Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Flying to the UK tonight to launch my new Carcanet book of poems. Bittersweet feeling, actually. 12 years ago, when I was deciding between moving to the UK or the US, I plumped for the latter because it was terra incognito to me. It felt right to start a new life in a country completely new to me. The US has since given me so much. The encouragement and opportunity to come out as a gay man. Superb poetry teachers and exemplars. Friends and lovers. New York City. But the US has not embraced my poetry. I'm grateful to Roxanne Hoffman for publishing my first chapbook and to various fine independent journals for publishing my poems. My work had not, however, found favor with any of the big poetry journals and publishers. After years of contest submissions and payments, I decided to self-publish my books and found a great deal of satisfaction in the process and result. I'm ever so pleased, and surprised, when individuals tell me how much they like my work. Still, the niggling feel...

In Public View what happened did not occur in public view —Marie Howe, “Ordinary Time” Prince William and his bride go shopping. He is exposing her to the cameras. He is exposing her to a bomb this morning, and all mornings they are together, and after. Sure, you don’t have to be a prince to expose a lover to danger. A poet will do the same. It is a dangerous time for a royal wedding. The police won’t say if they have divers in the Thames.

23. Why I moved to America and not Britain xxx When I walked in McDonalds in Welshpool, the floor sucked at my shoes. The server would rather rib his friend who came in after me than take my order. He gave me a cheeseburger when I asked for a quarter-pounder with cheese. He counted the change laboriously. The fries must have sat in the sieve for a long time for they were cold. xxx That was in 2002, when the Queen celebrated her Golden Jubilee, New Labor was losing its shine, and Nelson Mandela called Tony Blair "America's Foreign Minister." When I walked out of the joint, I had decided to go where real power resided. Since then I have discovered that the superpower does fast food badly too. That the corner where McDonalds is done the way McDonalds should be done is Singapore. 24. Things that Tilt xxx The Empire State Building in a snaphot. Rain. All the strokes of the letter W, upper or lower case. The fingers of the Bharata Natyam dancer. xxx To observe somethin...

20. First Things xxx The first time I entered a storytelling competition, I told the story of the greedy dog. Snapping the bone in the water, he lost the bone in the mouth. xxx The first time I fell in school, I muddied my white shorts. Terrified of looking as if I had fouled myself, I tried to clean my arse on the white walls. The stain not only stayed but spread. xxx I was thirteen the first time I published a poem. It was about looking at the rain lash the bronze back of the land. xxx The first time I fell in love, I was talking to God. After Darren prayed for me in Lee Abbey, I could hardly stay away from him. At the Lord's supper, I could hardly wait for the body of Christ to give each other the sign of the peace, when I could hold him briefly. I was twenty-one. xxx I had to bring a date for the Civil Service Dinner and so I brought a girl out for the first time. xxx The first time I saw New York was like the first time I saw Oxford, although one was more like a movie a...

Attribution I speak with the forked tongue of colony. --Eavan Boland, “The Mother Tongue” My grandfather said life was better under the British. He was a man who begrudged his words but he did say this. I was born after the British left. They left an alphabet book in my house, the same one they left at school. I was good in English. I was the only one in class who knew “bedridden” does not mean lazy. I was so good in English they sent me to England where I proved my grandfather right until I was almost sent down for plagiarism I knew was wrong and did not know was wrong, since where I came from everyone plagiarized. I learned to attribute everything I wrote. It is not easy. Sometimes I cannot find out who first wrote the words I wrote. Sometimes I think I wrote the words I wrote with such delight. Often the words I write have confusing origins and none can tell what belongs to the British, my grandfather or me. *

TLS August 14 2009 from Jim Endersby's review of The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1765-1820 , edited by Neil Chambers: Sweden's commercial interests had pesuaded Linnaeus that new, simpler and more accurate names were needed in order to ensure that botanists' time and money were well spent. [Joseph] Banks shared these concerns, and the adoption of the new names marked an important shift away from the cultures of curiosity, within which gentlemen like Banks had traditionally operated. Until the mid-eighteenth century, educated virtuosi such as Banks had collected anything and everything that was rare and curious; the practical uses of such collections were beneath a gentleman's notice. However, Linnaeus's standardized names were intended to put the plant world to work, to transform rare flowers into commodities that could be bought and sold, traded and transplanted. Linnaeus's names allowed accurate communication between naturalists around the w...

