More Words Left Unsaid

Elle Tucker and Mark Howitt, launch of A Change of Direction, photograph by Magdalena Kaminska

On Friday 60 people crammed into Edinburgh’s Argyle Cellar Bar for a poetry book launch, I reckon a first on several counts. The first book launch - poetry or otherwise - to be held at the Argyle Cellar Bar, first book launch at which the author personally knew every member of the audience, and first where I’d written the book. That’s me on the right, on the left Eleanor Tucker, a proper author, with two published books, working on her third, although hers don’t have any photos, mine does, so it’s difficult to judge which one of us is the winner, let’s call it a score draw.

The evening might have appeared a complete shambles, but appearances can be deceptive and to achieve that level of chaos in a live environment, especially the closing collab with Dr Zee, took weeks of preparation. However, time flew by, one minute I was kicking off proceedings with Sealed With A Kiss (a rarely heard outtake from Daft Punk’s 2001 album Discovery), next thing it seemed like I was thanking everyone for giving up their Friday evenings for joining me.

Dr Zee and Mark Howitt, launch of A Change of Direction, photograph by Magdalena Kaminska

Elle, who did a brilliant job of hosting the evening, did ask me about my influences, and although I talked about the style of poetry books that I didn’t like, I didn’t get around to explaining what sparked the idea for the notes to the poems in A Change of Direction.

A year past June I was in Manchester, that’s when I first discovered poetry, I talked about that, Portico Library, Ian McMillan, etc. But I also visited a second hand bookshop in Tib Street. It’s closed now, the bookshop that is, not Tib Street. Elle uses that double take technique at least once in her novel Turn Back Time, it made me guffaw with laughter, in fact the whole book made me guffaw with laughter. Not guff with laughter, that’s a very different thing. If you’re reading a book in a café or on a bus and you guff with laughter, at best it’s going to be embarrassing, at worst you’ll be asked to leave the café or get off the bus before your destination.

This second hand bookshop specialised in Philosophy and Poetry, and more because it looked nice than anything else, I picked up this first edition John Betjeman collection A Few Late Chrysanthemums for £20. Now, I know what you’re thinking, £20 for a first edition John Betjeman, Knight of the Realm, Poet Laureate, and he, the bloke writing this, an ex-accountant, is charging £10 for his book, well he says it’s a book, it’s really a 32-page pamphlet. And I can see where you’re coming from but, yes, Betjeman’s might be a first edition (so’s mine to be fair) but again, he doesn’t have any photographs. Another score draw I reckon.

Natalie Elizabeth, launch of A Change of Direction, photograph by Magdalena Kaminska

Anyway, to aid the reader, Betjeman has notes for some of his poems. Here’s a verse from A Literary Discovery:

In his ivy-mantled bedroom
Dirty as he was from town,
‘Ere he touched the wash-hand basin
Did he write a poem down

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that’s very good, but let’s check out the note for this verse:

There would not, of course, have been running water in the bedroom. We are to envisage a brass can with a face-towel over it. The water may have been cold and the poet therefore wrote the poem while waiting for a fresh can to be brought. We must not lightly accuse him of uncleanliness.

All a bit tedious really, writing in the third person about the deficiencies of his domestic plumbing, the sort of thing I do, and I get bored of it myself, let alone anyone else, but then I know no better.

Mark Howitt, launch of A Change of Direction, photograph by Magdalena Kaminska

And then I remembered a book that does this properly, with thoughtfulness and subtlety, One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem by Neil Tennant. A collection of four decades of Pet Shop Boys’ lyrics which read like poetry and in some senses require no explanation. But the addition of a few lines from Tennant to each title placing it in context changes this from a collection of song lyrics to a tapestry chronicling the landscape of modern life.

My kitchen sink poetry comes nowhere near, but I can dream.

I was faced with a choice at a difficult age
Would I write a book? Or should I take to the stage?
But in the back of my head I heard distant feet
Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat

Left to My Own Devices, Pet Shop Boys, 1988

A Change of Direction is available to buy now from The New Ramsay Head Press