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Juvenilia – Hardback and eBook Editions Now Available

Juvenilia It is my delight to announce that my new book, Juvenilia – Collected Poems 1998 – 2008, is now available in two new formats in addition to the paperback which was published in February. 

Juvenilia – Hardback Edition

This
hardback edition comes in a beautiful dust-jacket and a traditional
cloth cover. It takes longer to print and post, so please be aware that
orders take much longer to fulfil. This edition is £20.00, though
please also be aware costs for postage and packaging are significantly
higher and not included in the retail price.

Juvenilia – eBook Edition

This eBook edition is developed
specifically for the new generation of eBook readers and will be
compatible with Apple’s new iPad. There is no delivery charge and the
book is downloaded and instantly available. This edition is £4.99.

For more details, and to buy a copy, please see the P.Viktor/Lulu Store. Thanks again for your continued support.

Castor and Pollux, In Three Parts

Castor_and_Pollux-Parc_de_Versailles

I

What strange brothers are these
limned in stone, prostrate statues
upon a tomb?

Effigies, who lie in great repose
above skeletal remains
that do not share granite’s properties.

They are immortal –
lichen-covered and somnolent,
weathered by acid rain,

Whereas bone is veiled in
mortal dust, ghost deposits,
lying in the dark, forgotten.

Here lies Castor, the cadaver
of a man in his sixties, hair ashen
and face sunken –

One eye purpled like fruit,
his mouth crudely open in death –
a stone gauze over his countenance.

He is long departed,
the whorls of fingerprints eroded,
his irises stolen and lids shuttered.

Beside him lies Pollux,
his brow strewn with fresh lilacs,
his eyes with sweet almonds.

His face is the pale oval
of a strange saint, a monument
from an ill-lit heaven.

His youthful cheek is worn
by rivulets, having turned away
from his death-bed companion.

Here I visit, a grave
somehow a composite of memory,
of things not known to me.

I place a hand, hot with blood
onto their coarse, granular feet,
as if to make solid the connection.

II

He labours upon the stair, under the weight
of another cardboard box freighted
with a life’s long-collected cargo, a selfhood.

At the top of it is my apartment,
slowing filling up with objects to possess it –
as I stake a claim on a place, a short-term tenant.

By the tenth load he is wearied, 
his back broad as a workhorse under a rein,
but slack, his fifty years working against him.

He staggers for the briefest moment,
a moment that slips quickly between insight
and memory,

As the current offers the musk scent of sweat
down the steps to where I stand,
redolent of a fragrance yet to be recognised.

He motions onward, carries his burden
but leaving me stood there for just a second.
Such might define sexual attraction,

Such might be a yearning so hidden
under rational thought it is quickly forgotten.
I motion up the stairs behind him.

III

He was born under the sign of the twin
but a quarter of a century ago, one of
the Dioscuri, son of Leda and a swan.

But his birth succeeded his brother’s
by forty-three years, a conception
altered by the long course of history.

When the elder, Castor, born under
the crab, climbed into a cherry tree,
he was stabbed through the heart –

A spear of time correcting the error.
The younger, Pollux, mourned for
two years before an offer was made.

He, the immortal one, might share
his precious gift with his brother,
that they may both walk the line

Between death, in Hades, and life,
in Olympus. Thus the strangest
affliction did occur – one brother

Became the other, Castor’s traces
found in the flesh of Pollux, but his
own form turned to ash and dust.

Thus immortal only by memory,
and thus mortal only by proximity.
Both were brothers, but in one body.
 

Three Ghosts

Preston Lock
























They were lost within the shuttered camera eye,

somewhere along the Leeds to Liverpool Canal,

smiling blindly into sunlight, unaware of what

was to come, a ill-lit future they could not foretell.



Three of them, perched upon the lock gate’s arm,

a father, a sister, a brother, the last known picture

of them together. Even then the older man’s face

was insubstantial, his silver hair amongst clouds.



