In the interests of making amends,
I will trudge up this hill with rough implements
and dig into the sod. Spring creaks
with grey-greenery, stumped cabbage stalks,
and the horizon loosens into a smile
which almost hurts with its precision.
Somehow connections ache so much
amongst groundsel patches lines beg
to differentiate themselves. How else
to regard these rhubarb tips sprouting
from compost? Or the spindrift may
cresting an upsweeping breeze?
Still such care must be taken (to find
and not project). I’m staring at my shoes.
While over and above this valley’s
unambitious public transport routes
hen harriers jockey on the thermals,
poets, their words, ghost cemetery yews,
and mushrooms push between my flat feet.
Tom Phillips
Feb-Mar 2011
Or what became of parts of the earlier posting 'How to be a Poet'
Friday, 29 April 2011
The xhiro hour in Tirana
There was no telling how they knew when to start, but every evening the Tiranans took to the streets. Across the city, apartment blocks emptied and their inhabitants congregated on either side of the river Lana, spreading out through the district known as Blloku or into Rinas Park. This was the xhiro, the Albanian equivalent of the Italian passeggiata, an excitable promenade that went on until nightfall.
Blloku was at the heart of it. Formerly reserved for the exclusive use of Party officials, ‘The Block’ was now a frenetic free market. Subterranean shops at the foot of precipitous steps sold everything from newspapers to airline tickets while, at street level, every low wall was turned into a stall, laid out with rows of CDs, remote controls and secondhand books. In amongst government buildings, embassies and international agencies, cafes and bars were loud with chatter and bleating mobile phones. Families sat amongst gaggles of students and sinister men in leather coats. Dressed up to the nines, raven-haired young women teetered along the disastrous pavements on high heels or stopped to talk with boys leaning casually out of car windows. Oblivious to the throng, two balding men were sitting on folding stools at the edge of the pavement, quietly playing a game of dominos on an upturned cardboard box.
We joined the xhiro too. It was one of the reasons we were still in Albania. If Durrës had made us want to catch the earliest available plane, booking into the International, sitting on its terrace overlooking the ceaseless to-and-fro of Skanderbeg Square and then walking into the xhiro’s ad hoc street party had put that out of mind. ‘I’ve never felt so safe,’ said Kate as we tumbled out of Blloku on the first evening, only a few hours after staring into the muzzle of a Kalashnikov, and now, several days later, Anna and Jim were dragging us down streets whose names we could barely pronounce because they wanted to find a pizza place they’d noticed the night before and because there was a woman selling plastic Skanderbeg swords on one of the footpaths criss-crossing Rinas Park.
We meandered between picnics. At this time of day, Rinas was where families sprawled under trees and those who could afford it took tables around an illuminated fountain that sprayed feathery shafts of water into the air. Parents chased children across the grass until they tripped on roots and fell into a heap; grandparents gnawed charred sweetcorn cobs or bought kitsch pieces of jewellery for girls in pink dresses. The whole park smelt of grilled butter and, over our heads, a flock of starlings swooped and flexed like the illustration of a chaos theory equation, their shrill, persistent shrieks bouncing off the government ministries behind. Only Skanderbeg Square was quiet. As we walked back towards the hotel, a lone dog shambled between what little traffic there was, pausing to look at the policemen in their miniature bunkers and then sniffing around the statue of the great national hero. Over by the vast empty plinth where Hoxha’s statue had once stood, someone was packing potted lemon trees into the back of a Transit van.
From Becoming Europeans
Blloku was at the heart of it. Formerly reserved for the exclusive use of Party officials, ‘The Block’ was now a frenetic free market. Subterranean shops at the foot of precipitous steps sold everything from newspapers to airline tickets while, at street level, every low wall was turned into a stall, laid out with rows of CDs, remote controls and secondhand books. In amongst government buildings, embassies and international agencies, cafes and bars were loud with chatter and bleating mobile phones. Families sat amongst gaggles of students and sinister men in leather coats. Dressed up to the nines, raven-haired young women teetered along the disastrous pavements on high heels or stopped to talk with boys leaning casually out of car windows. Oblivious to the throng, two balding men were sitting on folding stools at the edge of the pavement, quietly playing a game of dominos on an upturned cardboard box.
