Monthly Archive for October, 2008

It was a mind and heart-warming Poetry Room last night, despite the chilly weather outside.  Many thanks to everyone who came along to discuss Jackie Kay’s collection ‘Darling:  New & Selected Poems’.

We started by looking at a quote from Jackie Kay that demonstrates her desire for active independent readers, and suggests her poetry’s inclusiveness:

I’m really interested in my readers’ responses. I make a lot of  room for my readers. When I write, I actually think about it consciously, about  creating a space so that the reader can come in with their life, their experiences, their disappointments, and their loves. I want it to be like the call and response of the blues.

Kay’s musicality, among other elements, shows the craft behind her characteristically accessible poetry.  One person found her conversational style off-putting initially, but was won over by the work on a second reading.    

We listened to a recording of Kay reading Chapter 3: The Waiting Lists from her sequence The Adoption Papers.  The poem shows Kay’s interest in identity and persona – themes which are crucial throughout her work.  The poem’s combination of wit and pathos continued in the other poems we looked at (the exception to this was the poignant Blues which contained no humour but moved people with its tale of violence in the life of the singer Bessie Smith). 

The eroticism of Pounding Rain was admired while the anarchic Maw Broon Visits a Therapist was given a splendid reading by a member of the group.  One person observed how the poem gave a voice to the often invisible presence of an older woman.  It was also noted how the use of a Scottish voice was significant throughout Kay’s poetry, and how using the ‘Broons’ in poetry could be viewed as a political statement.

Finally we looked at Mugs and, outrun by time, went out into the nippy night air musing over the launch of betrayal ‘like a splendid ship’. 

The next Poetry Room will be on Tuesday 25 November at 6.30-8pm in Blackwell’s bookshop, Newcastle.  We will be looking at Billy Collins’ dazzling collection ‘Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes’ (Picador, 2000).  Do come along – all are very welcome, both new-comers and old-hands - and keep an eye on this site for a list of the poems we will be looking at.

Friends old and new gathered for the first session of the new series at Blackwell’s, where the collection under discussion was Daljit Nagra’s Look We Have Coming to Dover! Nagra is unfashionably keen on the exclamation mark and it accurately reflects his work’s bubbling energy and strong demotic. The English that he uses is the English of a multi-cultural multi-class Britain, riven and refreshed by seemingly endless layers of difference. Identifying his use of persona to dramatise his poems was key to understanding the spirit of the book and its open verdict on race, identity and otherness. It was sometimes hard to trace Nagra’s ‘personal’ voice and this led to a valuable discussion about the need to read each poem with a sense of an individual ‘speaker’, not necessarily the poet.

Folk came along with favourable, but uncertain, first impressions of Nagra’s poetry but deeper investigation enhanced everyone’s appreciation of his skill and range. He consistently evokes vivid experiences of what it is to be black and British, exploring how the cultures sometimes coexist and sometimes conflict. Questioning his own complicity in both racism and tokenism, holds criticism at bay, as well as engaging our sympathy and understanding of a deeply complex situation. The language and content of his work stands outside the English literary tradition while it also seeks shelter in it, acknowledging its place in it, held together formally by a strict regularity of lines and stanzas in many of the poems.

We listened to a recording of Daljit Nagra reading his poem Parade’s End and it brought fresh insights hearing his own voice, flattened by its London origins, and the way he’d edited the poem between versions; both 2007, so it was impossible to know which came first. If you’re reading this, Daljit, many of us preferred the recorded version, where you use the present tense!

This collection was part of our programme since we’d hoped to have the poet himself visit Newcastle as part of this autumn’s SAMA Festival. Unfortunately, that fell through but we all enjoyed the opportunity to consider his collection and become more familiar with this stunning, funny and important work. There was a sense of anticipation as to what he might follow it up with – what next? The best compliment a reader can give a writer perhaps – to be left wanting more.

On Tuesday 28 October Anna will be leading a discussion of another rich and exciting collection that explores issues of race and identity (as well as much else) – Jackie Kay’s New and Selected Poems: Darling (Bloodaxe, 2007). This is a perfect book for reading on chilly autumn evenings. Come along and share your responses to it and find out what other people think. Keep an eye on the website for more details.