Not but a single month after Easter he was gone,

the last glimpse of him a portrait. What a moment

not known to be momentous, the Lancashire hills,

the chalky sky behind them full of indifference.



Once I went in search of them, walked the trail

they too had followed, and found the same lock.

But the gate was empty, the wind blew solemnly,

as clouds scudded across the pale sun like a clock.

Night Visitor

Fuseli - Lady Macbeth


























The narrow cot on which he sleeps is boxed-in,

a coffin, lidless, lying still on his single mattress.

But not asleep, the boy’s gaunt chest rises in quick

succession and a sickening wheeze sounds, a choir

of air, of the damned screaming in the distance.



His pale form is just visible in the witching hour,

his white bed sheet a knot of fabric about his feet,

and his limbs, blue-wax, seem emaciated, as bones

spun in a thin gossamer of skin. His eyes are lidded,

his face a frown of concentration on a tide of breath.



He might suffocate here, amongst the deposits left

by dust mites, who efficiently fill up his mattress,

his pillow, with allergens born on faecal matter.

They will secure his death, these steady workers

who find nourishment on flakes of human skin.



He reaches to a shelf where his lamplight sits,

and takes the small device which he holds to lips,

the bitter taste of Salbutamol clings in his throat.

He sucks upon the inhaler for dear life, but brings

no solace, no ease, as taking in carbon monoxide.



This fiend of illness sits on his chest, in which

he can get no rest as his young back begins to ache,

those muscles having shrunk to squeeze out lungs

in their tight, iron grip. In keen misery he sits up,

sudden, steps from his bed and alights the stairs.



About him drags his bed sheet, ghostly raiment

in which he appears to us as a pallid apparition,

caught as though between the dead and the living.

The house about him is silent, as the family sleeps

upstairs, unaware of his laboured gasps for air.



He finds an armchair and sits there, counting

his short, shallow breaths, measuring their depth,

and willing his lungs to deepen into vast caverns. 

Then the narrow bronchi slowly begin to open,

allow the first trickle onto a cracked riverbed.



The high, lonely whistle, as through naked trees,

starts to lessen, the constriction of back muscle

eases in. For hours he sits there, the long night

blueing to dawn, diluting as ink by a rim of sun,

into whose shimmering light his bulk solidifies. 

Marina and the Diamonds – The Family Jewels, Review

Marina - The Family Jewels The world of pop hasn’t always been a place where creative female singers, often lazily described as kooky, could find expressionistic harbour and great fortunes alike. Cyndi Lauper was the trailblazer for ‘kook-dom’ at a time when the biggest female popstars were almost uniformly playing most heavily on their sex appeal, all too keenly aware of the commercial impact of a sly wink and racy lyric. With her debut album She’s So Unusual, Lauper not only made the boldest statement of her career but paved the way for women to be more than just ‘Boy Toys’ (to borrow Madonna’s earliest tagline). They could be performance artists; they could take references from Pop Art and street culture and blend them with high fashion; they could flout gender norms and have personality, charisma and an offbeat way of viewing the world. In this manner, Lauper opened the floodgates for women from Tori Amos to Björk, Regina Spektor to Fiona Apple, Gwen Stefani to Imogen Heap, and Lady Gaga to Florence Welch.


Marina Diamandis, under the slightly misleading name of Marina & The Diamonds (the ‘diamonds’ are her fans, not a backing group), falls nicely into this pantheon of multifaceted women. Her unconventional singing style, strangely textured electro-pop, oddball lyrics and approach to melody – and of course her idiosyncratic way with fashion – have given way to comparisons with the likes of Alison Goldfrapp, Róisín Murphy and Amanda Palmer, and deservedly so. At a time when current female pop singers are increasingly taking their cues from Lauper, the release of The Family Jewels is well timed. The tantalising singles ‘Obsessions’, ‘Mowgli’s Road’ and ‘I Am Not A Robot’ (which featured on last year’s The Crown Jewels EP) steadily built sufficient momentum to land Diamandis a coveted place on the BBC Sound Of 2010 poll and borderline feverish anticipation for the album.



