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Just as we must dance as if no one is watching, we must write as if no one is reading. — Robin LeFevers

... as if ... Dancing.

A Larkin epiphany

I have discovered Philip Larkin, the poet. I mean, discovered. I had always thought of PL as a bit of a miserable old git but this is something else.

Larkin,cycling, came across a church out in the countryside somewhere, stopped to look and was moved by the experience, perhaps unexpectedly. The poem begins:

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.

and ends:

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

- the last stanza from Church Going by Philip Larkin

Full text 

The credit for this late epiphany must go to Richard Holloway and Andrew Motion and the BBC Radio 4 programme Honest Doubt: the history of an epic struggle, episode 19/20, On presence and absence; broadcast at 13.45h on Thursday 21st June 2012.

From the BBC web page:

In a series of personal essays, Richard Holloway considers the tensions between faith and doubt over the last 3000 years.

In today's programme, Richard Holloway focuses on an enduring paradox ... that God can be experienced both as present and absent at the same time. He explores the idea with the help of three post-war poets - Philip Larkin, John Betjeman and RS Thomas.

He talks to Larkin's friend and literary executor, Sir Andrew Motion, about Larkin's complex attitude to religion and reads from Larkin's seminal poem 'Aubade'. Larkin himself introduces his poem, 'Churchgoing' [sic], which expresses the nostalgia of what we lose when we lose our faith.

John Betjeman's religious struggle is discussed with Betjeman's biographer AN Wilson. And for the Welsh priest poet RS Thomas, the theme of God's absence and presence is compared to finding a [hare's form empty but recently vacated] on the hillside - 'we find the place still warm with his presence, but he is absent'.

Producer: Olivia Landsberg
A Ladbroke Production for BBC Radio 4.

Brilliant radio. Brilliant poet.

 Ends

Merchants of Culture

This is a great book. John B Thompson successfully captures the middle ground between the academic thesis and the chat down the pub. It's serious stuff delivered accessibly.

Merchants of Culture: the publishing business in the twenty-first century. Polity, 2010.
Book details.

The book explains, for the publishing industry, particularly trade publishing, how we got here and why. It is a fascinating read and it explained things to me that I had never properly understood before.

1. The Growth of the Retail Chains. 
2. The Rise of Literary Agents. 
3. The Emergence of Publishing Corporations.

They are the first three chapter headings.
This book deals with the publishing business in the UK and USA, ie London and New York, the centres of the English language publishing industry. There are commonalities and differences and John Thompson addresses them both.
He continues the story with an analysis of the Polarization of the Field between the big corporation and the small press, with little in between, and then discusses the part played by Big Books and Extreme Publishing in the corporation business dynamic. For corporations, at the end of the day, it is all about the bottom line and delivering "growth" year on year. Imprints within big corporations pin their hopes on Big Books, in other words, on books they hope will sell in large quantities, and on Extreme Publishing, that is, bringing a new title to market very fast and reprinting very fast.
Chapter 7 is entitled Shrinking Windows and it recounts how opportunities for marketing books have diminished; less retailers, less time, more expense.
It was only when I came to Chapter 8 that I felt the pace begin to drag; that's page 291ff. That's some achievement! For three hundred pages the author had kept my interest without question. At this point there was some reiteration, inevitably, of what had gone before but, once through the back eddy, the stream picked up speed again fairly quickly. Chapter 8 is called The Wild West and it is about book retailing in the UK, particularly the end of the Net Book Agreement on prices and the rise of the supermarket as a power player in the business. Supermarkets demand, and get, very high discounts from the publishers, squeezing the publishers harder than they were already. The situation in the USA is different; there is a sort of gentleman's agreement enshrined in law which seems to stabilise the market to some extent. It is still tight but it is not quite as wild as it is in the UK but, then, the size of the market is so much bigger in the USA compared to the UK, so the pressures are bound to be different.
The last two chapters deal with The Digital Revolution and Trouble in the Trade and there is a Conclusion: Facing an Uncertain Future.
I've learnt a lot and I understand better how the market operates and what people involved in the book business might be thinking and why. I thoroughly recommend this book.

Poem: December. Newcastle Emlyn.

December

It was sunny for a while

In Newcastle Emlyn

Then the rain returned

Sleet, hail, rain - a regular ice storm

And the day was suddenly

Dark. And white.

The river is full, the Teifi,

Winding its way first this way then that way

About the town,

Fuller than before,

Another drop and it will

Be all over the place,

All over the shop,

Café, hotel, farmyard, field

Literally. Figuratively.

Actually. A riverful of water.

[13.12.2011; revised 14.12.2011]

Poem : Upland Britain 1

after: Upland Britain: A natural history. Margaret Atherden.

Manchester University Press, 1992.

1: The physical features of upland Britain

Who said rocks? Which rocks?

Who said the Tees-Exe line?

Who said above three thousand feet?

This is my assessment of the uplands sign.

If we're talking rocks

The North Downs were my uplands

Rugged chalk

And dusty summer roads

And Old Man's Beard.

It takes all sorts.

But, this year,

It is whatever takes 

me in

My imagination

One two three. One two three.

Quick quick slow. Quick quick slow,
In the dance of geological time as
Basalt columns stand around the walls

Back to

Upper Teesdale

To that sweep of hill

To the plover arching sky       

Over and above the strata's rise and fall

Where it is time to take your partners. To move. To move. To move

And move together

To the pinching grip of Man upon the land

And Woman

In the whitewashed farmsteads

That are my source of joy.

[16.09.2011; revised 14.12.2011]
[I never did enter it for that poetry competition. But then, it was very rough. Only now, perhaps, after the accumulated months have scoured the landscape of unnecessary words, can it be considered done.]

Poem: For September

September 

16.09.2011

Today, the weather is playing at being autumn.

It is not of course. It is an aberration.

The summer is still here.

The sun's warmth is hidden by the clouds.

But, as I get out my winter jumpers

And watch the rain,

I'm glad

I mowed the grass yesterday.

[16.09.2011; revised 14.12.2011]

I wrote

Today, I wrote a poem for today. I'm saving it for a competion, not published anywhere.
It mentions the North Downs and Upper Teesdale. But I'm not saying any more.