A Winter Collage

Some quotes and thoughts at the end of 2024

Introduction

I’ve had a bit of a writer’s block when it comes to this newsletter. So much to say or point at approvingly or questioningly and so little time.

But I wanted to say hello and season’s greetings to regular readers, so here I am.

I hope you get a rest, and a chance to breathe and be with the people, places, ideas, food, culture, landscapes, seascapes, rivers and hills that you love. If you want to not think about anything right now, I’d totally understand so here’s the ‘card’ (generated while playing with and probably deciding against AI, more on that next year) if you want to leave now. See you next year.

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If you’re still here, stick on this seasonal playlist while you read a kind of little collage of a post, off which your own holiday lights can shine. I’ve not had time to do a new Xmas playlist but you can listen to last year’s. That’s called tradition, I think.

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“Force yourself to see more flatly.” Georges Perec.

Complexity is real, and useful. But so are the four cardinal points of a compass.

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“One Train May Hide Another….

as when “I’m full of doubts”

Hides “I’m certain about something and it is that”

And one dream may hide another as is well known.” Kenneth Koch

Some phenomena can dominate our perceptions. AI may hide assaults on artists and writers’ copyright, for instance, or a future of automated leisure socialism. The Devolution train, to give another example, may hide versions of the Populist No Good Politicians So Why Worry About Local Democratic Structures Express, the Great Man Steam Excursion, or the Public Assets Given to Private Companies bus replacement service. And yet, behind those might be Reinvigorating Local Democracy and Unlocking Investment through Citizen Involvement, Regionalisation and the Breaking Up of Whitehall Power.

My point – especially to policy makers - being, to quote Koch again:

“Pause to let the first one pass.

You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It can also be important

To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.”

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“Life felt less short when driving back home felt this long.” Lorrie Moore

2024 has – spoiler alert! – been hard work for a lot of people. It is a long drive. But art is how we make life feel less short too, so let’s savour the ride whatever the traffic or weather.

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“no complaints of too long or too hard” Nikki Giovanni

“and yet . . . there can be no complaints in this passing . . . no

sorrow songs . . . no if onlys . . . it is all here: the work the love:

the woman: who gave and gave and gave . . . no complaints of too

long or too hard . . . no injustice of accident or misunderstanding

of disease . . . just one great woman moving to the next phase . . .

and us on the ground . . . giving Alleluias”. Nikki Giovanni

That’s a quote from an elegy for Gwendolen Brooks by the recently departed great American poet Nikki Giovanni. That spirit of ‘no complaints of too long or too hard’ is something I’d like to take into 2025. Too many events and discourses in the sector recently – it seems to me – reflect a distinct lack of confidence, which while understandable given the challenging circumstances for many, is likely to undermine cases for support rather than enhance them.

I hate the empty language of boosterism even more than the next person (unless the next person is a certain subscriber I’m currently thinking of but won’t name!) but let’s not talk ourselves into stuckness, tentativeness or timidity.

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The Road to Wigan Pier

Here’s where I’ve been for work this year, in alphabetical order, not including places I’ve ‘travelled’ online when researching and evaluating. Thanks to the brilliant people I’ve worked with, for and alongside this year.

· Ballydehob

· Belfast

· Belper

· Birmingham

· Chester

· Consett

· Cork

· Dalby

· Derby

· Durham

· Eaglescliffe

· Leeds

· Leek

· London

· Manchester

· Middlesbrough

· Morpeth

· Oxford

· Newcastle

· Nottingham

· Redcar

· Sheffield

· Stockton-on-Tees

· Wigan

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“Weightier and more worried”, moi?

“When Mark Robinson’s Horse-Burning Park landed on the mat in 1994 after apprenticeships served in pamphlets and magazines, we might have been forgiven for welcoming a new wild man of English poetry – unafraid to use and be an ‘I’ in various guises; happy to let abstractions spark against each other in ways ‘not done’ – an altogether refreshing challenge to tight-lipped formality that was already on the back foot. … At first glance this second collection is shorter, weightier and more worried, if no less barbed….. It’s painfully funny, indeed by now a Robinson trademark: we may be smiling but the sadness is never far away, and it’s never reportage – always re-enactment.” John Forth

This is from a review (ok, the review so far) of my poetry collection The Infinite Town. I’m sharing as the ‘wild man’ bit amused me and might you, if you know me. Argumentative man, maybe, wild very rarely.

But John sees the combination of funny and worry that I think I crafted into the book, as I’ve tried, I guess to craft them into my life, which is – what’s the word? – satisfying.

Those two words strike me now like two goes in a game of wordle, in search of the word happy maybe, despite all the stuff in the world that damages the very idea.

If you want to make me happy, hit share, or, even, but the book from Smokestack Books. Message me if you want a signed one.