But those expectations are, as ever, problematic, with their basis being in music heard prior to the album’s launch. Have we so soon forgotten the cautionary tale of Little Boots? Like Victoria Hesketh, Diamandis has shifted partially away from the organic production values and songwriting heard on ‘Obsessions’ and ‘Mowgli’s Road’ to produce an unabashedly pop album – as recent hit ‘Hollywood’ shamelessly attests – employing the likes of Biff Stannard, Pascal Gabriel and Greg Kurstin (all of whom contributed to Hesketh’s album), as well as former Sneaker Pimp Liam Howe to add some polish. Fortunately for Diamandis, she manages to precisely pitch off-the-wall songwriting with glittering pop production, largely without betraying those who latched on early. A solid debut, it deftly finds the balance between radio-friendly hooks, outré sonic textures, idiosyncratic songwriting and a pristine studio shine.



Broadening its appeal, The Family Jewels is a more lyrically complex and ambiguous affair than anything offered by most of her pop peers. There are ruminations on modern society’s current fixation with celebrity culture (‘Hollywood’), the sense of isolation and exile as a consequence of fame (‘Rootless’, ‘The Outsider’), misgivings about success and ambition (‘Numb’) and dissections of female stereotypes (‘Girls’). All these are packed tightly into a pop confectionery some may find too cartoonish, sweet-toothed or slick to stomach, but the strength of Diamandis’s songwriting and her voice (as divisive as Marmite) glues everything together so the production never outweighs the personality.



The textures here are so complex that repeated listens offer something new each time. Whether it’s the staccato strings, bubbling bleeps and guitar chords of ‘Are You Satisfied?’; the syncopated piano and glissando of strings on ‘I Am Not A Robot’; the crisp beats and ’80s synths of ‘Oh No!’; the harpsichord and church bells of ‘Rootless’; or the ethereal layered harmonies on the orchestral ‘Numb’, a great deal of attention has been paid to the layers of each song. The highlights are numerous on this hook-heavy album; ‘Shampain’, with its chorus reminiscent of Kate Bush’s ‘Sat In Your Lap’, the stately ‘Obsessions’ which sets the story of a sadomasochistic love affair against a ska beat, ‘Hermit The Frog’ with its Eastern strings and brilliant “oh-ooh”ing riffs and Chas & Dave pub piano, the Greg Kurstin dance beats of ‘Oh No!’ with its resistance-is-futile chorus, and the fragile beauty of ‘Numb’, proving Diamandis can out-Florence Florence in the ballad stakes as well as on the up-tempo numbers.



The Family Jewels won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Many have criticised its over-produced, commercially conscious posturing and, of course, Diamandis’s vocals, but these seem to be more a matter of taste than indictments of quality. There’s plenty to be applauded here; avoiding the generic pitfalls that Little Boots tripped up on, The Family Jewels lives up to its brazen promise and ought to give Marina enough clout and credibility to stake claim to the crown of a genuine popstar.

Official Website of Marina and the Diamonds

Buy Marina and the Diamonds – The Family Jewels (Amazon)

Review written for and originally posted on Wears the Trousers.

Michael Peppiatt – Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma, Review

Michael Peppiatt - Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon is a giant of twentieth-century art and to many (including myself) he is the greatest artist of that age. I have long admired Bacon’s paintings, ever since I became involved with the Tate Gallery Liverpool when I was fourteen. I was lucky enough to be part of their Young Tate Project which allowed a small group of teenagers from the North West to curate an exhibition from the Tate’s extensive collection of modern art (the first and last time, I believe, the public has been invited to do so). I remember seeing Bacon’s work during many workshops around the gallery (situated in Liverpool’s Albert Dock) and being in awe of a quality in them that at the time I could not quite articulate. I would later recognise it as an existential horror which informs all his paintings. Eventually, one of Bacon’s portraits of Van Gogh was included in our exhibition, Testing the Water, such was the group’s visceral response to his work. Since my somewhat privileged education in modern art at a young age I have been fascinated by this enfant terrible of modernism and in recent years I have become equally intrigued about the man as much as the work.

