Travelling ghosts

There's a chill running down my spine as I sit down to type this... It isn't ghosts that are to blame, however, but Cumbrian snowfall and a broken boiler. Nonetheless, I've had the privilege of reading in a number of haunted places recently: a few weeks ago, I performed a selection of pieces from 'A Pint...' in the grand setting of Marlborough College, the school attended by Betjeman, Nick Drake and others. Students murmured about strange sightings in the library, a ghostly child in the grounds and other stories, but I was too busy staring at the imposing buildings to take much of it in. Besides, never mind the opulent grounds of the school, the highlight of my trip to Swindon's environs was encountering the world's weirdest roundabout.

On November 20th, myself and seven other poets arrived at sleepy Aspinall Street in Mytholmroyd to take part in an exciting project organised by Andrew McMillan. Our destination was Ted Hughes' childhood house, a black brick terrace that now has a thoroughly (and surprisingly) modern interior. The day-long event, 'Crossing Borders' saw four poets with Lancashire connections (Mike Barlow, Sarah Hymas, Clare Shaw and Steve Waling) and four with Yorkshire links (myself, Joe Hakim, Ben Wilkinson and Sally Baker) divided into pairs and challenged to produce new, collaborative poems exploring the idea of landscape and its borders. I was paired with Mike Barlow and we set out on a muddy walk with some trepidation, only to find ourselves quickly agreeing that we'd like to write something that explored the way a hill seems different depending on which side you approach it from. Our piece adopted the voices of two mountaineers, one from the east and one from the west who meet at the summit of the peak and swap routes.

The day produced a striking variety of collaborations, which Sarah Hymas has described much more articulately here. I also had high hopes of startling a ghost or two from the Aspinall Street house where some of us spent the night. After muttering about ouija boards, we went to an excellent real ale pub instead and stumbled back after last orders for a night's sleep, undisturbed by the spirits of Ted and Sylvia... Now there's a surprise.

On Sunday, I performed at Maryport literature festival and a trip to the Senhouse Roman Museum surely unsettled a centurian ghost or two: the venue was right next to the museum with its variety of relics and murals.In between visiting these ghostly locations, I've also recently been to Peterborough to perform at 'Speakeasy' in the Brewery Tap. You couldn't ask for a better organised evening of poetry, or a more responsive, friendly audience. A big thank you to Mark Grist and everyone else who made the evening such a pleasure.

Later this week, snow permitting, I'll be appearing at The Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden on Thursday as part of a tall-lighthouse event, then for the fantastic 'Wordlife' in Bradford on Friday night at the Theatre in the Mill, Sheffield Saturday night and Sheffield again on Monday.

The last month has been dominated by a bit of exciting news from Picador: myself and nine other poets (including Alan Buckley and Ben Wilkinson, also published by tall-lighthouse) have made the shortlist for the inaugural Picador Prize for a first collection. The shortlist was mentioned in The Guardian here. You can read poems by all the shortlisted entrants here.

Now, back to building a fire and trying to keep the chill at bay! If all else fails, there's always the whisky...

The decay of lying: a pseudo-scientific blog post

‘In modern days, while the fashion of writing poetry has become far too common and should, if possible, be discouraged, the fashion of lying has almost fallen into disrepute.’

So claims Oscar Wilde in ‘The Decay of Lying’ (1891), a typically witty account of the ‘proper aim of art’, which he describes as ‘the telling of beautiful, untrue things.’ Recent and inevitable news of cuts to the Arts Council budget, might prompt us to question anew what art is really for, where it fits into the rest of our fragmented society. Commenting on Wednesday in response to the announcement of a 29.6% funding cut, Arts Council Chief Executive Alan Davey said: 'These cuts will inevitably have a significant impact on the cultural life of the country. There will be some tough decisions…’. But what does the term ‘cultural life’ really mean and where do art forms like poetry fit in?

(1.1 A bit of science)

In his new book ‘The Master and his Emissary’, psychiatrist and writer Ian McGilchrist looks at the segregated hemispheres of the human brain and their asymmetrical relationship. To vastly simplify one aspect of his infinitely complex argument, McGilchrist suggests that the left and right hemispheres deal with incompatible versions of the world: the left specialising in quantitative information, individual components and the right in holistic connections, intuition and metaphor – the domain of poetry. For all the left hemisphere depends on the right for its functionality, the information it deals in is highly-prized: ‘we live in a society where the indirect, the difficult, the implicit are not valued.’ (McGilchrist, October 2010)

The author relies on a rather neat metaphor himself when he says:

‘The left hemisphere, though unaware of its dependence, could be thought of as an 'emissary' of the right hemisphere, valuable for taking on a role that the right hemisphere - the 'Master' - cannot itself afford to undertake.  However it turns out that the emissary has his own will, and secretly believes himself to be superior to the Master.  And he has the means to betray him.’

