Funeral Poetry

Like any other sane/unindoctrinated person, I found the funeral propaganda around Queen Elizabeth II’s death and the Establishment’s rush to overwhelm critical thought with the rapid accession of ‘King’ Charles III to be infuriating and risible in equal measure. I am reminded of Picasso’s comment that after a walk in the countryside, he had ‘green’ indigestion and it had to be relieved with a green painting on return to his studio. So the steady stream of mind-numbingly stupid worshipful coverage became so indigestible that I needed to write a funeral poem. Almost coincident with this decision, the former Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy published her commemoration in the Guardian, (Former poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy shares poem to mark Queen’s passing | Carol Ann Duffy | The Guardian) which, unsurprisingly, turned out to be laugh out loud appalling – spoiler alert – it’s a list poem. (At this point I was going to quote a small sample but on re-reading it, the cringe is too great to stomach). Then the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage also knocked one out, (Floral Tribute, a poem for the Queen by Simon Armitage | Queen Elizabeth II | The Guardian) which turned out to be a fucking Acrostic. The Establishment claim that the Funeral is the most important event in history (yes, the narrative is that bad!) and their Establishment poet comes up with a cowardly acrostic flower poem. As an ex-primary school teacher I know commented, if one of her eight-year-olds had offered that she would have asked them to try again.

Although you know it subconsciously, it wasn’t until I saw these ‘poems’ that I fully realised how the moral, political and cultural bankruptcy and corruption of the UK was so clearly mirrored in its Official Verse Culture. As Charles Bernstein wrote in ‘My Way’:

“Poetry can interrogate how language constitutes, rather than simply reflects, social meaning and values. You can’t fully critique the dominant culture if you are confined to the forms through which it reproduces itself, not because hegemonic forms are compromised ‘in themselves’ but because their criticality has been commandeered.” (Yes, I know I am stretching it to connect Duffy and Armitage to the idea of cultural criticality).

All this randomly coincided with my current reading of Alain Badiou’s ‘The Immanence of Truths’ in which he articulates the ontological and evental structure of worlds. It’s a massive undertaking and too large a subject for here, but a key theme is the systemic finitude limiting societal change, and the operational covering-over of the possibility of thinking about change. Capitalism consumes everything with the idea that the dismal future is endless, unchangeable and theirs:

“Any system that maintains that the current laws of what exists will be confirmed indefinitely because they are deduced, insofar as their universe is constructible, from what has already been defined.”

In ‘Immanence’, Badiou identifies that change is very much possible and “a fundamental ethics can be derived, in three interrelated imperatives” to achieve it. The Queen’s funeral qua hegemon is an ethic challenge to humanity and to poetry as truth procedure - a challenge that Armitage and Duffy have clearly failed. Here is my poem: 

 

Endless

1        “You must always commit to an Idea” 

See that?

It’s passed that. A line of trees hopeful between two buildings, or maybe

as big as ‘let not another child be slain’, as strong as memory of stolen lands,

To create a pulsing ripple, that soliton which surfs even under their palimpsest,

This our secret opera in a key undefaced by crucifixion or commodity

or gangmasters for captive freedom.

Our delicate wont to violent negation is a vinculum to black and red posters

Untouched acts vs the fading replacement written in tepid ink

the discretion out of reach and living as if divined

Forever and passed there, 

you can see that?

 

2          “You must contribute to uncovering”

Clown Laureates offer the consolations of traffic management, uniform imbalances,

A planning conceit of property values, secretly waged, a chart of dominant percentages, 

with walking children, royally screwed, to exude the smell of spoilage and unpasteurised 

genitals, lined up

in good order, salutes, highborn as primitive and weakened to obtain a “good” 

remembering, our photos are the same as life in Queue Theory chicanery

or chicane being-for-death – let not another child be slain, remember?

Ordinal to name things, number things, and hierarchize them, mediated as to police

This recurring procession dream and rule as repetition.

  

3          “Open thought up to real infinity” 

With the Hierarchy of Mediations in transit by deletion, with each local gesture,

The joyous breeze of interruption of imaginary nations as the true value

As art preserves, with the promise of happiness, the memory of the goals that failed fade. 

We

to be earned can commit the happiness of thoughtcrime to increment, to replacement.

And that’s it. Bypass feudal linear procession. Use elevated biocular focus to see that:

Passed even that. A sombre toast: to the grand narratives of us 

in the absence of gods, kings, laureates, etc.

 

 

uncontainable excitement

It looks like once a year I will receive an email from the Poetry Society inviting me to recommend ‘exciting new work’ that I might have come across, commissioned, etc., in the last 12 months to be considered for Carol Ann Duffy’s Ted Hughes Award for New Work, which she set up when she took over from Andrew Motion as Poet Laureate.

