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August, 2004 Middle of summer and here in the dark heart of England that seems to mean storms, rain and still more sodding rain. I think our Summer passed in what used to be notionally called Spring, and you will recall I reported on these very pages tales of unseasonably fine days spent in Norfolk. (Well, I seem to have had more than my share of those faintly ridiculous, 'Oooooo, you look brown' comments. How are you supposed to respond? Yes, my whiteness has nearly all gone!) Fortunately I never went on to predict the glorious summer I confidently expected would follow.
As I was walking all alane, GLOSS: corbies] ravens. mane] moan. fail] turf. hause] neck. theek] thatch. Evermair. Macabre and chilling as this tale is, some teacher decided it was medicine for schoolkids, and even Great Literature claims a drop or two. (This poem has appeared in editions of The Oxford Book Of English Verse from the first Quiller-Couch onwards). It is ghoulish, certainly. But I wonder why it is that what some folk disdain as morbidity a quality I and others find eternally satisfying. That quality being the same thing that every subscriber to TTA looks for. It's the suggestion of another world behind the obvious one, the world known only to the wind and the ravens. It is the job of the poem here to offer a special dispensation to the reader, the startled eavesdropper on the bird-talk, to be offered a rare glimpse into this other world, a world which triumphs over the material wealth and mortal flesh of the slain knight. It's quasi-religious, this yearning for insight into these other worlds, and yet it wants no doctrine or orthodoxy. What's more, behind it all there is an exciting plot, a thrilling paranoia in the revelation that only the knight's hawk, hound and his lady fair know where the body lies. And his lady fair, having taken another mate, is not telling. There's the story, and then there is what's behind the story. I was recently interviewed by a magazine that asked for my views on whether genre - Old Peculiar - should be taken more seriously. Obviously I didn't say what the reviewer wanted to hear. The fact is I think that anyone who parts with the cover price of a new book or a subscription to this magazine for example is already taking it as seriously as anyone could possibly want. I can't spend my time worrying about those who don't. Anyway sadly, somehow, the article came out as yet another whine about not being taken seriously. But who are these po-faced "serious" readers we're all supposed to be chasing? All authors want more readers (beware the author's ego, like the rowdy shareholders of a global capitalist economy demanding growth and muttering darkly about expansion: don't we love it every time we get translated into a new market. Growth! Returns!). Of course we do. But spare us the earnest sobriety of the relentlessly serious. I work hard for a bit of levity, and to paraphrase the words of my old friend John Jarrold, if they don't like a draught of Old Peculiar, and if they prefer not to drink in our company at the Tavern Of The Slain Knight, then that's their look out. On the contrary, on a good night at the inn we joke about morbidity. There are those amongst us who might know where the body lies, and who appreciate the sound that the wind makes in the trees. We return there again and again because it affords us a glimpse of shimmering worlds deeper and more timeless than this occluded and immediate one, and because it is strangely comforting to construct a nest of what we find in these stories. Because we are the ravens, and we will make our dinner sweet." There, so that's clear then. Let's have no more discussion on it. Meanwhile I just turned in a draft of my Young Adult novel to Faber. It's called TWOC and anyone remotely connected with the youth juvenile justice system in the UK will know that this stands for Taking Without Owner's Consent. You might reasonably think that taking anything without the owner's consent is the same thing as theft, but you'd be wrong. When you twoc something it is not your intention to permanently deprive. Apparently. You are merely borrowing it unlawfully, and usually to go "joyriding" in it. In the place in which I grew up (see my bio here) there is a particularly lethal bend in the road that has claimed the lives of a number of speeding joyriders. After the last fatalities someone put up a macabre sign: KERESLEY WELCOMES DEAD JOYRIDERS. There was a squared-off space at the bottom for the tally to be updated. The authorities quickly took it down, but I've always wanted to write something on this subject. Though during the process I've had to find out about cars, a subject that in truth I find no more compelling than the serial numbers of railway trains speeding past Leicester station's platform four on a Thursday evening. Call me girlie. Anyway I have really enjoyed writing this book. In the end it's not so different from my other material, except that the narrator is a teenager and the concerns are targeted at YAs. Faber & Faber will publish it in the UK next year. If it finds a publisher in the US it will have to undergo a title change, since my agent Chris tells me it sounds too much like one of those spirited folk-vulgarisms you do occasionally tend to encounter in boisterous areas of the United States. Because Faber are publishing TWOC I got an invite to their legendary summer party, this year held in Russel Square gardens. Legendary because poets are reputed to get drunk and "do things in the bushes with each other". There were plenty of well-known poets in attendance and several of them have no personal hygiene problems at all. I could report bush activity here but I won't. Shudder. As it happens I got to say hello to a lot of people I've wanted to meet for a while. Most fun was Ruth Padel. It was late and everyone was sloshed when we ended up speaking Greek to each other and crooning mawkish Irish folk songs along with one of Faber's poetry editors - heaven knows what that was all about. I go to these events to meet other writers and to impress influential people who will help my career. But all I do is get sloshed, insult important literary editors, sing badly and shout obscenities at the darkly quivering bushes. It's got to stop. More sensibly I've also been working with fabulous German artist Lara Bandilla (go to http://www.larabandilla.de) on a reworking of the Green Knight story from the Arthurian cycle for a BFS calendar. Together we did one scene. The Green Knight story is one of the most fascinating and challenging tales within the cycle. With its recondite symbols of fertility and the explicit tests of Gawain's virginity the story is charged with sexual allusion. Lara and I have dealt with only one scene, independently of the writers and artists who interpreted the tale for other months of the year. A reader of these unputdownable and indispensable and warm, achingly funny, a tour-de-force pages suggested what a terrific father I must be, judging by my references to the savages. But naturally. Madam. The thing is I write them, don't I, just like I write my own notices above. My dread of course is that these journal-like entries will still be available when the savages are old enough to question them. You know: that's not how I remember it. I mean I somehow neglect to report the usual grouching, bellowing and general moodiness that might more accurately characterise my shambling efforts at parenting. Ella for example keeps twocing colour pens and various bits of stationery from my study; Joe twocs stuff from my toolbox all the time. This brings the full weight of the noisy domestic judiciary down on them, and that doesn't get reported here. No point being a writer if you can't gloss your own PR picture, though it was ever thus. How do you think dull poets have managed to make themselves sound dashing over the centuries? When off the page they're really just a lot of very strange drunks shuffling about in the bushes at publishing parties. But I must leave you. School is out, and even now the savages are tugging at my sleeve, demanding that I carry them over the lush green fields on my back, reading them Sufi poetry as a prelude to our blackcurrent-picking expedition in the late afternoon sun of a glorious English summer. Graham Joyce can be contacted by emailing graham@grahamjoyce.net |
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