We joined the xhiro too. It was one of the reasons we were still in Albania. If Durrës had made us want to catch the earliest available plane, booking into the International, sitting on its terrace overlooking the ceaseless to-and-fro of Skanderbeg Square and then walking into the xhiro’s ad hoc street party had put that out of mind. ‘I’ve never felt so safe,’ said Kate as we tumbled out of Blloku on the first evening, only a few hours after staring into the muzzle of a Kalashnikov, and now, several days later, Anna and Jim were dragging us down streets whose names we could barely pronounce because they wanted to find a pizza place they’d noticed the night before and because there was a woman selling plastic Skanderbeg swords on one of the footpaths criss-crossing Rinas Park.
We meandered between picnics. At this time of day, Rinas was where families sprawled under trees and those who could afford it took tables around an illuminated fountain that sprayed feathery shafts of water into the air. Parents chased children across the grass until they tripped on roots and fell into a heap; grandparents gnawed charred sweetcorn cobs or bought kitsch pieces of jewellery for girls in pink dresses. The whole park smelt of grilled butter and, over our heads, a flock of starlings swooped and flexed like the illustration of a chaos theory equation, their shrill, persistent shrieks bouncing off the government ministries behind. Only Skanderbeg Square was quiet. As we walked back towards the hotel, a lone dog shambled between what little traffic there was, pausing to look at the policemen in their miniature bunkers and then sniffing around the statue of the great national hero. Over by the vast empty plinth where Hoxha’s statue had once stood, someone was packing potted lemon trees into the back of a Transit van.
From Becoming Europeans
Wednesday, 6 April 2011
Forthcoming
Tue 19 April, The Eldon House, Bristol: 'Mrs Higgins Presents...': an evening of pub theatre with music, stand-up, cabaret and lots of quite implausible things, including the likes of Mark Olver, Stand & Stare, Malcolm Hamilton, Tom Wainwright, Joe Hall, Kesty Morrison, Cazal and 'Wilma'. Wed 15 June: 'Man Diving', script-in-hand performance at the Ustinov, Bath: a full-length script about an EU monitor in Mostar, Bosnia, and the aftermath of one of her on-the-ground decisions.
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
Tell him not to look so intense
Tell him not to look so intense.
The house shakes and that word
is meaningless, anyhow.
I was like that once, only
looking at a map of river deltas,
sunken green land between tawny ridges,
it seemed as if the inevitable rising tides
might stretch as far north as Minnesota.
Or that I would have to kill my father.
It never came to either.
At the sea’s edge,
where Freud caught eels,
and sharpened his scalpel,
a thousand pebbles dried.
We think we know the world too well,
inventing convenient melodramas,
exit strategies, complications
to be met with knitted brows.
Svalbard: perhaps I’ll go there.
Tom Phillips
The house shakes and that word
is meaningless, anyhow.
I was like that once, only
looking at a map of river deltas,
sunken green land between tawny ridges,
it seemed as if the inevitable rising tides
might stretch as far north as Minnesota.
Or that I would have to kill my father.
It never came to either.
At the sea’s edge,
where Freud caught eels,
and sharpened his scalpel,
a thousand pebbles dried.
We think we know the world too well,
inventing convenient melodramas,
exit strategies, complications
to be met with knitted brows.
Svalbard: perhaps I’ll go there.
Tom Phillips
Sunday, 6 March 2011
After Asculum
"And I, Pyrrhus," he said
(grandiloquently)
"might well stand
above such blazing campfires
coding victory."
These losses, in each individual case,
mean no more or less,
viewed from this angle,
than the dead and the redundant.
Arithmetic exists at the sword’s edge.
Years pass in their thousands.
Here’s one – a mosaic
on the museum floor:
the writer on his knees
before the emperor.
(grandiloquently)
"might well stand
above such blazing campfires
coding victory."
These losses, in each individual case,
mean no more or less,
viewed from this angle,
than the dead and the redundant.
Arithmetic exists at the sword’s edge.
Years pass in their thousands.
Here’s one – a mosaic
on the museum floor:
the writer on his knees
before the emperor.
Thursday, 24 February 2011
Venue magazine, Bristol
Ever since I moved to Bristol in the mid-1980s, I have read Venue magazine, Bristol and Bath's equivalent of Time Out. Around fifteen years ago, I began to write for the magazine as well. Initially, I wrote a few theatre reviews, then did a couple of features, then became editor of the theatre and art sections; from 2004-5 I was editor of the magazine; since 2005 I have continued to contribute in a number of ways; currently I'm Venue's sub-editor. The magazine was founded in 1982 and for more than half of its existence it was a wholly independent publication. Just over a decade ago, it was brought by Bristol Evening Post, the local newspaper, which is owned, in turn, by Northcliffe and the Daily Mail Group.