Some years ago I saw John Maybury’s film, Love Is the Devil (1999), not so much a biopic of Bacon but more a snapshot of his life during his notorious relationship with George Dyer. Derek Jacobi, despite a certain amount of fruity over-acting, captures the nihilistic essence of the man in is his brilliant portrayal of Bacon and it was after I saw this film that I picked up Michael Peppiatt’s book which, a rather large tome, has sat on my shelf for the past six years (I still have the receipt in the front page, bought from Pumpkin Books which sadly is no more).  I wish it hadn’t taken quite so long to get to this book because it is rather brilliant. Apart from being lucidly written by Peppiatt and extraordinarily well researched, it is possibly the most authoritative text on a man who is both brought vividly alive before the reader’s eyes but who paradoxically remains as unknowable as the enigma Peppiatt suggests in his title. He somehow manages to capture the many contradictions of Bacon; vicious queen and profound intellectual, major artist and hedonist supreme, sadist and compassionate human being, both likeable and deeply unlikeable, frivolous and serious in the same breath.



Peppiatt also incorporates serious discussion of Bacon’s body of work alongside the biography without making crass judgments on either, and his honest sense of being perplexed by the man while at the same time trying to understand him is endearing. He makes as much as he can from the scant information relating to his childhood and early years, and a Herculean effort of research has filled in some of the gaps. Peppiatt also had the luxury of knowing Bacon well and made copious notes during long discussions with the artist which he was able to use in the writing of the book, an enviable position for any biographer. This intimacy with the subject allows insights into Bacon’s character which may not have been possible otherwise and the copious quotes from Bacon’s own mouth bring him stunningly into life. And what a life – he lived like an artist should with wild abandon, seeking all sensation and all experience in extremis, perhaps one of the last great artists of our time. There is much to enjoy about this book, especially because in some ways I identified with Bacon and would have loved to have met him. Peppiatt’s book is the closest I’ll ever get. 


The Official Website of The Estate of Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon – The South Bank Show 1985

Excellent interview with Francis Bacon by Melvyn Bragg for The South Bank Show in 1985. I am currently reading Michael Peppiatt’s brilliant biography of Bacon, Anatomy of an Enigma, and these YouTube videos are an evocative snapshot of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century which are the perfect accompaniment to Peppiatt’s book. Enjoy.































Ellie Goulding – Lights, Review

Ellie Goulding Lights

(4/5) In recent years the BBC’s annual ‘Sound Poll’, voted for by music critics and industry experts who predict the most promising new acts, has sharply increased in prominence since its inception eight years ago. The first recipient of this accolade was 50 Cent, unbelievably enough, way back in 2003 and other dubious inclusions on the poll have included Sadie Ama, The Dears, Tom Vek and Sway, most of whom have receded back into obscurity and never quite reached the potential predicted of them, thus making the poll seem irrelevant and redundant. When Adele won the honour in 2008, with Duffy a close second, there seemed a sudden shift in how people perceived the title, and all of a sudden the record company and media hype-machines went into overdrive to capitalise on this newfound ‘buzz barometer’. This shift has very much changed the way new artists are launched, especially in the UK, with many record companies releasing a buzz-single prior to Christmas and then trying to assure that their new act features as highly on the poll as possible. 

