador Thumb 4<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih-dZabZrspj3QXK4sndNRzkooPAi4qdLReFP3VbKtfF57plxXWS8VerrwIUp0hVXDasg3gFXGAEDCu1nhc4qDC3lqWhLNa1V-z8vz5BdAH3dFwz5egL3q1-uLUR_GO72jtr5We5NAnJWc/s1600/Thumb+4.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih-dZabZrspj3QXK4sndNRzkooPAi4qdLReFP3VbKtfF57plxXWS8VerrwIUp0hVXDasg3gFXGAEDCu1nhc4qDC3lqWhLNa1V-z8vz5BdAH3dFwz5egL3q1-uLUR_GO72jtr5We5NAnJWc/s320/Thumb+4.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5686359270704571378" border="0" /></a>Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-2779693749388327672011-12-15T06:08:00.001-08:002011-12-15T06:17:26.410-08:00Ambassador Thumb 5<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgimtRBJvSKNdPoboFpQWAHh5x34kjqUk_hnR9KMDOyivclIX9K5TT2TrlKkF7JnQbnXocS3Dn-lnuUYxmRIgcqptDw5prumhy9cj4755baXmddgeHEnA_hyOevhtgAYszzkAZ1sV_W3PZ8/s1600/Thumb+5.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgimtRBJvSKNdPoboFpQWAHh5x34kjqUk_hnR9KMDOyivclIX9K5TT2TrlKkF7JnQbnXocS3Dn-lnuUYxmRIgcqptDw5prumhy9cj4755baXmddgeHEnA_hyOevhtgAYszzkAZ1sV_W3PZ8/s320/Thumb+5.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5686359032580736642" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDu8_hyDCniQfxYa2LC7qGqSGZco6f_QKxf_h7xTKogk4_LYfnoFQu3w7qS0dzFGi6P_6bKDSYGJtEJP424zu-nKTS0yne6j7lkMvzBVk6ZP5T2ihDK2XLb7m4Y80DbzM-_iCJJq9TcLIo/s1600/Thumb+3.JPG"></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV__Z0XQBELbujpy0fN5LRACNZ6eaFKztSI306toiOB-FjZpQzGkg8n3m0GD32q57begu2xiHYuNDReGqNYJhBDJ4NGdvnyRFiZubgZuHAYG1g7-8QTtjr6F6XtVK_YmjsQ43LW_GdacOB/s1600/Thumb+4.JPG"></a>Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-3913589863071193862011-12-15T05:18:00.001-08:002011-12-15T06:07:49.541-08:00Cheap and Vulgar and Sort of Childish - EXCLUSIVE<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVoxIsap4hS1i4Vus7OttMULY2Nn30PgMKNcFdIGCiqpf8rBB0JCfzGoXoVq0dQKVfPBOxYZTke1R2VrBXVSHA8cGTI6_sLiVqWM1O-qWTVXufkehvqPqygDuU_i2O9XJXPIkVjpIiCpHL/s1600/thumb+christmas.bmp"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 125px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVoxIsap4hS1i4Vus7OttMULY2Nn30PgMKNcFdIGCiqpf8rBB0JCfzGoXoVq0dQKVfPBOxYZTke1R2VrBXVSHA8cGTI6_sLiVqWM1O-qWTVXufkehvqPqygDuU_i2O9XJXPIkVjpIiCpHL/s200/thumb+christmas.bmp" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5686356303507306530" border="0" /></a><br />Every year I think I'm going to do one of those virtual advent calendars where I post something new and delightful every day from the 1st to 24th of December. Had I managed to do so this year, the thing behind the <span style="font-style: italic;">first</span> door would have been this. It is a short piece called 'Ambassador Thumb' which I wrote in between <span style="font-style: italic;">The Harbour Beyond the Movie</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">The Migraine Hotel</span>. I read it at readings a few times and then submitted it to <span style="font-style: italic;">Succour</span>, a magazine for which I was regional editor and was therefore confident, if not certain, of publication. I also talked it over with my most useful and critical friends and they felt it was a bit "trad absurdist", clearly derivative of Gogol ('The Nose'), which is true, and that I wasn't really doing much to make the style my own, an opinion with which I was inclined to agree. And seeing as I'd also brought along a radio play (derivative of Beckett), a full-length novel (derivative of Beckett) and a sinister one-act monologue (derivative of <span style="font-style: italic;">Fraggle Rock</span>) to show-and-tell that week, I didn't have any time to make a case for it.<br /><br />But a year or so later when I gave a friend a copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">Migraine Hotel</span>, he wrote to me a week later saying, 'Where's Ambassador Thumb?' I told him it didn't really fit with the rest of the pieces in <span style="font-style: italic;">MH</span> and he wrote back to say, "You fucking idiot."