On Tuesday last week staff and freelancers were told that Northcliffe is to close the magazine as of issue #962 (published on 16 March). This is due to a decline in advertising revenue, rising print costs and a modest fall in circulation. The corporation's 'tolerance' of Venue's commercial performance has, in other words, run out.
Obviously, for those of us who work for the magazine, this is disastrous. However, the response to the news from Bristol and Bath in the last 48 hours has been extraordinary and reveals the extent of the damage the closure will do to the two cities' cultural life as a whole. Over the course of nearly 30 years, Venue has proved itself to be both a champion of local culture in general and an advocate of the kind of independently minded DIY attitude which underpins much of the best of the West Country 'scene' from The Cube and People's Republic of Stokes Croft to Massive Attack and Banksy. Time and again, it has written about artistic endeavours which other local media don't have the resources to cover properly - discussions, demonstrations, talks, poetry gigs, open mic/acoustic nights - and given creative people at the very earliest stages of their career the chance to talk about their work. It has also reviewed countless films, gigs, plays, comedy nights - and been instrumental in passing the likes of Massive Attack and Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory on to a much wider audience. As many have pointed out in their responses to news of the closure, Venue should not be seen as a purely commercial venture: it is part and parcel of Bristol and Bath's cultural life and its owners should have a duty to protect it even when economic times are tough.
The demise of regional publications like Venue, however, is not merely a 'local' concern. It also reflects the growing centralism of UK culture as a whole, its reduction to a mono-centric metropolitan 'culture show' in which the same few voices are heard. How much more thriving would UK culture be, for instance, if every major city had a magazine/forum where its artists and their audience could have their say?
One argument, of course, is that the internet provides what local/regional magazines used to do. The truth is, it doesn't. It provides some information - and it's incredibly disparate. You miss as much as you find. The internet's a card index. You see the spines of the books but not what's inside them - blurbs, but not criticism and review. I'm not saying, by that, that magazines like Venue are always right - but it's the combination of information (all in one place) and insightful writing which makes it.
I'm biased, of course - but to show I'm not the only one, here are some links that'll illustrate what's been happening here since the news of Venue's imminent closure was announced:
www.venue.co.uk/isawyou
Facebook - Save Venue
Facebook - Rescue Venue Awareness Info Page
Twitter - #savevenue
On Tuesday last week staff and freelancers were told that Northcliffe is to close the magazine as of issue #962 (published on 16 March). This is due to a decline in advertising revenue, rising print costs and a modest fall in circulation. The corporation's 'tolerance' of Venue's commercial performance has, in other words, run out.
Obviously, for those of us who work for the magazine, this is disastrous. However, the response to the news from Bristol and Bath in the last 48 hours has been extraordinary and reveals the extent of the damage the closure will do to the two cities' cultural life as a whole. Over the course of nearly 30 years, Venue has proved itself to be both a champion of local culture in general and an advocate of the kind of independently minded DIY attitude which underpins much of the best of the West Country 'scene' from The Cube and People's Republic of Stokes Croft to Massive Attack and Banksy. Time and again, it has written about artistic endeavours which other local media don't have the resources to cover properly - discussions, demonstrations, talks, poetry gigs, open mic/acoustic nights - and given creative people at the very earliest stages of their career the chance to talk about their work. It has also reviewed countless films, gigs, plays, comedy nights - and been instrumental in passing the likes of Massive Attack and Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory on to a much wider audience. As many have pointed out in their responses to news of the closure, Venue should not be seen as a purely commercial venture: it is part and parcel of Bristol and Bath's cultural life and its owners should have a duty to protect it even when economic times are tough.
The demise of regional publications like Venue, however, is not merely a 'local' concern. It also reflects the growing centralism of UK culture as a whole, its reduction to a mono-centric metropolitan 'culture show' in which the same few voices are heard. How much more thriving would UK culture be, for instance, if every major city had a magazine/forum where its artists and their audience could have their say?
One argument, of course, is that the internet provides what local/regional magazines used to do. The truth is, it doesn't. It provides some information - and it's incredibly disparate. You miss as much as you find. The internet's a card index. You see the spines of the books but not what's inside them - blurbs, but not criticism and review. I'm not saying, by that, that magazines like Venue are always right - but it's the combination of information (all in one place) and insightful writing which makes it.