In an interview for ‘Poetry’ magazine, McGilchrist outlines his ideas in relation to poetic expression. Metaphor is of key importance to society and the brain (indeed he characterises it as ‘the only way of understanding anything’) and yet it is marginalised. We live in a society that prefers instant gratification and quantifiable information (which we can constantly access through technology) over intuitive thinking and, as a result, poetry is bound to be marginalised too.

It’s an interesting theory which, in turn, provokes questions of what we mean by ‘truth’ in society and in art. It’s clear that the intuitive, deep truths of poetry are different from our social concepts of literal , informative truth: the facts, just the facts and nothing but the facts. Information versus knowledge. So how should we approach ‘truth’ within an individual poem? Is Wilde right when he argues that we should shun ‘careless habits of accuracy’ and realise instead that ‘Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life’? In early November, Jacob Polley and I will be leading a weekend workshop here at The Wordsworth Trust about poetic fictions, whether poetry can do justice to reality through the unreal, though who knows what conclusions we’ll reach!

(1.2 A bit more science)

Positivism, of course, holds that statements are senseless if they cannot be verified or falsified. However, outlining his theory of falsifiability, Karl Popper famously asserted that unfalsifiable statements are ‘unscientific’ but not without relevance (having cultural or spiritual meaning) and equally a theory cannot be guaranteed true by past corroboration, even after rigorous and repeated testing. For his part, McGilchrist suggests that the kind of attention we bring to bear on the world at a given time changes the nature of the world we attend to and there is no single way of thinking which can be proved true. All the same, science ‘purports to be uncovering such a reality. Its apparently value free descriptions are assumed to deliver the truth about the object, onto which our feelings and desires are later painted…’

A traditional approach: science first, poetry later. We’re familiar with the idea of art as embellishment, as ‘alternative’, entertainment in its truest sense. When we speak about ‘truth’ in art, we aren’t applying the exacting standards of the positivist and its assumed that we’re dealing with a far more tenuous concept. Yet McGilchrist writes that science ‘is just one particular way of looking at things, a way which privileges detachment, a lack of commitment of the viewer to the object viewed. For some purposes this can be undeniably useful. But its use in such causes does not make it truer, more real, closer to the nature of things.’

This is something I’ve been thinking about recently in relation to Richard Dawkins’ book ‘Unweaving the Rainbow’ and his remarks on the relationship between science and the arts. My article ‘Re-weaving the Rainbow’ is a review of three recent poetry collections by Jo Shapcott, Pascal Petit and Patrick McGuinness. I’m no scientist, to state the bleedin’ obvious. My selective, biased response to some of Dawkins’ points is very tentative, just as my understanding of neuroscience is limited (expect a possible blog entry from the far more qualified poet Niall O’Sullivan about McGilchrist’s book at some point!).

(1.3 A bit less science)

Nonetheless, it seems to this amateur that the questions McGilchrist raises in ‘The Master and His Emissary’ about ‘truth’ are fascinating. They strike at the heart of what the domain of metaphor and, by implication, the domain of poetry is for at a time when cuts to arts funding make is ever more paranoid and defensive about what it is we do, what poetry is ‘for’. In some ways, he argues that the issue doesn’t even need answering, such is the significance of metaphor to human life. But doesn’t poetry (and art) thrive on marginalisation? Rumours of demise are always greatly exaggerated and, like it or not, the best work usually comes unbidden and asserts itself against the odds – not an argument for increasing the odds, of course.

In the midst of this, I’ve been cheered this week to attend a series of different events that variously demonstrated to me how poetry is alive and vigorously kicking in all its forms (a sestina, I’m told, delivers a lethal karate chop). On Tuesday, I was a guest reader on Felix Dennis’ ‘Did I Mention The Free Wine’ which saw an audience of hundreds gathering outside Windermere to hear several hours of poetry and, er, neck free booze. The next evening, performing with the very talented Luke Wright, I read at Hull’s ‘Write to Speak’: a vibrant and exciting spoken word night fast making an impact with its warm atmosphere and mix of new and established voices – I definitely recommend a look at their programme for the coming months. Friday saw the gala of the second Manchester Poetry Prize at MMU, a generous award for new work won this year by Judy Brown and Michelle Kern, proving that good poems will out.

(1.4 A slapdash conclusion)

And perhaps poetry is even more tenacious than we often think. To quote McGilchrist a final time, ‘poetry engraves itself in the brain: it doesn’t just slip smoothly over the cortex as language normally does. It has all the graininess of life, as it rips into being from deep within the limbic system, the ancient seat of awareness and affective meaning.’ In other words, better get used to it - there’s no bloody chance of getting rid of us.