Somewhat bemused by the source of this request last year, I emailed them back to ask who the judges were going to be (as at the time of launch they hadn’t been announced). I received an email back telling me who they were – I forget now, look it up somewhere if you need to know – but it was obvious that the judges would be incapable of recognising new work if it held a gun to their heads, which is what I replied to the Poetry Society - to offer up real innovators would be to diminish them and validate a sham. The final communication from them took the form of the equivalent of a shrug.

And surprise, surprise, who should win the inaugural award than Duffy-lite Alice Oswald, “a nature poet who writes ‘very much in the tradition’ of Hughes”.

First of April - new born gentle
Fleeting wakeful on a greenleaf cradle.
Second of April - eyes half open,
faint light moving under lids. Face hidden.
Third of April - bonny and blossoming
in a yellow dress that needs no fastening.

Etc

Despite the claim that the award is for "the most exciting contribution to poetry" in the past year, Oswald, whose work is as indistinguishably mainstream as Duffy’s own, beat the ‘fabulous’ shortlist of Andrew Motion and Jackie Kay – on what planet would any of these names be considered exciting? The only adjective that comes to mind for Motion’s writing is turgid. Sue Trehy is an insanely fast reader and so when we travel she takes piles of books. I noticed that a Jackie Kay book had made it into her luggage recently. She doesn’t like me telling her what she should and shouldn’t read so I kept my mouth shut, interested to see what she thought of it. I’ve never seen her not finish a book, she seems to take it as a point of pride to finish if she’s started whatever it's like; but the Kay was thrown down unfinished. "Ordinary beyond belief, she can't write" she declared, "I’ve read better writing by 6th Form teenagers."

Saying “I would have told you so” isn’t as much fun as saying “I told you so”.

The artistic bankruptcy of the hegemony continues to manifest in an implied but fundamentally aimless desire for renewal. With no recourse or capacity to language itself as the source of renewal, much as they dally in writing for children or try their hand at plays, or as reviewed recently, even curating exhibitions (Duffy at the Tate), supposedly this “very exciting award highlights the many forms in which poets work, from poetry collections to verse novels; radio poems and film poems to libretti and verse dramas; individual poems or poem sequences; work for adults or children; through to poetry written for public sculptures, inscriptions, or other contexts”. Except the evidence so far contradicts this empty rhetoric because Oswald won with a rural book like her other rural books except with illustrations by an artist I can’t be bothered to look up. Amusingly Oswald said: “it’s an award that dips beyond the mainstream into some of the more unusual poetic channels”. ‘dips beyond the mainstream’ ! As well as being talentless, the arrogant writers of the hegemony of the banal are cheeky buggers.

Anyway, this year I emailed the Poetry Society back that having seen their understanding of new work in the first year I thought that they had a brilliant sense of humour and I was looking forward to an excitingly risible second year award. I did momentarily wonder what damage it would do to a poet who actually did write something new if they won it accidentally, an award despite itself, but even after only one year it is clear this is inconceivable.

Duffy at the Tate

When I first heard that Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy had curated an exhibition called The Sculpture of Language at Tate Liverpool http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/CollectionDisplays?venueid=4&roomid=6299 my reaction was an equivalence of anger at the implications of this hegemonic banality and resignation that it was only to be expected.

For a while I intended to traipse over to Liverpool specially, so I could do write an informed critique. Noticeably there appear to have been no reviews of the show. Google just throws up the usual lazy journalism of reprinting the Gallery press release. A quick look at said-publicity, the list of works included, and the execrable sonnet Duffy wrote to accompany her selection made me begrudge the obvious waste of time and effort to actually go and see it but also realise that the information available is more than enough to know what’s wrong with it. Coincidentally I have been reading Tom Raworth’s latest “Windmills in Flames” which includes the appropriate response to Duffy ‘Coda to a Laureate’ – (first line: “If I could take my tongue out of your arse”).

According to the PR the show “Presenting artworks created in a range of media from 1699 to the present day, Duffy's personal selection creates a multi-layered and poetic display. It invites us on a journey towards a universal notion of language, from ‘before words’ to ‘when words come into being’. She explores the numerous ways in which artists have deployed, dissected and engaged with language; by making reference to literature, by exploring the processes and devices of inscription and the formal qualities of typography, by using words to convey meaning or by creating works that are synonyms and metaphors for communication itself.” I always wonder what marketing people and visual arts people (for that matter) mean when they refer to a ‘poetic display’. You frequently read artists and curators refer to images as poetic but I am never sure what that actually means; one can usually infer that it references some form of vague lyricism, which is about all you could expect from Duffy. In her case maybe vaguely lyricist visualism is preferable to

POETRY
I couldn’t see Guinness
and not envisage a nun;
a gun, a finger and thumb;
midges, blether, scribble, scrum.

Followed by 2 more stanzas of equal banality.

