Field Works

Ceaseless rain but the flower books say that this Cuckoo Flower (aka Lady's Smock and Milkmaid; cardamine pratensis) is "damp-loving".  It looked beautiful this morning in its soggy Radnorshire field.

The Campaign Against Real Writers

I have just read a short but very effective piece in the latest New York Review of Books by Jonathan Mirsky on the scandal of the London Book Fair last month which was dominated by Chinese authors – but only those permitted to be there by the censors acting in concert with the book fair's organisers and the British Council.  Excluded were any writers not approved of by the Chinese censors.

"We must be very powerful and they are frightened of us, said Qi Jiazhen, a septuagenarian Chinese writer who took part in a protest meeting of the excluded.  The British Council's director of literature claimed that the officially permitted writers were more 'representative' because "they live in China and write their books there" in contrast to the "other writers who have left".  This is the official Chinese censors' line but it raises a number of interesting questions.  Does it mean that Joyce, Becket, Hemingway, Kundera, to choose some names at random from the long list of writers who have lived and worked out of their own countries, were somehow not real writers, not part of their originating culture and language?  Are the only writers worthy of our attention the ones who stay at home or the ones who make themselves acceptable to the government of the day?  And what is the British Council, an organisation dedicated to spreading culture beyond these shores, doing advocating such a grotesque idea?

"What's happening is that countries are becoming companies. And that's what the British Council is already, just a company cooperating with the Chinese company," Mirsky quotes one leading Chinese poet, Yang Lian, as saying.

There are, as it happens 35 Chinese authors who are not likely to be decamping to Paris shortly to write their books.  That is because they are in jail for the words they have written.

Are you a liberal?

Thank you to the Gladstone Library for making me think about liberalism (with a mandatory small 'l' in these Coalition times).  Here is my contribution to their exploration of the theme.  They have been looking for people who will say why they are or are not liberal and those who reject the notion are seemingly rather thin on the ground.  Perhaps this is the problem with this noble cause; like motherhood and apple pie no one can find an argument against it.

Launch of Acapulco by Nicholas Murray

An enjoyably convivial evening to mark World Book Night last night through the launch of my new poetry collection, Acapulco (see previous post for details).  Here I am reading from the book (available online from Melos Press) watched by Peter Tatchell who was the dedicatee of one of the poems in the collection, 'Courage'.  The poem was suggested by Peter and friends' courageous defiance of the bigots of Moscow who attacked the gay pride demonstrators while the forces of 'law and order' looked the other way.





Courage

for Peter Tatchell

Today is the day

to clean the streets

of the gay-proud.

The shavenskulls slip

like loosed dogs

into the chanting crowd

to scatter their mayhem

under the benevolent eye

of the ‘security forces’

whose black boots

firmly cleave to

the frozen ground.

It is the mania of hatred:

each lashing out 

at what he fears

like a man whose wild hands

fight off a swarm

of angry bees.

World Book Night: Shakespeare and I

Next Monday 23rd April has been designated World Book Night (as well as being Shakespeare's birthday) and it is being celebrated all over the country with various events (see below).

It is also my own birthday and the day of the launch of my latest book of poetry, Acapulco: New and Selected Poems (Melos) so it will be an exciting day all round I hope. I see from the organisers of the event that there will be candlelight readings up and down the land but I think they are planning normal lighting at my launch at Lumen in Tavistock Place in Bloomsbury.

In addition to one million books being given away by 20,000 volunteers and distributed by charities in prisons, hospitals and schools in disadvantaged communities, the organisers say that World Book Night will see tens of thousands of people getting involved in hundreds of free, public reading events taking place in libraries, bookshops, art centres and open public spaces.  For example at the Southbank Centre the World Book Night flagship event will be screened for everyone to see via big screens in art venues and libraries around the country and on the World Book Night website


The World Book Night website at www.worldbooknight.org has the latest details for all events.

I am not giving away any books but here is a free poem from my new collection which can be ordered online from www.melospress.blogspot.com

Thanks to Sarah Crown of The Guardian for the mention on her blog.

LAUREL

How Daphne might have felt
as she ran from the breathy Apollo
(before her skin was bark, her feet roots,
her arms boughs in wild semaphore,
her fingernails the bitter leaf
destined for a victor’s crown)
I felt in that nightmare of pursuit
one is always destined to wake from.

_________________________

Is there really no political poetry? / Features / Home - Morning Star

Is there really no political poetry? / Features / Home - Morning Star

Acapulco: New and Selected Poems

My new book of poems: Acapulco: New and Selected Poems, officially published on 23rd April, is now available to order on line from Melos Press at £10.  I will now hand you over to the Melos blurb:-

ACAPULCO

New and Selected Poems

by

Nicholas Murray

Nicholas Murray was born in Liverpool and now lives in

Wales and London. He has written critically acclaimed

biographies of Bruce Chatwin, Matthew Arnold,

Andrew Marvell, Aldous Huxley, and Franz Kafka.

He has also published two novels, A Short Book about Love,

and Remembering Carmen, and books on Victorian travellers, Liverpool and Bloomsbury. 

He runs the poetry imprint Rack Press and is a Fellow of the Welsh Academy.

Acupulco contains nearly thirty new poems and work drawn

from the earlier collections, Plausible Fictions and The

Narrators. It concludes with the full text of Get Real!

a powerful verse satire on the coalition Government

which was performed by the Iris Theatre Company

at St Paul's Covent Garden in 2011.

Praise for Nicholas Murray's poetry:

“From the opening lines of 'Landscapes' we are in the

company of a voice that quietly but compellingly makes

itself heard... Throughout these poems, shadows, absences,

and possibilities stalk the tyranny of mere fact...”

David Wheatley, Thumbscrew

“Precise and rather mysterious poems” 

John Fuller

“...his clear sense of internal rhythm and strong feeling

for the well-honed phrase”

 Sarah Crown, The Guardian  

Acapulco is published by 

Melos Press

38 Palewell Park

London SW14 8JG