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Pete Atkin / Words / Re: Clive James: 'Injury Time' |
15.08.17 at 09:43 |
| Started by Kevin Cryan | Newest post by Kevin Cryan |
The Age
August 11 2017
Injury Time review: Clive James turns his attention away from his mortality
Geoff Page
POETRY
Injury Time
CLIVE JAMES
Picador, $26
Quote:Of Clive James' many employments and vocations since he went to Britain in 1962, the most important has always been poetry. It isn't what has made him famous but it's plainly what he'd most like to be remembered for.
In the six "extra" years since he received a diagnosis of B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, James has been much more attentive to this vocation than he once was – even if his Collected Poems 1958-2015 does run to 560 pages.
Injury Time is a worthy successor to his 2015 collection, Sentenced to Life, and covers much of the same ground, albeit with even greater bemusement at his unexpected and almost embarrassing survival. "The old fraud," I recently heard a friend of his joke with some
As James himself says in Advice to a Young Poet, a prose tailpiece to this book: "If even a few people remember a line or two in a poem you wrote, you're not just getting there, you're there. That's it: and all the greater glory is mere vanity." Conceivably, "a line or two" may be setting the bar a bit low but it's a good criterion against which to evaluate the book which offers it.
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read on
Kevin Cryan
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Not Pete Atkin / Off-topic / Those 'few lines' found [Re: The Guardian] |
09.08.17 at 19:15 |
| Started by Kevin Cryan | Newest post by S J Birkill |
Member Seán Kelly writes:
Quote:
About Clive and the Guardian. This is a snap from our printed copy. Dated 22nd July:
A rather short and casual goodbye to him I thought!
Seán
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Perfunctory. Parsimonious. Unbefitting this august journal. Thank you Timothy Treffry and Elizabeth Dunnett (not MV members), and Kevin for keeping us posted during Clive's tenure. And well spotted, Seán! |
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| 5 |
Pete Atkin / Gigs / Re: Beeston, Nottingham - 30th June 2017 |
02.07.17 at 16:58 |
| Started by Pete Atkin | Newest post by Mike Walters |
Well, I was there, along with my old friend and fellow MV Andy Victor. It was something of a sentimental journey for me since in our schooldays Andy and I used to be frequent attenders of various Nottingham folk-clubs (Andy still lives there and still is) and I remembered one or two of the club regulars from those days. Not only that, but the first time Andy and I saw Pete perform live was some forty years ago just down the road at Nottingham University SU.
Thought it was a terrific evening. Pete was on top form, a great mix of older and newer songs, and a very appreciative audience. I spoke to one or two people who hadn't been familiar with the songs previously who were really enthusiastic. Oh, and a rare outing for Stranger in Town, my favourite song from LL. |
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Pete Atkin / Chums / Re: Russell Davies on Radio |
01.07.17 at 21:05 |
| Started by Kevin Cryan | Newest post by Kevin Cryan |
Russell is back on BBC Radio 2 with a new six-part series The Russell Davies Archive.
Quote:Classic tracks and forgotten gems from the 1920s, 30s and 40s
The Archive is a celebration of masterpieces and forgotten gems from the 1920's,30's and 40's . Recordings which saw the great stars of popular music and instrumentalists of the day stepping up to the microphone and perform exactly what we hear today with no way of correcting errors or eccentricities. In this programme we enjoy tracks from The Boswell Sisters, Fats Waller, Bing Crosby and the unique sounds of Whispering Jack Smith from this archive as Russell Davies opens up that glorious hinterland of older music, incidentally playable now in far better sound quality than was available at the time.
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Programme 1/6 (broadcast on Monday 26 June 2017 23.00) is here
Programme 2/6 ( to be broadcast on Monday 03 July 2017 23.00) here
Kevin Cryan
I still cannot get over the fact that we lost The Song Show four years ago. The show in which discussed in some depth popular songs, most of which came from the first six decades of the 20th century, but not all of them well known " Davies talking about the history, structure, writers, singers, arrangers.... was" as The Telegraph's radio critic Gillian Reynolds wrote at the end of 2013 " a real joy".
Having listened to the first episode of this series, I can say that at least some of the virtues of TSS have been restored.
Kevin Cryan
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Pete Atkin / Members / Re: John Waites |
25.05.17 at 21:06 |
| Started by S J Birkill | Newest post by Seán Kelly |
| Thanks Steve - I am very sorry to hear that. I sat next to him at the first Pheasantry gig where -as he himself mentiioned when he wrote about the gig - we bonded over a shared attempt to put out a burning napkin (his food was in severe danger of a soaking from my beer -luckily he got to it first!). A very friendly man - It is very sad news to hear that he has gone. |
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| 10 |
Pete Atkin / Gigs / Re: Two new gigs coming up! |
25.05.17 at 17:24 |
| Started by S J Birkill | Newest post by Pete Atkin |
I'm so, so sorry not to have been able to be at Wimborne on Sunday, but it sounds as if Ian S did superbly well, and not just in the circumstances. My unflexible trip to Portugal had been booked long before the Wimborne date was offered, so the timing was always a bit tight, but we thought - hah! - that it would all be manageable and OK.
I was booked on a 10pm easyJet flight from Porto to Bristol and arrived at the airport to news of its cancellation and the prospect, as it turned out, of four hours queueing to be recheduled. I could have taken a six hour midnight bus ride to Faro and then a flight on Sunday to Newcastle. That wouldn't have got me to Wimborne in time, of course, so we opted for a three hour midnight bus ride to Lisbon and a flight to Gatwick at 640am on Tuesday. Heigh ho.
I phoned Ian S from the airport on Saturday night in order to give him plenty of time to build up his anxiety, and spoke to him and the festival organiser again several times from my hotel in Lisbon on Sunday morning. The Skype thing seemed possible, until they discovered they couldn't get any WiFi at the Wimborne end. Anyway, there I was sitting and watching my phone for the call, but it never happened, not at my end anyway. So it goes.
I do hope that Ian and I may get another opportunity to test out our routine as we had originally planned it. It sounds as if it was in any case a good and useful way to make contact with a bunch of people who previously hadn't known about the songs at all.
Onward!
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