Poetry News – Scotland, April 2017

On events, get on up to Auld Reekie, where the team at Neu! Reekie! are putting on yet another fabulous evening on 28 April at St Andrew’s Church, Leith, as a prelude to their massive summer festival in Hull, 2017’s City of Culture. Where Are We Now? will be crammed with poets, DJs, film-makers and musicians, with artist and ex-KLF member Bill Drummond, and Clare Pollard (showcasing her new book, Incarnation) at the top of the list. In keeping with this year’s decidedly topical flavour, the publicity is friendly, inclusive, punchy and utterly no-nonsense – in fact, theirs is one of my favourite blurbs to date:

'The UK has reached a crossroads. Where it goes next is anyone’s guess. Dark divisive forces of racism and prejudice are stirring across the UK (and Europe) in the wake of Brexit and across the Atlantic following the election of Donald Trump. We need to ask our artists, musicians and writers where they stand. Come together. Ask questions. Listen and watch. Dance. Shake things up. This is where we're at.'

Couldn't have put it better if I tried.

Spring has sprung, and with it comes the much-anticipated winner of the Ted Hughes Award (presented on 28 March). Created by Carol Ann Duffy, and generously funded with money which would otherwise have gone towards the Poet Laureate’s annual honorarium, the award celebrates exciting new work in poetry, whether in printed form or alternative media. On a poetic scene which, despite the encouraging widening of genres in recent years, is still coming to terms with areas outside the box of ‘printed page’, the most satisfying thing about the Ted Hughes Award is that it brings unorthodox and cross-genre artistic projects into the foreground, allowing them to compete with more traditional forms of writing.

For several years now, it has been one of the most impressive accolades a poet can have on their CV, and previous shortlists boast household names like Patience Agbabi, Kate Tempest, Andrew Motion and Alice Oswald. Judging panels have been no less impressive, and the latest shortlist was selected by Canal Laureate Jo Bell, Irish poet Bernard O’Donoghue and singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams. 

 As always, the line-up is interesting, and the gender balance very even. Typically, the ratio leans more towards the printed publications side of things (which, in all likelihood, reflects the majority of nominated works overall), but one of the seven is a first in the award's history – an album, no less. After reviewing Salena Godden’s LIVEWire earlier this year, I was delighted to see it had made a place on the list. It’s definitely fresh, with a voice full of gumption, spice and fun. Furthermore, reading is an inescapably physical activity which requires some effort, no matter how pleasant, while a CD allows for the kind of easy absorption that books cannot always manage. A chatty voice in the room, especially one which you are under no pressure to respond to, feels incredibly therapeutic. 

While that particular work stands on its own in terms of delivery, the written works on the list are wonderfully varied in theme and presentation as well, and all have their own relevant flavour of the times. Some are more structural experiments; Will Eaves's The Inevitable Gift Shop combines prose and poetry to carry its quirky subjects across, and Harry Man's beautiful book Finders Keepers is not just a work about endangered wildlife, but is as much about the 'symbiotic' relationship between the poems and Sophie Gainsley's accompanying illustrations. 

Theme-wise, The Immigration Handbook by Caroline Smith and Sunshine (a collection about substance abuse, addiction and mental health) by Melissa Lee-Houghton are both very strong, topical contenders, dealing as they do with harrowing issues which need both honesty and creativity to arouse better public awareness. Hollie McNish's Nobody Told Me, detailing the real ups and downs of motherhood in hilarious detail, is an equally necessary read for so many in its own way. As the media will always seek to pressurise women into having babies using idealistic fluffy marketing, an injection of real-life stories told humorously are a surefire way to help us approach parenthood more intelligently, embracing all the loving mess it for what it really is. 

Finally, Jay Bernard's lyrical prequel to the medieval Dutch poem Morien (The Red and Yellow Nothing) is also a very beautiful, strong undertaking, not just for its exploration of race and colour, but because he has chosen lesser known historic literature as a base from which to explore those themes – I particularly enjoy poems which introduce me to other works as yet undiscovered. Plus, I'm a sucker for all things medieval. Nothing to say, except... well, read them all. At this level of excellence, the winning prize is only a token.