<br /><br />The only surviving version of 'Ambassador Thumb' is in Issue Six of <span style="font-style: italic;">Succour</span> (subtitled 'The Future') and the only copy I have is one that I read from at a school in the South West. Thankfully, just before I went on stage (or "on library" as it so often actually is), I overheard one of the teachers talking about the headmaster (who was to be present) and his attitude to swearing. Apparently he had thrown a writer out by his lapels (licking him squarely in the face with his good, clean tongue all the while) for using the word "bloody" only a couple of months ago. I had a pen with me and made some hasty edits to 'Ambassador Thumb', so I present to you the expurgated version with the following notes as sometimes the crossing out is pretty thorough:<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">1. For "How very magnanimous of you" read "How fucking magnanimous of you"</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">2. For "I murmured disconsolately" read "'Fuck you,' I told him"</span> <span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><br /><br />3. For "Git" read "Bastard" (Not really sure about this one - I think "Git" had recently been used in one of the </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Harry Potter </span><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">films, so I figured it was okay).</span> <span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><br /><br />4. For "Even the soap operas" read "Even the Adult Channel"</span> <span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><br /><br />5. For "people's backs" read "flesh against a background of groaning and saxophone music"</span><br /><br />A narrow escape, I think you'll agree. I might post something about swearing too much in my writing if I can fit it in with my therapist next week. The manuscript I'm working on at the moment is just lousy with cussing and it sometimes makes me kind of sad. It seems cheap and vulgar and sort of childish. For most poets this is a question that never comes up. They write about soulful, meaningful lovely things, and occasionally, when they're really cross, they maybe drop in the odd light swear, and we're all like, oh boy, he/she must really mean this! But if you spend all your time playing in the gutter with little obscene plasticine figures you made, the whole swearing issue is completely different and nobody understands. For instance, my wife just came in to ask how the marking was going and has found me trying to photograph my own thumb. That would make a good title. I guess all I'm really trying to say is Happy Christmas! And I hope you enjoy!Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4198605241010741357.post-41567644082683454772011-11-24T03:53:00.001-08:002011-11-24T04:26:22.525-08:00Donnie Lighto<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmXMtJ4RSszULlRC2cOMcfRNO4lYYNhmGunPDdgZRhShwJTe9_1Klzg5-OJPMDrC3jNFz11EN0z-6k24fYolXi6brgUSYDnoLkqqHuDv9YeXzjMxXJ9Bsrf5ilA5QKkKRBDRbwAS3eoBjx/s1600/moon.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 199px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmXMtJ4RSszULlRC2cOMcfRNO4lYYNhmGunPDdgZRhShwJTe9_1Klzg5-OJPMDrC3jNFz11EN0z-6k24fYolXi6brgUSYDnoLkqqHuDv9YeXzjMxXJ9Bsrf5ilA5QKkKRBDRbwAS3eoBjx/s200/moon.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5678537650999041826" border="0" /></a><br />I haven't written anything on here for so long that I've developed Blog Fear. It's like when someone buys you a Moleskine notebook and it's so expensive and pretty, all you can think to write in it is <span style="font-style: italic;">Hemingway looked at the Chatwin. It was a damn good Chatwin.</span> The last couple of sentences alone have taken me <span style="font-style: italic;">hours</span>.<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>Anyway, <span style="font-style: italic;">Donnie Darko</span> being on after Film 2011 last night has motivated me to write a new post. I stayed up to watch the first 10 minutes as I wanted to check something that's bugged me for years. See, when I saw Donnie Darko in the cinema as a student, it began with Echo and the Bunnymen's only good song, 'Killing Moon' and I really, really liked that it did that. I think I even leant over to my ex-girlfriend and whispered, 'That's really clever because there's, like, A GIANT BUNNY MAN in the film!' And it's also a bit about killing.'