Julian Gough

There's an enjoyable discussion of spam poetry going on, over at the Guardian Books blog.  I just posted a contribution there, so I may as well repeat it here...

I'm a fan of spam. I like the way that, beset by predators, predatory itself, it evolves with furious speed. I like to have a dip into my spam box every couple of weeks to see the new trends evolving (like the recent "What a stupid face you have" / "You look so stupid in this photo" variations.)

Ben Myers is right on both points, it's a stunning resource for poets, but to make good poetry out of it you have to be a very good editor. Alive to nuance and resonance. I've been playing with spam poems for years. (Not just spam: this week, I wrote two poems I'm very pleased with, constructed entirely from the legal disclaimers on poetry websites.)

By using spam, and other internet debris, poets can essentially outsource free association. But the best comment on the perils of the method comes from W.H. Auden, in a letter to the poet Frank O'Hara, long before the internet:

“I think you (and John {Ashbery} too, for that matter) must watch what is always the great danger with any ‘surrealistic’ style, namely of confusing authentic nonlogical relations which arouse wonder with accidental ones which arouse mere surprise and in the end fatigue.”
-W. H. Auden

If your ear/nose/throat/soul (add to/delete as appropriate) are alive to authentic nonlogical relations, then spam and all the other digital junk of the internet are your friend. They can jolt you out of the deep groove of habit. The first and hardest step in surprising and delighting others is surprising and delighting yourself.

Ten thousand syllables

A break

Thirty thousand syllables

A break

Bashô applauds, but it’s not over.

We will be back with
A hundred thousand great new
Syllables, after

This break.

Dromineer, December 2007

I

A winter storm has thatched the east shore of Lough Derg
In the traditional manner, by breaking
All last year’s dead reeds across the knee of the wind,
Then waves – chop-chop – chivvy ten thousand tons of them
Across the lake and into position
Interlocked along seventy miles of shore.

Today, the obsessive-compulsive waves have
Calmed down a bit, but
Still fiddle with it every few seconds
Like Christo adjusting the silk hem of an island,
Unable to drag himself away.
Like a writer at Christmas, poking a poem
Trying to enjoy the break
Unable to enjoy the break
Trying to enjoy the break
From writing.

II

The sun makes a grudging appearance
For one minute, to two shivering fans
Who’ve been standing on the concrete jetty in the rain.
“That’ll have ta do ye.”
It ducks back behind the zinc clouds
And sinks fast below the black hills.

“Fuck this, I’m off back to Australia,”
Mumbles one of the fans, or the sun.

It’s hard to tell over the
Splash of the lake waves, the
Crash of the lakeside
Property prices, the
Crying of developers and birds.

(Julian Gough, Tipperary, 2007.) 

(Photos by Julian Gough. Taken in Dromineer on the day he wrote the first draft of the poem.)
 

Dromineer, December 2007

I

A winter storm has thatched the east shore of Lough Derg
In the traditional manner, by breaking
All last year’s dead reeds across the knee of the wind,
Then waves – chop-chop – chivvy ten thousand tons of them
Across the lake and into position
Interlocked along seventy miles of shore.

Today, the obsessive-compulsive waves have
Calmed down a bit, but
Still fiddle with it every few seconds
Like Christo adjusting the silk hem of an island,
Unable to drag himself away.
Like a writer at Christmas, poking a poem
Trying to enjoy the break
Unable to enjoy the break
Trying to enjoy the break
From writing.

II

The sun makes a grudging appearance
For one minute, to two shivering fans
Who’ve been standing on the concrete jetty in the rain.
“That’ll have ta do ye.”
It ducks back behind the zinc clouds
And sinks fast below the black hills.

“Fuck this, I’m off back to Australia,”
Mumbles one of the fans, or the sun.

It’s hard to tell over the
Splash of the lake waves, the
Crash of the lakeside
Property prices, the
Crying of developers and birds.

(Julian Gough, Tipperary, 2007.) 

I should stop saying I hate poetry. It's not true. My position is far more nuanced and subtle than that. I just think 98% of all poetry is shite.

And who, citizen, subject or slave, could disagree with that grave judgement, pondered long?

I didn't read much good poetry this year, and the good poetry I read was mostly old stuff. But as the knackered year gasped its last, its liver packing in as it fell over the finish line, I read a poem that I loved (well, wanted to shag... what do you think this is, the Age of Chivalry?)

It's a Christmas poem (God help us) and it's in the Guardian (may Marx preserve us), so it should be shit squared. But Christmas is a time of miracles.

It's by Glyn Maxwell, and it's called Hometown Mystery Cycle.

Enjoy.