Ellipsis 1

Ellipsis has gone to the printer! The first volume of the series will be launched at the end of July, with readings by the three authors: Frances Gapper, Bethan Stevens and Ruth Valentine.

Mirabeau Performance

Mirabeau went down a storm at our first London performance. One audience member was heard to compare the concoction of words and chords to chamber music, though our final number, Richard Price's 'Last Train', owed more to the Rolling Stones than Schubert. The compositions of the talented Caroline Trettine (above) added depth to the simplest verses and Ian Kearey's light-fingered guembe accompaniment to my poem 'Astrolatry' (a translation of a ballad by Sorley MacLean) evoked the magic of space travel.

The Crowning Privilege: Carol Ann Duffy

Those who are beginning to find the media reportage of the appointment of Carol Ann Duffy as poet laureate a little disingenuous may be revived by the words of Robert Graves. Graves gave the Clark Lectures at Cambridge in 1954-5, and chose to speak about poetic patronage.

The history of literature shows that it is possible to sell poems without selling your soul: Graves' opening lecture, published in The Crowning Privilege, makes an important distinction between poets who worked independently within a system of court patronage, retaining their style and dignity, and poets (often 'scops' or 'snobs') who produced mere flattery. Graves reminds us that poetry has been inextricably linked to royal patronage since the Anglo-Saxon period. He notes, wryly, that in the medieval period, ‘Slavish commendations of royalty had not become fashionable.' Poems addressed to a patron were more likely to incite debate, and even Chaucer used his envoys to 'lecture Richard II on what kingly conduct should be.' Graves, who had no love for the establishment himself, notes that the dedications to patrons, common in poetry up to the period of Pope, were not only obsequious fawnings. The noble dedicatee often served the same purpose as the well-known reviewer on the modern blurb: the reader assumed that this would be quality verse. Duffy's predecessors may have been more unconventional and anarchic than is widely believed.

In the same lecture Graves continued the theme of his work The White Goddess, pointing out that the poetic deity is perceived as female, whether the Irish Triple-goddess and patroness of poetry, Birgit, the Welsh Cerridwen, or Calliope, the most distinguished of the Muses. John Skelton, among others, paid homage to Calliope: ‘Regent is she/of poetes al’. Few will expect Duffy to bring supernatural powers to the laureateship. Perhaps she will find a better role-model in the druid-poet of pre-Christian Britain, who sat at the right-hand side of the powerful female monarch. According to Graves, this poet's duties included responsibility for the matriarch's insignificant male consort, ‘to stand continually by the king’s side and ensure that no accidental breach of royal taboo on his part – by eating beans, touching a dog, wearing a knot in his clothes, and so on – could endanger the safety or fertility of the realm.’ One wonders if Duffy might be able to take a similar custodial role with regard to the Duke of Edinburgh.


Robert Graves: Photograph copyright Rab Shiell

After Light at Bookartbookshop

As the sun went down over Hoxton Square, new poems appeared in the window of the Bookartbookshop. Many thanks to everyone who came along and enjoyed the exhibition.

After Light Private View

Fashion Photography: Brett
Books: Model's own