In Scottish poet Rob A. Mackenzie's debut book of poems, "opposites collide--reality and delusion, political activism and apathy, friend and enemy, life and death." The voice that registers these collisions is by turns satirical, probing, tender, and always entertaining. He stops at this blog for the final stop of his virtual book tour to answer some questions. You can read here a good number of the poems we discuss. Jee: At an earlier stop on your book tour, you said that you spent quite a bit of time deciding on the first and last poems of the collection. “Light Storms from a Dark Country” is a strong atmospheric start to the book, to my mind. “Freak lightning tears its jack-knife/ through the sky” is such a menacing image. What made you decide to begin your first book with this poem? The last poem “The Scuffle” is, aptly, about endings. What is it about a fox attacking a teabag in a garden that makes it so attractive as the book’s final image? Rob: Quite a few poem...

Eshuneutics reviews my poems Equal to the Earth , focusing on the alchemical meaning of the sea.(A longer review is forthcoming.) Harry Rutherford reads my book as part of the Read the World Challenge. So, for one, I am the Solutio , for another, I am Singapore. Coincidentally, both live in the UK. What do we make of this?

retentissement / reverberation The Christmas crowd is roaring round the circus ring. The bear is tearing up the master of the ring. A stone dropped in the water does not see the ripple. A tower struck by lightning does not hear bells ring. On an abbey’s lawn I learned to make a daisy chain from serious young men stretched out in a scattered ring. I often think I moved my life to the wrong country. The call is not for me whenever the phones ring. Tempted to switch these verses round like playing cards, I do, sometimes, to hear the cash register ring. One thing leads to another, as one day the next, but there are nights that huddle in a silver ring. You have big ears, Jee, which are losing their hearing to the bloodthirsty circus cheering for the ring.

atopos / atopos She says there are more than two ends to every stick. I think there are exactly seven to my stick. Red altars hung on the outside and kitchen walls. Every round bracket insisted on an incense stick. The carolers sang by a streetlamp in my cross-stitch. White and pink ribbons spiraled round the candy stick. Modest by European standards the concert hall transported to the “New World” on a waving stick. At two and ten o’clock of the field helmets waited. You can’t distinguish me from others in our stick. Trampling up and down the Lakes District, Anna, we cut from the green wind a stout walking stick. The sixth was artistic. The seventh was obscene. Let Paul not be an end. Let him be Jee’s stick.

I just read again Swift's "A Modest Proposal" in order to teach a class for a colleague. The savagery of the satire strikes me as hard as before. The outrage over the suffering of the Irish poor in 1729. The bitterness against England's exploitation. Particularly moving are the passages detailing groups such as begging mothers, and, more unexpectedly, young laborers. After dismissing the problem of the "aged, diseased and maimed," who take care of themselves by dying and rotting away, the speaker argues that the same is happening to the laborers. And as to the younger laborers, they are now in almost as hopeful a condition. They cannot get work, and consequently pine away for want of nourishment to a degree that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common labor, they have not strength of perform it; and thus the country and themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come. Thinking about this monument of English prose, I am reminded of anothe...

I have a deep affection for Julian Barnes, generally because I always enjoy his intellectually stimulating novels, more particularly because he taught me how to look at a painting. One chapter in The History of the World in 10½ Chapters muses on Géricault’s “The Raft of the Medusa.” I remember Barnes’s careful marshalling of evidence in the painting to decide whether the tiny ship in the horizon is approaching the desperate survivors of the shipwreck, or leaving them. I don’t remember the conclusion, but the approach has stuck with me: seeing is also interpreting. His new novel Arthur and George begins with the desire to take a look: A child wants to see. It always begins like this, and it began like this then. A child wanted to see. This particular child who wanted to see is Arthur, who is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, the professional ophthalmologist, the champion of the weak, and, finally, the evangelist of Spiritualism. What the child Arthur saw was...

July 13, Sun Arrived late at Parliament View Apartments, along Albert Embarkment. Danced at Fire, in Vauxhall. July 14, Mon Walked round Westminster and Soho. Watched Billy Eliot the Musical at Victoria Palace Theatre. Drank at Comptons.  July 15, Tue Spent afternoon with Anna and James at Hyde Park. Had dinner with Mary and Derek in Soho. Drank at Comptons and G-A-Y.  July 16, Wed Walked along South Bank. Visited Tate Modern: Bacon and Picasso room; Pollock's Summertime . Watched stand-up comedy at Royal Vauxhall Tavern. Drank at Barcode Vauxhall. July 17, Thu Watched King Lear at Shakespeare's Globe. Dinner at the Box. Drank at Rupert Street and 79 CXR.  July 18, Fri Visited the British Museum: the Parthenon Marbles. Danced at G-A-Y.  July 19, Sat Visited Sir John Soanes Museum: Hogarth's Election and The Rake's Progress . Visited National Gallery: Cezanne's Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses);  Seurat's Bathers at Asnieres;  and Velazquez's The Rokeby Ve...

xx The parliament of fools in session: we are new republics freed from monarchy. One man may be an MP, and so may another, as a day succeeds a day, not as a son, but as a term of light both after and before the close of night. You call that man a Representative whose babel tongue, creaturely and creative, transforms a people’s will into their laws, amending constitutions when there’s cause. xx Republicans, outside the residence of royal pomp and London circumstance, we watch the changing of the palace guard, and see the toys we thought we lost returned. They come back with the force of all we lost— queen mother, nursery, Sunday pot roast— pictures that grow more valuable with age, fading the massacres, disease, and rage. xx But if we give the past memory’s due, let it not take the future hostage too, for both of us, adolescent and child, cried out in a nightmare terror, wild for a soft bosom or a gentle word, and welcomed as a parental safeguard oily-tongued, bloody-deviced tyranny. Ho...