---

Below: the author, engaged in a highly scientific experiment about the optimum consumption of Budweiser (picture by Andrew Marshall)

The green grass of home

Tomorrow morning, the UK will wake up to National Poetry Day: an annual celebration of the written and spoken word. Across the country, there’ll be edible poetry cakes (better than inedible ones, no doubt), limericks and readings a’plenty, and the South Bank Centre will host a daunting ‘thousand poem challenge’.

Each year, the day has a different theme and this time around, it’s the deceptively simple idea of ‘home’. Deceptive because we all instinctively know what ‘home’ is, but its a far more elusive concept than it first seems – home can mean almost anything; a long-abandoned birthplace, a landscape, a set of four walls. To many, home is more to do with people than place.

I often find I have a clearer sense of being away from home than ‘at home’. Returning to the town where I grew up this weekend, I encountered my dad in the kitchen, grimly muttering the words of Robert Frost: ‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.’ Well, who can blame him…

Likewise, anywhere can be a home-from-home: just ask the barman of my local pub. Home is where the heart is, after all… Daljit Nagra, Dreadlockalien and others have all been blogging about personal notions of home and homesickness on the National Poetry Day website and you can read their thoughts here, including Ian McMillan’s ‘home as a haven’, Jo Shapcott’s ‘home, a baggy old coat’ and my meditation on mountains, Larkin and whisky.

Ironically, I’ll have little chance to put my feet up at home throughout October: you can catch me on the road at a series of forthcoming readings, notably Hull Truck Theatre (with Luke Wright) on October 20th and at The Low Wood Hotel with Felix Dennis on October 19th – did anyone mention the free wine? Next month; Peterborough, Cambridge and a pennine poetry extravaganza…

Meanwhile, tomorrow afternoon from 1-4, The Wordsworth Trust will be hosting poetry readings every hour, with readers including Mark Ward, Penny Boxall, Andrew Forster and myself. We’ll be exploring the theme of ‘home’ within spitting distance of Wordsworth’s own homely cottage… Do drop in if you’re in the area!

Ghost train

Having recently ordered the Selected works of the American poet Galway Kinnell, I'm finding myself drawn back to the same poem over and over again, unable to let it be. Appropriate enough: the piece, 'Fire in Luna Park' is about a terrible accident in a theme park and its haunting ending resists clear resolution.

The poem hinges on the idea of 'crying wolf' - the narrator relates how neighbours of Luna Park would often be kept awake by 'the screaming produced by the great freight machines', until 'it seemed the same big-lunged screamer cried out in mock terror / each night across the water, and we hardly heard and took no notice'. I was reminded of the children up the road from my house in Chesterfield, whose screams as they played in the garden would momentarily terrify me, assuming some accident, until I became so accustomed to them I almost blocked them out. Anyone who has ever held on for dear life and screamed on a rollercoaster or been on the kind of ride Kinnell describes that 'holds its riders upside down and pummels them until the screams pour out freely' will know that half-laugh, half-scream that fairgrounds produce.

In this case, it's the Ghost Train, jerking 'through dark tunnels / here and there suddenly lighted by fluorescent bones' that carries its passengers through the ground into a true nightmare, which we presume to be a fire:

'...last night the shrieks of actual terror pierced through our
laughter, and kept at it, until we sat up startled.

The Ghost Train, now carrying seven souls and the baffled grief of families
has no special destination,
but must worm forward, twist, backtrack, looking for forgetfulness,
through the natural world,
where all are born, all suffer, and many scream
and no-one is healed but gathered and used again.'

It's an ending typical of Galway Kinnell's lyrically dexterous style, an almost apocalyptic note that would seem heavy in the hands of another writer, but retains a certain lightness here, though the words themselves are incredibly poignant, appropriately weighty. There's something horrifying about the juxtaposition of fairground glee and mortal terror, an awareness of how the macabre often lurks behind the faintly ridiculous.

Kinnell is a singularly compassionate poet and his work recalls the poems of Robert Frost to me - a poet who he addresses a homage to in his 1964 collection 'Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock'. 'Fire in Luna Park' achieved for me that kind of rare memorability that, paradoxically, has the reader going back to the poem over and over as if they're scared they might forget its essence.

It set me thinking about the way a poem can immortalise its subject or, to take a bleaker view, keep the subject trapped in a kind of purgatory, separated from the real world, occupying the mirror-world of the poem forever. In April this year, I published my pamphlet 'Parallax' with Forest Publications; a series of poems about bidding leave and the secret lives of inanimate things, dedicated to the memory of Justin Wand who died in April 2009. You can never adequately capture somebody's memory in a poem, so I suppose the best the poet can do is to reflect on that - the poetry book becomes a kind of strange, Pandora's box of memories. In a sense, it could be seen as a selfish act, creating a character within the confines of the poem to keep them there, a dull imitation of the person you once new, a kind of Coppelia.