Ellie Goulding was the winner of the BBC’s Sound of 2010, but one wonders if it has done her more harm than good. Little Boots for instance, a similarly electro-pop artist who won last year, was crushed under the weight of expectation.  As a consequence of her title, she became over-exposed and when the music didn’t quite match the hype she seemed to experience a rather nasty backlash by the fans and the press. The fact is, with hindsight, the critics got the winner spectacularly wrong – Florence and the Machine or Lady GaGa, both of whom featured in the top ten at three and five respectively, were indisputably the sound of 2009 – leaving Little Boots to run off to America with her tail between her legs. The point could not have been more starkly made by the subsequent cruel snub at The Brits this year. (she wasn’t voted in any of the major categories). This bright popstar, who had been the awe of music fans everywhere with her YouTube performances and her infamous Tenori-on, became a figure of contempt and her album, a decent enough pop record but not the futuristic masterpiece everyone was expecting, has been pretty much forgotten.



Ellie Goulding has the same problem on her hands – too much success too soon, over-exposure, critic backlashes, not made any easier by the fact that she also won the Brit’s Critic Award last month as well. There have already been warning signs; Goulding recently admitting in an interview that she suffered panic attacks bad enough to send her to hospital as she struggled to cope with the hype and the very quick ascent into the stratospheres of celebrity and success.  There have also been some rather nasty reviews of her debut album in the press by prominent critics who seem adamant on using their one opportunity to mount an ill-informed backlash on the young singer, most notably Alexis Petridis of The Guardian who gave the album a woeful 2/5 score with one of the laziest write-ups (she is not from Powys you idiot) I have ever seen in which he barely mentions the music. Pete Paphides also gave a nasty review for The Times, and Gigwise’s wrote their usually hapless ‘hey, this isn’t an album by a band of smelly twenty-something men’ review in which they totally missed the point. Some have argued, and rightly so, that the BBC Sound of Poll is just another excuse for the media to build acts up and tear them down.



But what of the music, which so often gets forgotten in all of this? Luckily for Goulding, Lights is a solid pop album with an electro-folk tinge, superior to Little Boot’s Hands but not quite the copper-bottomed pop of Florence and the Machine’s Lungs. The advantage for Goulding is that she’s a singer songwriter in the traditional sense, being a co-writer of every song on the album, but she is also a popstar willing to sonically mash-up folk, nineties rave, drum and bass, and electronica. Think of Lights as the missing Everything But the Girl transition album between Amplified Heart (1994) and Walking Wounded (1996) when the band threw aside acoustic-pop for hard drum and bass. The first half of the album is absolutely stacked with current or potential hit singles – Starry Eyed is a brilliantly euphoric dance number full of acoustic guitars, cut and paste vocals, Goulding’s gorgeously fragile voice, a massive chorus and eighties club beats. First single, Under the Sheets, utilises speeded-up/slowed-down riffs and a hard-edged dance arrangement contrasting brilliantly against Goulding’s infectious chorus. Scheduled as the next single is the gorgeous opening track Guns and Horses with its stuttering beats, guitar strums, and a deliciously husky vocal turn.



This Love (Will Be Your Downfall) and The Writer could easily be future singles, the former one of the strongest and most melancholy songs here – ethereal choral voices and pianos suddenly explode into a very early nineties house rhapsody with a chorus that earworms its way into your brain, the latter a swooning ballad with yet another hook-heavy chorus which proves Goulding can do more than just electro-beats. The second half of the album has trouble holding up to the sheer quality of the first, but highlights are the delightful ‘oh oh oh’ breaks of Every Time You Go, the Frankmusik-like Your Biggest Mistake and the drum and bass tinged Salt Skin which keep proceedings pretty much on track. Perhaps only Wish I Stayed and I’ll Hold My Breath are less immediate than the other songs on the album and may have benefited from some sonic variation. But these seem like petty criticisms of an album which pretty much lives up to the expectations and even, in places, surpasses them. Ellie Goulding is here to stay with a solid debut under her belt that is the perfect platform for a long career in pop.



