Category: Certainties

I hate technology. I’ve been thinking about this all month. You just want it to work, right? When you get some irritating message meaning nothing you just want to return to yesterday.  Who’s writing this stuff?  It’s awful.  I love technology.

Right.  What a month it’s been.  Your time machine is working and here you are.  2015.  Strange, incomprehensible year (SIY).  Just like last year.

The taste for acronyms seems to be dying down.  Good thing too.  Extinction’s the inevitable result but other things are always evolving.  It’s common sense.  Let’s get started.

I’m not sure who these people are but I know in a general sense, so that’s positive.  The reading went well, and Phil who in his own mind, I’ve no doubt, even years later, was still scurrying around in his miniscule lodgings in Belfast, has been put to bed.  Yay.  175,000 followers can really pack a room.  Thank you for your business.  The other readers were terrific too.  Sugar Le Fae.  Diane Tucker.  Kevin Spenst.  Daniel Cowper.

Then STJR packed it.  Still think of the man and how, wow, he’s really not around here now.  Really.  A great man and across the great divide, sir, I salute you.  Thank you.  Thank me.  Thank everyone.  We’ll find a better ending for this paragraph later.

That’s right.  For whom the bell tolls.  Had your bell rung.  Five o’clock bells.  Tintinnabulation of the bells.  Bellwether.  Alexander Graham Bell.  Ding dong.

So you’re dead in January and what else is it but the cold, hard rain as described earlier?  Plenty else.  It’s three in the afternoon here on the late-breaking 25th and we’re heading to the beach.

Well trammeled by fine looking, living humans.  I’m thinking this sitting in the car sitting in the parking lot.  Here they are.  Walking the dog.  Jogging.  Slogging.  Partnering.  Friending.  Holding hands.  The sun is even shining.  How dare it?  It’s supposed to be overcast.  It’s pretty disappointing.  No it isn’t.

I enter a short story contest.  Why not?  I can use the $1500 US.  Probably the greatest short story I ever wrote born of honestly acquired pain and suffering and light sprinklings of deep psychic anguish.  Of course it was.  Pain is hilarious if you can get the words in the right order later.

So I’m not sure where this is headed.  February, probably.  It’s time to take stock and maybe make some.  Winter soup for the loved.  The lost don’t get any.  It’s too bad.  Short story update in a couple of months.  If this was Canada it’d be a year.  In terms of writing Canada takes more decades than you’ve got.  Chalk it up to experience and other clichés.  Graffiti the whole thing.

 

 

 

Philip Larkin was born in England in 1922 and died in England in 1985.

He lived most of his life in England.

I discovered Philip Larkin by myself.  No one introduced me to his work and he was never covered in any course I took.

Before I bought this volume I hadn’t read a single poem by Philip Larkin.  I was curious about this crazy looking bump-head with the coke-bottle glasses.

He looked so, I don’t know….  Official.  Straight-laced.  Conservative.  His work is anything but.

I read a few poems and got interested in Philip Larkin. I read one of the two novels he published in his twenties – “Jill.”  I found it a very impressive accomplished novel for a guy who was only in his twenties.  I went back to the poetry.

If you didn’t like the use of the word “f**k” and its derivatives in a poem in 1967 Philip Larkin wasn’t for you. He didn’t care. He’d worked as a small town librarian in post-war England.  He was educated at Oxford University.  He worked at Queen’s University, Belfast.  He was a close friend of Kingsley Amis.

“Collected Letters” edited by Anthony Thwaite, published in 1992 by Faber & Faber is a great read. Great biography too by Andrew Motion published by Faber & Faber in 1993.

Janice Rossen wrote a great appreciation of Philip Larkin’s work published by University of Iowa Press in 1989. These are just the books I’ve read. I see there’s a massive new biography of the poet by James Booth, just published by Bloomsbury Press.

I recall one memorable passage from the Andrew Motion bio where Philip Larkin finds himself under the necessity of asserting the rights of authors against some publishing scheme.

Philip Larkin was said to have restored poetry to the British people.  Not sure what anybody meant by that.  He was, during his lifetime, quote, “England’s most beloved poet.”

Others called him a curmudgeon, misogynist and worse.

He edited the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse.

For years he wrote about jazz.  He published his columns in “All What Jazz”, published by Faber & Faber.

He published “Required Writing”, a collection of his occasional pieces, published by Faber & Faber.

He was Head Librarian at Hull University in England from 1955 until his death.

He never married. There were no kids.  He had a long term relationship with Monica Jones.  They were living together at the time of his death.

“Letters to Monica” was published by Faber & Faber in 2011.

I would say that Philip Larkin was singularly unimpressed with many things.  Many other things impressed him deeply.

His poems have attitude, wit, beauty and form.

I’ll be reading some of Mr Philip Larkin’s poetry for the DPRS (Dead Poets Reading Series) http://www.deadpoetslive.com/ downstairs at the Vancouver Public Library main branch in the Alice MacKay Room, Sunday January 11, 2015 at 3 pm.  Hope to see you there…

‘When I see a couple of kids…’

That’s how my brain was working.  If I don’t get out of the way they’re going to crash into me.  These damnable ambulances.  It’s worse when they won’t pull over.  That went out of style quite a few years ago.  Now you’re in the way.

It’s not like much has changed.  You just hope the emergency vehicle gets through, and doesn’t personally remind you of tragedies past.  Rear-ending.  You always worry about that even as an experienced driver.  Who’s going to drive up behind you and hit you?

Rain at times heavy.  Rain general.  Not sure in all the flashing lights what that means.  Hope it’s not trouble.

What happens is you need to get out there.  And don’t worry about what’s happening.  It’s a cliché.  I just wish someone would fully explain to me what this is all about.

And don’t forget I’m covering Philip Larkin for the ‘Poet’s Reading Series’ down there at the Alice MacKay room at Vancouver Public Library Main Branch this Sunday, January 11 at 3 p.m.

I have the great good fortune to be sharing the venue with some very talented people.  Hope to see you there.