As Seamus Heaney says - far more eloquently - in an interview with Dennis O'Driscoll, memory occupies a strange place in poetry:

"You end up dropping back through your own trapdoors, with a kind of 'they-can't-take-this-away-from-me' feeling. There's a paradox, of course, since the poems that provide the recompense are the very ones that turn your private possessions into images that are - as Yeats once said - 'all on show'. Yet a poem saves as well as shows."

For some far less eloquent (but hopefully interesting) musings, you can buy my new pamphlet, 'Parallax' here.

The Last Barman Poet

I'm growing mildly concerned that 'A Pint for the Ghost' has been a bit heavy on the 'ghost' recently and a bit light on the 'pint'. Relish that sentence - it's probably the only time you'll hear me utter the word 'light' in relation to beer drinking. To redress the balance, I considered going for a heavy session down at Tweedies, (which, incidentally, has my nemesis, Old Rosie on tap again today) but instead I thought I'd plug a fantastic ongoing pub-themed poetry project, organised by Ross Sutherland.

'The Last Barman Poet' is a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the piss-poor poem Tom Cruise performs at the end of the 1981 film Cocktail, gyrating his way around the bar and proclaiming the superior quality of his Sex on the Beach. If you were lucky enough to escape that episode the first time round, you can watch Tom in all his Youtube glory here. Ross has been inviting poets to contribute homages, covers and remixes of the Cruise poem for a special 'Homework' event in London on September 29th.

The idea for the event originally came from the Aristocrats joke. To quote Ross' site, this is "a (pretty unfunny) joke that US comedians use to show off their stagecraft. The joke itself is a test pattern; it’s down to the comic telling the joke to add their own brand of flair, and hopefully make it funny. The organisers of Homework wondered—is it possible to create an Aristocrats for poets? A poem so bad that the writer would have to use all their ingenuity and talent to make it worthwhile?" Only the evening of the 29th will tell...

So far, the project blog has seen an enticing array of poetic cocktails, from poets such as Luke Kennard, Tim Wells, Niall O'Sullivan and many, many more. There's even a Last Barman rap. I couldn't let the opportunity to write about a bar pass me by, so I've contributed a few verses too. My piece is about the Last Poet Bar, narrated in the voice of a grumpy Yorkshire drinking establishment. No idea where the inspiration for that could have come from.You can read my efforts here. And if you're in London on September 29th, you can attend the Homework extravaganza!

What are you waiting for? The bar is open...

Brief ghosts

Thanks to a gift from a friend, I recently became the proud owner of Tony Walker's spooky volume 'The Ghostly Guide to the Lake District', published back in 1999. As well as being a tireless listener (some of the stories related in the book were 'hours old', he claims, at the time of writing) Walker is highly attuned to the connection between landscape and legend; an idea that formed the starting point for 'A Pint for the Ghost' - Derbyshire and Sheffield ghost stories are very much a product of the industries that once thrived there. In the introduction to the Ghostly Guide, Tony sums it up neatly when he says:

'To our ancestors, the world was mysterious and haunted by spirits of all sorts. On a bright day in a city centre, that might be hard to believe, but when you hear the wind in the trees on a dark night, or see the moonlight on a frozen lake, the Otherworld is much closer."

Ghosts are a symbol of the unseen and therefore unknown - those things that could be explained rationally, but invite a compelling alternative story. To me, ghostly tales compliment our understanding of the world in the same way that poetry coexists alongside science - offering a parallel narrative, relying on intuition rather than seeking to offer absolute truth.

Nonetheless, 'The Ghostly Guide to the Lake District' is a very grounded book which acts as a useful guide to the local area too, encouraging the reader to tour around lesser known spots on the periphery of the lakes. It offers a comprehensive catalogue of legends and popular stories which takes in the whole region. Flicking immediately to the section marked 'Ambleside', I was disappointed to see that Grasmere has one of the most anti-climactic ghost stories you could imagine, reduced to a few terse sentences:

"Grasmere is a pretty and much visited village which has a ghost story from one of the local pubs. Gerald Findler records this from the middle 1960s. He says that some locals were in a pub in the village talking about ghosts. A stranger joined in the conversation. The locals said 'We've been talking about ghosts, but we don't believe in them.' At which point the stranger vanished."