Whether or not the BBC’s Poll will be the type of poisoned chalice it was for Little Boots  in the long-term remains to be seen. Goulding is certainly a cut above the rest with her delicate vocals, strong melodies, perceptive yet simple lyric writing, and her choice of collaborators (Frankmusik helped her to find her sound, Finlay Dow-Smith – better known as Starsmith – has helped to craft it). With or without the poll, she is the most exciting thing in pop right now.


Official Website of Ellie Goulding

Buy Ellie Goulding Lights

Ventriloquist’s Dummy

Ventriloquist Dummy






























When a papier-mâché mouth opens

it hesitates, looks to the ventriloquist

for words it cannot quite articulate.



Its feeble mandible gapes on silence,

until the hand in a small back cavity

brings it into life, dull without knowledge.



The phrases it uses are three-times stale,

from a few old fragments not fit for purpose,

a left-handed scrawl forgotten to time.



Such are arranged in eloquent syntax,

formally framed within the rigours of speech,

of plaintive sentiments of joy and grief.



Uncanny the way it appropriates 

the heaviness of his words, sad nuances

for which the puppet takes undue credit.



Somehow the audience doe not hear this –

the rigorous handclaps signalling a triumph,

sentimental tears pushed away from cheek.



Oh, how they think the words the dummy mouths

belong somehow to it, so that its master

is conspicuous in his resentment.



But the claims he had written this lament

are fast brushed aside, how they spoil the effect.

The ventriloquist is promptly silenced.

Groove Armada – Black Light, Review

Groove Armada Black Light (3.5/5) Groove Armada have been stalwarts of the dance music scene for over ten years now, rivalled only by Basement Jaxx and Massive Attack who, like GA, were born out of the nineties dance/electronica boom and who similarly employ guest singers to provide vocals for their music. Black Light is their sixth studio album (they work at the same slow pace as Massive Attack and Basement Jaxx) and it’s perhaps their most cohesive set yet, an odyssey of eighties synths, Kraftwerkian soundscapes and rock guitars influenced by the likes of Gary Numan, Roxy Music, and David Bowie. There are also a plethora of diverse vocalists on hand, from Will Young to Bryan Ferry, new artist SaintSaviour and Nick Littlemore (one half of electro-pop duo Empire of the Sun). Despite this eclecticism, Black Light suffers from being cut from an all too familiar sonic cloth – the combination of indie guitars, eighties synths and electro-beats is starting to sound old already, pioneered by the likes of New order, Joy Divison and The Prodigy and recently revived by the likes of Cut Copy, Hot Chip, Delphic and Ladyhawke.


Invariably it is the songs transcending this formula that leave the strongest impression. Will Young’s turn on History, an electro-dance number borrowing very heavily from Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy, is glorious. Young’s soulful voice is looped and filtered but this doesn’t distract from his gorgeous falsettos in the chorus in tribute to Jimmy Somerville. Bryan Ferry is typically louche on the minimalist beats of Shameless, barely breaking a sweat in this sleazy number. Nick Littlemore adds some Empire of the Sun magic to Fall Silent, which opens uncannily like Ultravox’s Vienna, and Just for Tonight, which could have come straight from their debut Walking on a Dream (2008). The latter features She Keeps Bees’ Jess Larrabee on vocals. Time and Space manages to reference ska and disco while sampling a deliciously retro-nineties vocal sample for the chorus with bombastic synth flourishes and brass. First single Paper Romance is all shouty infectious choruses, big bass and walls of synths.  Some of the other tracks are a little less memorable, such as album opener Look Me in the Eye Sister, Not Forgotten, Warsaw and I Won’t Kneel, which come and go without much fanfare.



While not really breaking any ground musically, Black Light is a sturdy enough album. It may have benefited from some weaker tracks being dropped from the track list, but it should ensure Groove Armada find a legion of new fans curious by the contributions of Young, Ferry and Littlemore, as well as clubbers on the lookout for something a bit more downbeat to take the edge of their come-downs.


Official Website of Groove Armada