I think I'll be writing more pieces like this alongside my poems - in fact I've already begun another
about my visit to the Mary Stuart's chambers in Holyrood Palace last week - an immensely moving place to visit (the chambers specifically, not the palace!). I wish I could have shut out all the other tourists and had the rooms to myself for a while.
So Madame Ecosse is forthcoming February '17 - last week I reordered the entire collection. Originally it was going to be in three sections but the selecting of poems for the first two sections seemed arbitrary with a number of poems, so then I put the collection into two sections - Garden Songs and The Birth Files - but even these sections niggled away at me.
I noticed with Tree Language (which was in three sections) that reviewers would quite happily ignore an entire section in reviewing the book. I guess I wouldn't like The Birth Files poems to be ignored - they are on a tricky subject after all - and I'm suspicious that relegating them to a section at the end of the book would cause them to be easily ignored.
I'm not entirely sure the new order is the finalised deal - I'll need a couple of weeks before I can objectively look at it again.
Like everything else - no readings for ages then they all come at once!
I'll be reading alongside J.O. Morgan, Vicki Husband and Em Strang at -
St Mungo's Mirrorball Showcase 5
Thursday 27th October
CCA Clubroom, Glasgow, 7pm
I'll also be reading at the third Dunoon Book Festival alongside Tariq Latif -
30th October 12.30 pm
Dunoon's Victorian Pier Building
I recently ordered The Literary Impact of The Golden Bough by John B. Vickery - a second-hand ex-uni library book that has clearly never been opened. It looks specifically at the influence of The Golden Bough on Yeats, T.S. Eliot and Lawrence. I can't wait until January when I can really get into my study of The Golden Bough and work out what kind of poem(s) I'm going to feed it all into.
3 comments:
Hi Marion,
Looking forward to reading Madame Ecosse when it is published. Regarding your thoughts on structure (3 sections or 1?) - I wouldn't pay too much attention to the critics. More often than not they are wrong in the long run. I was visiting my daughter in Madrid and there is a street there were at one end of the street there is the preserved fully intact, fully furnished house of Spain's own Shakespeare - a massively popular and critically acclaimed playright / poet of the 17th century - who of course is now unknown and unread. At the other end of the street there is only a small plaque on the wall to indicate that here is the site of the house (long since demolished) of Cervantes - translated into every possible language and author of perhaps the best none character in literature. Only you know what structure is best. Hoping all's good, Alan.
Spelling errors - where and known
Thanks Alan, hope all is well with you!I'm glad I made the structural changes - I think the sections were a hangover from Tree Language that had to be got rid of! Wishing you all the best for Christmas and the new year - and for lots of poetry in 2017!
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