My Favourite Poems Of the Last Few Years...More Or Less

I'm not really one for end-of-year lists. The timing of this list-oriented entry may seem suspicious, but it's (more or less) coincidental; at any rate, it's not a "best of 2013".

While I've often written about classic poems on this blog, I particularly wanted to highlight some of the new (or new-ish) poems that I've discovered and loved since I started The Stone and the Star - or at least, that I've discovered in recent years.

Vague enough? Well, let's say the list that follows includes ten of my favourite poems of the last few years, or at least not too long ago (so if something is five or ten years old, don't write to me in protest). Some of them I've written about already, and where links are provided they should either take you directly to the poem, or to an entry I've written about them (which should contain either the poem, or a link to the poem). Where I haven't yet written about these poets, you may see more of them in 2014 on the blog. The main thing to know is that these poems are a good way to spend some time.


Travel Papers (Carolyn Forché)
Fast Is the Century (Nikola Madzirov)
At Roane Head (Robin Robertson)
Man Praying, King's Cross, 34° (Toby Martinez de las Rivas)
Hennecker's Ditch (Kate Kilalea)
Vita Contemplativa (Adam Zagajewski)
Migration (Karen Solie)
How To Build Your Dream Garden (Kapka Kassabova)
Author's Prayer (Ilya Kaminsky)
Garden Statues (Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi)


The countries represented include the United States, Macedonia, Scotland, England, South Africa, Poland, Canada, Bulgaria, the Ukraine, and Sudan, and three (four?) of the poems are in translation from other languages. This international range was not at all deliberate, by the way, but I think it's pretty interesting. It certainly highlights the fact that my exciting poetic discoveries of recent years have often been international and/or in translation.

Lost In Translation, Japan and Poetry of Place

I first watched Lost In Translation shortly before visiting Japan in 2004. Although I've seen it several times since then, I watched it for the first time in years about six or eight months ago, and it hit me rather hard. I realised that it reminded me of a lot of things from the past ten years, one way or another. The middle-aged actor Bob (Bill Murray) is there to promote Suntory whiskey when he meets Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson). On my first visit, in 2004, I brought back some Suntory whiskey for the friends in Dublin who had made me sit down and watch Lost In Translation before I left - that went down rather well. On my second visit, in 2010, I bought a miniature bottle of Suntory for someone in London who, in the end, I never gave it to.

Lost In Translation is definitely a film which polarises people - almost everyone I know who has seen it either cites it as one of their favourite films (that's me), or says it was bland or insipid or boring or words to that effect. I just found it incredibly realistic and rather moving, in terms of the characters in their interactions. I wouldn't say that it offered a lot of insight into Japanese culture, though the glimpses are entertaining and fascinating - the main characters don't make that much effort to really engage with the culture around them, so they remain outsiders. Not that it is a culture where it is particularly easy to become an insider.

But Japan is one of my favourite countries, after two visits to see one of my (Western) friends and her (Japanese) husband. It is a country where you can have so much fun, exploring the old and beautiful history, art and architecture, or running through the modern playgrounds of the cities and the futuristic technology. And everything works smoothly and everyone is so polite... My shining memories tend to surround the time I spent with my friend, and with her delightful friends, and marveling at the beauty of the castles, like the airy Himeji, and the gardens of Kyoto, and the otherworldly Ursula Le Guin archipelago of Okinawa. Oh yes...and shopping a lot, and sampling all of the amazing food that I possibly could. (Japan is my number one culinary destination.)

Returning to Lost In Translation, I see this above all as a movie about dislocation and feeling isolated (which can happen anywhere - even at home) and about the place where you are reflecting your state of mind. The latter is particularly interesting, and relates to poetry. I've consistently found that when I write poems about places - which I often do - the place (usually a city) ends up acting as a mirror and as an excavator; it reflects my state of mind and my preoccupations, and uncovers more. Every city reveals something different, of course. With other human beings, you have a different chemistry (in any kind of relationship) and thus a different way of relating to everyone; cities are like this as well because they all have a differing energy. I know sometimes that my experience of a city could have been quite different if I had visited in different company; or alone; or happier; or sadder. I remember that Tokyo, which I only visited in 2004, struck me as fascinating, but cold. I was living in Ireland and having a hard time when I took that trip, and while in Tokyo I was either alone, or with people I didn't know that well. I am not sure if I would have found Tokyo exactly warm under different circumstances, but it would not have been the same, I'm sure.

I thought of this in relation to poetry partly because of the workshop I took with Kapka Kassabova at Poetry Parnassus, which was about poetry of place and travel. One way to approach this is by allowing the place to tell a story about your state of mind, or a process you are going through in your life, or something similar. This is often where I turn out to be coming from when I write these poems, although it can be an unexpected result. Among others, we looked at the poem 'Finisterre' by Sylvia Plath, and Kassabova's own wonderful poem 'How to build your dream garden'; these are great examples. In 'Finisterre', Plath's lonely and morbid state of mind surges overwhelmingly out of the poem's imagery:


The cliffs are edged with trefoils, stars and bells
Such as fingers might embroider, close to death,
Almost too small for the mists to bother with.