Of course, I immediately threw my book aside and started to wonder which local pub this fleeting exchange might have taken place in... It seems like an appropriate excuse to investigate all the bars in the vicinity, and I've already embarked upon this labour of love, visiting Tweedies at the weekend with Andrew and Chris to sample the Grasmere Guzzler beer festival. A good time was had by all (we think) and Friday's beer didn't stop us completing the beautiful 11 mile Fairfield Horseshoe on Saturday.

We started at Rydal Hall and walked the reverse of the route suggested by Wainwright, who waxes lyrical about the beauty of the round, having a sly dig at fell runners along the way: "Fellrunners will complete the whole round in less than two hours without seeing anything other than the track before them. I admire those who can perform such feats. I envy their fitness but not their achievements; racers and record breakers seem to me to be out of place on the high fells. Mountains are there to be enjoyed, and enjoyed leisurely." That's told us runner types, then. The image at the top of this post, taken half way through the route, is a kind of ghost in itself: the pictured scene never actually happened - Andrew took photos of me and Chris separately and this image is a composite. Mind-bending stuff...

We were lucky with the weather on Saturday and enjoyed unusually clear visibility. I've not experienced that too often in the hills since July! Returning to 'The Ghostly Guide...', Tony Walker manages a stirling defence of the Lake District's miserable climate, observing tactfully "parts of the County do indeed see a little rain. There are also blankets of fog that shroud the moors, blizzards that block mountain roads and sea mists which hang over the coastal marshes. For spotting ghosts, this kind of climate is a distinct advantage." I repeated that to myself last night as I huddled at an Ambleside bus shelter in the driving rain, wondering if the whole street was going to float away in the deluge.

The Badger Bar and the Grey Lady

Arriving back in misty Cumbria after a whirlwind fortnight in Edinburgh is a shock to the system, albeit one softened by climbing Arthur's Seat yesterday afternoon. Arthur's Seat gives a fantastic vantage point from which to map the city - sea to the East, industrial fringes to the West, blackened spires and the walls of the Castle marking a bullseye in the centre. If I were to chart my own map of Edinburgh city centre, the focal points would be The Banshee Labyrinth, a series of sofas where friends were kind enough to let me crash and many (too many) pubs. There'd also be a set of more abstract peaks and troughs sketched in to reflect how mixed our performances of 'A Pint..' were. Last week, British Theatre Review gave the one-woman version of the piece a pleasing 3 stars, though they would have preferred a little more theatricality. By far the best accolade as far as I'm concerned, however, is making it into a Top 5 Shows To Get You Tipsy. Couldn't ask for better than that...

Back in Grasmere, I'm already being assailed by ghostly tales. In the taxi on my way back from the station, we passed the Badger Bar, a mere five minutes from my house towards Rydal. The driver, who had previously been regailing me with stories about horse dressage, suddenly became animated. He began to tell me about a time some twenty years ago when he'd been working in the pub, putting emulsion on some panels in the dining room, when he glimpsed the ghost of an elusive 'grey lady'.

As he painted, he became aware of a sudden chill in the room that seemed to gather and pool around him, almost like a blanket. Looking behind him, he glimpsed a woman's head and shoulders through the glass doors to the room beyond. At first, he assumed it was one of the girls who worked in the pub - "simple lasses, good for pot washing but not much else. I went to tell her off for being where she shouldn't be..." - but as he made towards the door, the figure vanished as soon as it had appeared. Had it been one of the 'pot washers', they would have had to go through the external door, but the figure's disappearence was soundless. He switched all the heaters on in the room and consigned the vision to a 'daft moment'. In fact, he didn't think of it again until years later, when guests in the bar also reported seeing a stately female figure in the very same spot...

I didn't have much time to dwell on his story, because he was off again: "See that there hedge? I planted that in 1976...". I might have to pay a visit to the Badger Bar before too long. Purely in the name of research, of course. I'll report on any spirits who try to steal mine.

Being honest

I've long been interested in the idea of what 'honesty' really means in the creative arts, and whether Rita Ann Higgins was right when she said that the poetic truth necessarily involves lying. Earlier this year, Horizon Review published an article of mine on the subject of Craig Raine's approach to truth, which you can read here. Given my preoccupation with white lies, I was immediately drawn to the title of D.C. Moore's play, 'Honest', which is being performed at The Fringe between now and 23rd August. Having settled  in a side room of Milne's bar, Hanover Street, the audience is abruptly addressed by Dave (Trystan Gravelle), a disenfranchised city worker, clutching a bottle of Budweiser, with the memorable opening : 'I think I might be a bit of a cunt'. The monologue that follows is by turns witty and almost heartbreaking, an understated, frank account of what it means to see the world you're used to as if through the side of a glass tank. 'Honest' is made more powerful by its forthright delivery, and the audience are entirely drawn in. D.C. Moore's play has been well-received in the press and deservedly so - it was so excellent I went to see it twice in one afternoon. Interestingly, one reviewer likens the writing to Conor Macpherson, my favourite playwright and the inspiration behind some of 'A Pint for the Ghost'. Certainly, there was something of Macpherson's unflinching portrayal of lives without purpose in the writing, though I felt this was a subtly different brand of dark comedy. The premise that the whole play is in fact part of a bar room conversation is certainly something reminiscent of 'The Weir', and reflects Dave's character: part-outsider, part confidente. A must-see event for anyone in Edinburgh, without doubt.