<br /><br />Let's back up a bit here. In the early 2000s, in what turned out to be the death throes of big department store media outlets, a lot of such shops started offering crazy deals on DVDs, like 8 for a tenner, etc. Maybe they still do, but I've never met anyone who's been into one of the (cockroach-tenacious) branches of HMV (which are mysteriously still occupying <span style="font-style: italic;">giant buildings</span> with floorspace like car showrooms in all of our highstreets) in the last five years, and frankly I wouldn't trust anyone who had. So my household would take it in turns to take advantage of such offers, because it was actually cheaper than renting movies and if you didn't like them you could just take them to a charity shop the next day.<br /><br />One phenomenon of which I am absolutely certain (although I am yet to find anyone who agrees, or who had a sufficiently advanced DVD habit in the early 2000s to say for sure) is that <span style="font-style: italic;">completely regardless</span> of such special offers, any film which featured either Jake or Maggie Gyllenhaal retailed at £2.99. The price never went up or down from this - the price of a not especially lavish special coffee. You must have noticed, right, that everyone you know who still has a stack of DVDs in their living room ALL, whatever their taste, their age, and whatever else they like, ALL have a copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">Secretary</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Donnie Darko</span> in their collection. It's not just me who's noticed that, right? Even my gran had these movies. And the reason is that by some sinister decree, films starring Gyllenhals were to undercut the market by a minimum of a fiver. We would all go wandering through Virgin Megastore, past all of the Coldplay CDs and think, '£2.99?! Well, I didn't exactly <span style="font-style: italic;">love</span> the film, but c'mon! It was good enough for £2.99! Even the fucking <span style="font-style: italic;">box</span> is worth £2.99. £2.99 is cheaper than renting a movie.'<br /><br />So anyway, I bought Donnie Darko, like <span style="font-style: italic;">every single other person who exists and was alive around then</span>, some years after enjoying it in the cinema, made some microwave popcorn, put it on and was crestfallen (like, if you can imagine a crest falling off a wall) to discover that the film started with some other 80s song I didn't recognise. I was born in 81, so I'm at that awkward age where I still don't get most of the cultural referents the people 10 years older than me who actually make films and TV use. Ooh, I can't wait to do the same to people 10 years younger than me when I'm there. Sitcoms will be all Pogs and something else that happened in the 90s but I was too busy playing Pogs to notice.<br /><br />So yes, back to being crestfallen: Had I just made up the whole 'Killing Moon' thing? Had I imagined it? I assumed, until last night, that I must have done. But after Film 2011 last night, after the dawn scene where Donnie Darko picks up his bike and rides back into his suburb, what should I hear but the ringing, jangly chords of Echo and the Bunnymen's 'Killing Moon'? Exactly that, is what I should and, indeed, did hear. I danced a jig with glee. Then I checked my DVD, which I hadn't prised out of the DVD holder for years and found 'DIRECTOR'S CUT' written in small, blue on slightly-darker-blue lettering under the title.<br /><br />Which brings me to my point: what the fuck is with you, director of <span style="font-style: italic;">Donnie Darko</span>? Are you some kind of film-ruining idiot? Why don't you just go to screenings of your own films and have loud mobile phone conversations over the top of them, instead of actually, genuinely ruining them for everyone forever?Luke Kennardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12703489745677191808noreply@blogger.com