Paul Muldoon at Charleston Literary Festival
I should correct that heading by saying that May has also shot by, and the flurry of events has not been recorded in this little venture. Tut. The fact is that the old creative juices (and they're feeling rather old at the moment) have been entirely devoted to producing poems for the end of my MA's first year. People say to me "How's the course going?" and I say "Fine", because I'm enjoying it but I haven't got the faintest idea whether I'm writing any better than I was at the beginning. Perhaps, though, I've got a slightly better idea of what I'm meant to be doing, which is a start. But, like all subjects, the more you get into it the more difficult it is, and at the moment I'm running the risk of feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all.
Something must be going right somewhere, though, since the rate of acceptance by the wee poetry mags has improved. It's not like our dog Balzac with the postman, exactly - grabbing my submissions as they come through the letterbox - but the percentage take has I think got a little better than it was. But we're talking in modest terms here, and I don't think a Nobel Prize is in the offing for a while.
Continuing the poetry theme, I can say that one of the high spots of May was hearing the poet Paul Muldoon give a reading at Charleston Festival. He read both his own poems and some by his old friend Seamus Heaney, and did it with such wit and charm the whole audience was captivated. It wasn't just Middle England, either, though there was more than a fair smattering of the well-heeled pensioner set. It taught me a lot about how to give a reading, though in my case I'm usually limited to eight minutes rather than Muldoon's hour.
Earlier this month we were in Mallorca, where I was able to continue the theme of Dead Poets (see earlier postings about our trip to Ireland) by visiting Deia, a beautiful and remote village on the west coast of the island where Robert Graves is buried. We had some difficulty finding his modest grave, but it's nice to add it to the collection. Graves was part of a group of painters and writers who lived in Deia in the second half of the last century. Their graves, or plaques in their memory, are mostly huddled together at one side - reflecting, I imagine, the way in which they were perceived by the local community. Graves, however, has a simple stone with an inscription that appears to have been done in freehand while clay was still wet. There was a group of pebbles on the gravestone, some with messages attached, left by admirers. It's always interesting to see how far poetry can reach in touching the hearts and minds of others.
The academic term is now over, though we have the joy of a summer school coming up on campus in Lancaster at the end of the month. A rather intensive week of talks and conferences and hopefully some writing. Gulp.
Antony Mair