I'm biased, of course - but to show I'm not the only one, here are some links that'll illustrate what's been happening here since the news of Venue's imminent closure was announced:
www.venue.co.uk/isawyou
Facebook - Save Venue
Facebook - Rescue Venue Awareness Info Page
Twitter - #savevenue
Friday, 28 January 2011
Friars, Aylesbury
In the late 1970s, early 1980s, when I was a nice young grammar school lad, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, had the unlikely distinction of being the first town outside London that the 'punk' bands who scored headlines in the music press played after they'd done the 100 Club, the Roxy, the Marquee etc. For the price of a week's worth of school dinners, the likes of The Jam, The Clash and Ian Dury played the Civic Centre, only yards from the freakish, giant plastic animals Kubrick filmed for 'Clockwork Orange' but never included in the final cut. Aylesbury's own musical exports at the time - and, indeed, hereafter - were John Otway (taught in primary school by my godmother) and, erm, Marillion (who once enjoyed the ignominy of being beaten into third place in a Best Local Bands Poll by an almost entirely fictitious band of grammar school fifth-formers called HGB Terminal that only played one gig at a Methodist youth club).
Some photographic evidence of all of this era is at the following, thanks to photographer Don Stone:
1978: The first gig I went to, pretending to be my best mate's older sister (long story): http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/donstonejam78.html
1978: Magazine, with Howard Devoto up a pole:
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/donstonemagazinejul78.html
1978: Tom Robinson (no prizes for guessing which pic's from '2-4-6-8 Motorway'
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/donstonetomrobinson.html
1978: The Clash, The Slits and The Innocents
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/clashdec78.html
1979: The Undertones, The Knack (!) etc
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/donstoneundertones.html
1979: The Pretenders
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/donstonepretenders.html
1980: The Clash/Ian Dury
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/donstoneclash80.html
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/clash80.html (and note 'extortionate' ticket price of £3 - for the first date of the 'London Calling' tour).
1980: The Ramones/The Boys
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/donstoneramones80.html
1980: Iggy Pop/Psychedelic Furs
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/donstoneiggy1980.html
Tragically, there don't appear to be any photos surviving from U2's first UK gig outside Ireland (no, really, they were quite promising then: I only went because Peel was playing them all the time), or, indeed, the Wire/The Cure double-headlining diplomatic nightmare, Gang of Four with their arms in plaster after having been attacked by neo-Nazi idiots or Vic Godard and the Subway Sect in their Frank Sinatra phase.
What there are, though, are photos from John Otway's outdoor freebie in the Market Square (allegedly the very same Market Square mentioned by Bowie at the start of 'Five Years'), pics displayed here: http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/geofftyrellopenairotway1.html
Some photographic evidence of all of this era is at the following, thanks to photographer Don Stone:
1978: The first gig I went to, pretending to be my best mate's older sister (long story): http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/donstonejam78.html
1978: Magazine, with Howard Devoto up a pole:
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/donstonemagazinejul78.html
1978: Tom Robinson (no prizes for guessing which pic's from '2-4-6-8 Motorway'
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/donstonetomrobinson.html
1978: The Clash, The Slits and The Innocents
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/clashdec78.html
1979: The Undertones, The Knack (!) etc
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/donstoneundertones.html
1979: The Pretenders
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/donstonepretenders.html
1980: The Clash/Ian Dury
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/donstoneclash80.html
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/clash80.html (and note 'extortionate' ticket price of £3 - for the first date of the 'London Calling' tour).
1980: The Ramones/The Boys
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/donstoneramones80.html
1980: Iggy Pop/Psychedelic Furs
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/donstoneiggy1980.html
Tragically, there don't appear to be any photos surviving from U2's first UK gig outside Ireland (no, really, they were quite promising then: I only went because Peel was playing them all the time), or, indeed, the Wire/The Cure double-headlining diplomatic nightmare, Gang of Four with their arms in plaster after having been attacked by neo-Nazi idiots or Vic Godard and the Subway Sect in their Frank Sinatra phase.
What there are, though, are photos from John Otway's outdoor freebie in the Market Square (allegedly the very same Market Square mentioned by Bowie at the start of 'Five Years'), pics displayed here: http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/geofftyrellopenairotway1.html
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