(from 'Finisterre', Sylvia Plath)


I feel like I should revisit some of the places I've been to but have not yet written about, and explore them again through poetry.

Japanese poetry is a largely unknown world to me as yet, but I found this beautiful translation of a Kobayashi Issa haiku, by Robert Hass. It also strikes a poignant note as it involuntarily brings up thoughts of the 2011 tsunami.


The snow is melting (Kobayashi Issa, translated by Robert Hass)

Poetry Parnassus on Friday and Saturday: Lost Geographers, Shifting Continents, Poetic Emergencies and Revolution

Poetry Parnassus, this past week at London's Southbank Centre, was a really extraordinary experience and one which I wish hadn't come to an end quite so soon. I took in a good many events, but I wish that I could have somehow gone to even more, or all of them...

On Friday, I spent about half the day at the festival. My first event was the Geography For The Lost workshop with Bulgaria's Kapka Kassabova. I'd chosen this because poetry of travel and place is one of my chief enthusiasms and the prime inspiration for a lot of my own writing. I wanted to find different ways to approach this kind of writing, and the workshop was really stimulating. We read a variety of poems and approached travel poetry as descriptions of place, as reflections of relationships, and so on. It was encouraging to see what a variety of people had joined this small workshop, too - maybe unsurprisingly given its nature, between us we'd been born on or lived on virtually every continent.

The star event of Poetry Parnassus was in the evening - Continental Shift, featuring the following poets:

Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)
Seamus Heaney (Ireland)
Bill Manhire (New Zealand)
Kay Ryan (USA)
Jo Shapcott (UK)
Kim Hyesoon (South Korea)
Togara Muzanenhamo (Zimbabwe)

This was an incredible lineup. I had seen Seamus Heaney a couple of times before, but he is a delightful reader and he always seems to choose different poems. I found his reading of the Song of Amergin, and 'I Am Raftery' in Irish, really moving, as were his own 'Two Lorries' and 'A Peacock's Feather'. Wole Soyinka had an incredible presence and body of work, only disturbed by the fact that his own mobile phone went off during one of his poems; a pretty hilarious moment. (He muttered something like "Oh my God, if this is who I think it is...") Seeing two such elder statesmen of poetry (sorry for the cliche, but what else can you call these two Nobel Prize winners?) at the same event was very exciting. As well, I was totally disturbed and fascinated by Kim Hyesoon, especially 'The Sublime Kitchen'. Bill Manhire's 'Erebus Voices', about the Air New Zealand/Mt Erebus disaster, made me cry. Togara Muzanenhamo was, I think, a late addition, but superb. He had undergone an odyssey, as two years previously he'd not been able to get a visa for the UK, and for this event his visa had only come through at the last minute. Such experiences weren't uncommon for a good few of the poets at Poetry Parnassus, I think, and apparently some failed to get a visa, again.

Seamus Heaney at Continental Shift:

On Saturday morning I went to Bill Manhire's workshop about memory exercises, which was fruitful. A few meaningful coincidences, too; he made reference to Wallace Stevens's 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," which I hadn't been very familiar with previously but had read just a couple of days before the festival. I then caught some of the free readings in the Clore Ballroom, sponsored by various publishers and journals. I loved the poem by Zambia's Kayo Chingonyi about cassette tapes - great for those of us over a certain age - and it was lovely to hear George Szirtes read 'Mapping the Delta', and to meet him briefly. (Another coincidence: on Sunday, at Poetry Review's stand where they had a free Lucky Dip, I picked up a copy of 'Mapping the Delta', to my delight.)

I also paid a visit to the Emergency Poet, which was so nice. Deborah Alma invites patients into her old ambulance, asks questions such as "Do you enjoy walking by the sea and how often do you get to do it?", "Are there any types of poetry you are allergic to?" and "What books would be on your desert island list?", and then makes suitable poetic prescriptions. I got an excerpt from T S Eliot's 'East Coker', and Wendell Berry's 'The Peace of Wild Things', both of which were quite spot-on to ease my nervous disposition. Deborah Alma also works with dementia patients using poetry, so I felt that there was a serious intent behind the fun.

The Emergency Poet's ambulance:

A little later, there was another amazing event, 'They Won't Take Me Alive: Women and Revolution'. This was a panel and reading, featuring Gioconda Belli (Nicaragua), Chiranan Pitpreecha (Thailand), and Farah Didi (Maldives). All have in one way or another been politically involved and used poetry to bring attention to the issues of their countries and the personal impact of oppression, war and loss. Again, I was really struck by how powerfully meaningful poetry is in such countries, and how even writing poetry can be a brave, dangerous act. Amanda Hopkinson read poetry by Alaide Foppa, who was "disappeared" in Guatemala in the 1980s. When 'Exile' was read, many people in the room were in tears, including myself.

I then had a quick drink with a friend, and we discussed Eliot and Pound while overlooking the Thames, and then I called it a day for poetry. I'll write about Sunday at Poetry Parnassus shortly, but must call it a night, now!