Of course, when it comes to honesty, one man's truth is another man's bias. It was with mixed feelings that I read The Scotsman's lukewarm review of 'A Pint for the Ghost' last week. The review highlights some of the problems of our setup (a noisy bar, hardly suited to ephemeral metaphors) but largely focuses on the show's 'insubstantial' nature and lack of focus which is, in a sense, rather the point: 'A Pint for the Ghost' was conceived as a conversation, a set of exchanges in a lonely pub after hours, not a play with a clear narrative arc. The reviewer appears to have approached the piece as standard theatre (even curiously referring to 'male and female leads') rather than a poetry and storytelling event, intended to create an atmosphere in which the audience realises that our stories and lives seldom have a clear resolution, a neat narrative. Ghosts, after all, are a symbol of unfinished business. I'll leave judgement on whether or not the show has been effective in evoking that to our audiences. They don't have long - I'm fast approaching the last two night's of the show at the Edinburgh festival and what has been a fantastic learning curve. The Fringe is a merrygoround and I'm certainly feeling mildly sick and dizzy, though whether that's the Fringe's fault or the result of discovering Jaegerbombs, I wouldn't like to say... Watch this space for news of what we're planning for 'A Pint..' post-Scotland; there's talk of haunted venues in Leeds, Hull and beyond!

Auld Reekie

Down a dark, dark street, in a dark, dark pub, there's an even darker basement where Scottish ghosts go to drink the night away. If you're brave enough to venture down there between the 12th and 17th of August, you'll find myself and Simon Perkins, clutching whisky glasses and telling far-fetched tales of steel city spirits, tap room poltergeists and murdered widows.

I arrived at the Edinburgh Fringe on Friday afternoon and was immediately chucked headlong into the festival maelstrom, with performers flyering every street corner and large swathes of the city centre turned into beer tents for the month (oh, what a drag). As a Fringe virgin, everything seems rather bewhildering at first, but I'm fast learning that it's an advantage not to have a clue what's going on around you: the scale of the festival is frankly mind-blowing otherwise.

'A Pint for the Ghost' is here as part of the PBH Free Fringe, founded by Peter Buckley Hill in 1996. The Free Fringe has a fantastically supportive atmosphere, with performers watching each others' shows, helping with set up and even partially staffing the door – I'm immensely grateful to the stars and behind-the-scenes staff of 'The Head Girl, the Gap Year and Sue Ellen' who have always been on hand to help me lug chairs and tables around and dish out flyers.

Our venue is the brilliantly spooky Banqueting Hall, downstairs in the Banshee Labyrinth on Niddry Street, a stone's throw from The Royal Mile. Inside, the Labyrinth is a maze of eerie corridors and, as 'Scotland's most haunted pub', hosts ghost tours several times a day. For the next 4 weeks, comedians, storytellers, cabaret performers and spoken word artists are taking over the pub's many rooms to host free performances. The verdict? So far so good: we've had pretty much full houses most nights and, apart from the odd glitch with the CD player or an over-enthusiastic smoke machine (which gave particular resonance to the line in my opening poem that mentions 'pubs still cast in smoke so thick you barely see your hand before your face'), our first three shows in particular went swimmingly.

Edinburgh seems like the natural home for 'A Pint...' after all. The city's winding, cobbled streets and dark gothic buildings are crawling with ghosts. Even in the daytime, as crowds surge over North Bridge and shoppers crowd Princes Street, there are still corners where you can feel a distinct chill in the air. Nowhere more so than the Banqueting Hall in darkness. Last night, the performance was interrupted by repeated banging sounds and, as we cleared up, we were accosted by a less-than-sober contortionist, who told us that the ceiling had partly collapsed on him as he performed in the space last year...and he was definitely blaming ghouls instead of faulty architecture.

As befits the festival, I've managed to sustain a few monumental hangovers, ably assisted by the mind-altering properties of Tennent's lager. I've also taken in a range of other spoken-word shows, loosely connected by the theme of death: Literary Death Match, Tim Clare's Death Drive, Molly Naylor's 'Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You' and the fantastic Dead Poets. All highly recommended to anyone who is in town for the Fringe. There's also been plenty of whisky window shopping, running up hills and more pints of Brewdog's aptly named 'Trashy Blonde' than I care to recall. Amongst all that, I also found time to walk into a lampost in true, slapstick style, whilst reading a map. Living proof that, whatever audacious claims my show might make, I'm definitely not a ghost: ghosts don't bounce.