Having enjoyed the film, The Quarterback and I went on Tuesday to watch the musical at the Victoria Palace with great anticipation. Perhaps our high expectations let us down. The musical did not live up to its rave reviews. Stephen Daldry, who helmed the film, directed the musical as well. Lee Hall, the scriptwriter, wrote the book and lyrics, while Elton John wrote the music. The songs were not particularly memorable. I don't remember any repetition or development of musical motifs in the second half, except for the sentimental duet sang by Billy and his mum. Fox Jackson-Keen, who was a new Billy, had stage presence, but was always theatrical, unlike the very natural Jonty Bowyer, who played his chunky gay pal. Jackie Clune was wonderful as the dance teacher, Mrs Wilkinson, bringing a bittersweetness to the role.  The dance numbers were well executed, but it was weird to see striking miners dancing. Also odd, though crowd-pleasing, was the Disney-like number when dresses on hanger...

After a snack at New York Pizza, we went to a gay bar called Montmartre, off Halvemaanstraat. It was smoky, and decorated in a jungle theme. Parrots flew through or hung from fake creepers and branches in the ceiling. Two small disco balls provided the discordant note. We got a table near the front of the bar, which gave us a great view of the entire bar. The crowd was mostly white guys in their thirties and forties. The regulars were obviously familiar with the playlist and sang along. A few younger guys danced spontaneously. We looked into Entre Nous, just across the street, but it was empty. I remembered reading that the partying crowd here moved together from bar to bar, and so guessed it was not time for Entre yet. We walked down Reguliersdwarsstraat and tried Soho. Soho was done up in a poshed-up English pub style. It was jam packed with muscular guys bulging in tee-shirts and jeans. We went next door to ARC, which looked very much like a bigger version of NYC's G Lounge. The...

At the end of the long narrative poem “Sir Osbert’s Complaint,” Osbert Sitwell hopes he would be admitted into heaven for being a “Sceptical believer with a decent turn of phrase.” That self-description is applicable to Gregory Woods in his book, Quidnunc . He believes in the world but is skeptical of its human sufficiency. He believes in the poetic tradition but is skeptical of its modern relevance. The rhetorical strategies he pursues—parody, satire, mimicry, gossip—follow from such believing skepticism, but, instead of tracing these larger devices, I want to look at Quidnunc at the level of the phrase, and its decent turn. A good illustration of the book’s turning of the phrase, the opening poem “Civilization” begins: We tilled a land ungenerous with its resources, barely scratching at the surface for its reluctant benison. Between its gaunt, eroded outcrops we conserved a topsoil dry and sparse but capable of nurturing our basic needs . . . What strikes me in these lines is the at...

from Matthew Reynolds's review of Tate Britain's Millais exhibition: This discomfiting fascination with the relationship between human bodies and what they are in - both clothes and setting - is one of Millais's distinctive qualities. Through all the variation in style and genre which this exhibition amply documents, he remains absorbed by the idea that a setting can become a kind of vesture, the vesture project an image, and the image tally uneasily with the human being to whom it is attached. No character has been more comprehensively sunk into a natural setting than Ophelia, and yet the effect of ths is the opposite, it seems to me, of that suggested in the exhibition's detailed and generally perceptive catalogue: "the depicted cycles of growth, maturation and display doubly absorb Ophelia into a natural process, and render her insignificant". Of course the silvery embroidery of her dress mingles with the stream and connects with the sprays of white dog ros...

The first issue of The Chimaera , the offspring of Shit Creek Review , has just been delivered. It looks major and feels intimate. I have three poems in it, and a prose piece that started life as a blog post. Rhina P. Espaillat has a really good poem on the subject of home. Alison Brackenbury, whose first book Dreams of Power I read and loved in Singapore, is also here. And poets I first knew from PFFA: Rob Mackenzie, Rik Roots, Anna Evans, and Salli Shepherd. And a poet I first heard on the NYC poetry circuit, but who has now moved to Dublin: Quincy Lehr. And, in a strange return, a poet I knew from Singapore, an expat himself, Chris Mooney-Singh.