The claim that this has been realized as an installation, which allows visitors to re-write it to create ‘their own sonnet’ is I guess laughable. My bet is that this is nothing more than the usual UK gallery practice of ‘hands-on’ write on cards and pin on a board to ‘have your say’.

The irritation about this show is in the oft-repeated fiasco of the visual arts co-opting poetry and in their choice demonstrating that they have absolutely no idea of what is going on in contemporary poetry. In curating the Text Festival I have reviewed the Tate Collection myself to borrow from so I know what Duffy had to work with. Seeing what she chose I am drawn to a comment from Marjorie Perloff’s ‘Differentials; Poetry, Poetics, pedagogy’ which I am also reading at the moment: “the what might happen subordinated to the what has happened”- this actually describes the problem in the hegemony of the banal, Duffy and her oppos write as if modernism didn’t happen; their past is not modern (her selection at the Tate is at best artistically static); their present is not contemporary and their future can only be the past.

The Coincidental Laureate

As various other bloggers noted during the Text Festival, Carol Ann Duffy was coincidentally confirmed as the next poet laureate. In the blogs I saw there was only mild criticism of quality of her writing, though I felt that the irony hung in the air that it should be announced in Manchester concurrently with (but disconnected from) the Festival. However in the Thinking Environment Symposium on the Festival Sunday there was more open anger at the appointment. The symposium was an invitation only workshop for the festival artists, premised on the idea that Festivals and conferences usually expect things from their participants and don’t very often give them something back (except some small payment). The artists were offered the space to develop their thinking about their own practice and collaborative ways forward for innovative work (I will return to this in a future blog). The anger expressed at the Duffy appointment was not a major feature of the day’s thinking but is worth thinking about. On face value the anger is legitimate (especially for UK poets who had to live with the doggerel that Andrew Motion came out with and who have not much greater expectation of Duffy). I certainly have complained about the dismal quality of laureate writing many times here and elsewhere, and sometimes with the same anger. However, in the Thinking Environment it occurred to me that the anger was misplaced. We complain that Poet Laureates are mainstream poets – and frequently not even the ‘most capable’ of that empty ‘school’. But actually that is the job description: the poet is recommended on a list drawn up by someone in Government and presented to the Queen who chooses the one she likes. The poet is then approached indirectly to see if they would accept if asked. If they accept they are appointed if they refuse they were never asked – because a subject can’t refuse the Monarch. Even poets in the mainstream have problems with this; I vaguely recall that Andrew Motion wasn’t the first person who wasn’t asked. As a person, when I have met her, Carol Ann Duffy has always been nice to me – I remember her appreciating my explanation of how to read Lyn Hejinian’s Writing is an Aid to Memory and she was once very kind when I needed personal support, and I also had a sense that there was at least some backbone of (feminist) political principle. Fundamentally and obviously the Poet Laureate is the Establishment’s representation of itself, it is an appropriation. This era’s mainstream poets accept because of the carrot that they can use it to promote poetry in general; it is represented as a platform, so despite the obvious negatives, these poets think that they can use it to get more people reading. I don’t see any evidence of Motion achieving this; admittedly he is such a poor poet reading could hardly be helped (he is now Chairman of the Museums Libraries & Archives Agency, which is an equally pointless governmental organisation).

I think it is instructive to look at the Royal/Establishment use of a different artform: visual art. Does anyone get irritated or angry about the Royal Portrait painters? Every few years a mediocre artist that we have never heard of gets commissioned to paint the Queen’s portrait. It is a news item and the only question inevitably is whether the painting looks like her, with the only question to the nobody painter being ‘what is she like as a model?’ It doesn’t register at all in the art world because visual art has an autonomy of purpose, intent and public-private economy which is driven by newness and the next thing (discussion of the Blairite access corporatism of the Tate & other Empires is too much of a digression here). So the nearest Monarch-Government can come to appropriating contemporary art is the Culture Minister attending the Turner Prize or super-star artists at cocktail parties at Number 10: a reflected glory that they can be modern and cool – a state artist would be kitsch. The idea that the Queen could announce that the Turner Prize winner will be designated the official state artist would be laughable, and the official portraitist is in the same way below even that. The anger at the Poet Laureate is often focused on the question of who it is and that there are so many more interesting poets who could do it better, but this is to lose the argument before it starts. The Poet Laureateship is itself the denigration of all poetry. Instead of anger, which exemplifies the artform’s weakness, maybe derision and laughter would be more productive, allied with counter-naming (as Ron Silliman argued in the Thinking Environment): So the post should generally now be referred to as the State Poet – call it what it is – or the Poet Lackey or the Puppy Laureate (although even Barney would refuse the Queen’s offer – Who am I kidding? if she included doggy biscuits, then like the poets who take the job, he will do anything – but at least he would have the transparent canine integrity and lack of conceit to be driven by the urge for biscuits rather than the pathetic obsequiousness of wearing their collar).