The Somnambulist

I've often thought that the hills are a good hideout for ghosts - by night, the peaks behind Dove Cottage seem to guard their own secrets. One of the paintings in the Wordsworth Trust's current exhibition, 'Savage Grandeur and Noblest Thoughts' depicts a passage through Langdale; glowering mountains on either side, a woman riding alone through the desolate landscape... walking alone in the hills towards nightfall isn't for the faint hearted, particularly if you're partial to a supernatural tale.

It's no surprise that the Lake District, with its sombre peaks and deceptive, tranquil waters, is home to some legends similar to the ghost stories from my native Peak District: there are tales of phantom armies marching over Hellvellyn, a drowned village at Thirlmere much like the one at Derwent reservoirs in Derbyshire, and countless tales of miners run amok. In Whitehaven, the Revd Sabine Baring-Gould was moved to report in the 1800s:

"I know a man who is haunted by two spectres. He has shaking fits, during which his eyes wander around the room; then he sees the ghosts. He was a miner, and is said to have half cut through the rope when some men against whom he bore a grudge were going down the pit; the rope broke and they were dashed to pieces. Their ghosts haunt him night and day, and he can never remain long in one house, or endure to be alone night or day."

Neither is it surprising that some of these legends stirred Wordsworth's poetic imagination. Wordsworth is credited with inventing the fateful tale of Emma and Sir Eglamour at Aira Force, near Ullswater, detailed in his piece 'The Somnambulist'. Emma was the promised bride of a knight, Sir Eglamour, who sailed abroad and was gone for months without any word. Half mad with worry, Emma would sleepwalk every night, down to a bower beside the waterfall of Aira Force (part of Aira Beck) where she had last seen her lover. She never met a soul in her sleep and would return to bed.

One night, however, Sir Eglamour returned and, passing through the ravine, saw his bride's white-robed figure in the moonlight there. He rushed towards her on the precarious ridge where she stood. His touch woke her immediately and in her terror she tumbled into the torrent and was swept onto the rocks below. The finale to this tale of lost love is predictably bleak, with Emma's body retrieved, and a whispered 'assurance of love and fidelity' to Sir Eglamour before she died in his arms and he in turn died in mourning.

Though the story is reputed to be one of Wordsworth's own rather than a tale inspired by legend, there have been various reports in the years that followed of visitors becoming lost of trapped in the rocks and chasms around Aira Force, only to be led back towards the light by a white-robed figure. It seems ghosts who die for love are usually not malevolent...

Banshees, of course, are not reputed for their good tempers, and next week sees 'A Pint For The Ghost' heading to the terrifyingly-named Banshee Labyrinth in Edinburgh to perform at the Free Fringe. The show will run between Saturday 7th and Tuesday 17th August, with a night off on the 11th. Do come and have a pint if you're in town for the festival....

Now you see them, now you don't

Three Invisibles

The sea is invisible
under a sun-scatter of light.

What are you invisible under?
From what hard foreland of being

do I fail to see you?

I could put a boat
into that baffling glitter

that would tameit, that would slide
on the veriest water...

Inland, the mountains

withdraw

behind a beautiful blue haze.

I could walk through that haze

and reach those mountains,
I could measure them

with legs and lungs.

Is it your beauty

that comes between me and you?

Is what strips me

to my unwilling self

your closest shelter?

What wrong place am I in
who, of three invisible things,

love most the one

no voyage may take me to,

no journey will ever take me to?

Norman MacCaig, June 1964

I've been getting used to the idea of 'invisibles' over the past few weeks in Cumbria: all too often the mountains are hidden behind cloud that's not so much a veil as an overcoat. But, as MacCaig says, they can be measured 'with legs and lungs', and running in this landscape is always a comfort as well as a test.

Last weekend, I was performing at Latitude Festival in Henham Park, Suffolk and was thinking about that other sense of invisibility that MacCaig invokes in 'Three Invisibles'. The audiences in the poetry tent - which had a stunning line up this year, from the legendary John Cooper Clarke to Blake Morrison and Jacob Polley - were variable and almost tidal, sometimes a huge crowd at the back, sometimes a scattering of sleepy, hungover teenagers slumping on cushions at the front. One the one hand, that made it quite difficult to plan a set. On the other hand, I realised, we're always rehearsing for a kind of invisible audience anyway. There are always people in your mind when you practice and perform your poems who aren't really in the audience, who perhaps never have been or will be, but who shape your reading all the same.

Those 'significant others' are often there when we write too, and they can be a healthy influence as long as they aren't too much of a censoring, editorial presence. They're often the people who, ironically, probably wouldn't give a toss about our poems if they were here - old lovers, greater poets, disapproving relatives... - but they have a hand in them, like it or not.

However many 'invisibles' were in the tent at Latitude (insert jokes about invisible poetry audiences here), the festival was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, with highlights including Daniel Kitson and Gavin Osborne's mesmerising midnight storytelling by the lake. You can see a photosynth of me doing some poems from 'a pint for the ghost' in the poetry tent by clicking here. Note the er, stylish black dress and army shop wellies combination...

I'm now preparing to take 'A Pint...' to Edinburgh in August, where I'll be performing at the PBH Free Fringe from 4th-16th August in the Banshee Labrynth, including a special 'Utter Ghouls' event with the excellent Tim Turnbull on August 13th.

Lonely as a crowd

Tom Jones is making a cameo appearence at Latitude festival this year. An octopus predicts the football scores with barely-compelling accuracy. Evidently, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy. Perhaps such strange but riveting happenings explain why 'A Pint For The Ghost' has been so eerily silent in recent months (so long, in fact, that I'm not sure the use of 'recent' is justified).

An alternative explanation for more rational followers: I've had a busy six months, having recently been appointed Poet-in-Residence at The Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere, Cumbria and moved halfway across the country to take up this exciting new post. The hills of the Lake District are an inspiring setting for any writer, but I've been particularly intrigued to learn that Wordsworth's former house, Dove Cottage, was once a pub. In fact, ale houses figure prominently in local history - apparently Samuel Taylor Coleridge's son, Hartley (who lived just up the road from my current house) met his end in a ditch after a long night at The Nag's Head. Hartley, himself a fine poet, was frequently found sleeping by the roadside after one too many at his local. A ghost after my own heart, though I'm relieved to find the road back from nearby Tweedies bar is an easy one...

Since my last posts, 'A Pint For the Ghost' has been on the road, with performances including the sold out London Word Festival and a trip to Hull and back for the North Lincs Art Festival last week. Simon Perkins (pictured above) and I performed in the intriguing surroundings of Cleethorpes Light Railway, which boasts the smallest pub in the UK and, we're told, will soon also be the home of the smallest sweet shop.

We're taking the show to the Edinburgh Fringe this year between 4th-17th August, where you can retreat from the clamour of the festival and hide away in the chilling Banshee Labrynth for ghost stories and poems from myself and Simon. Do pay us a visit if you're in town; the show will be free to watch.

More imminently, I'm off to Latitude festival this weekend to perform ghost poems and other material on the poetry stage and, of course, to hear the likes of Tom Jones and Sheffield's finest export, Richard Hawley.

Now that I'm installed in rainy Grasmere, expect some more frequent updates about poetic and ghostly goings on from The Lakes and beyond, including some new poems!

A backwards glance

The latest Poetry Society bulletin fell through my letterbox last week and it contains a nice review of 'A Pint...' which looks at memory and 'the veil that separates the living from the dead'. The review concludes by considering the fine line between poignancy and sentimentality in a very interesting way:

'Each poem is a glass raised, tipped in the direction of who or whatever the poem is dedicated to, be it an ageing father or a long-dead industry. Yes, there's darkness here. But ultimately, the collection celebrates persistance, the reluctance to give up or give in, the reluctance to accept any ending.'

I've always thought that considering the past is never a chiefly sentimental act. The past so quickly becomes a different life that we can't feel close enough to it to get too doe-eyed. It's as if we're viewing someone else's life. Ghost stories are not simply an act of nostlagia, they're a way of re-inventing; both chilling and wistful.

Ken Head has recently reviewed the pamphlet online here for the flourishing blog Ink, Sweat and Tears. In his review, he also muses on some of the dangers inherent in re-imagining the past. Luckily, he's convinced by 'A Pint...':

'Though often darkly moving, her ghosts aren't sentimental. She knows well enough that, however precious, the past's a foreign country where Time's already been called and the poet herself has become a ghostly watcher...'

Of course, if ever there were a warning against looking backwards too much, it's Michael Donaghy's fine poem, 'Upon a Claude Glass':

Upon a Claude Glass

A lady might pretend to fix her face
but scan the room inside her compact mirror -

so gentlemen would scrutinize this glass
to gaze on Windermere and Rydal Water

and pick their way along the clifftop tracks
intent upon the romance in the box,

keeping untamed nature at their backs
and some would come to grief upon the rocks.

Don't look so smug. Don't think you're any safer
as you blunder through your years

straining to recall some aching pleasure
or blinded by some private scrim of tears.

I know. My world's encircled by this prop,
though all my life I've tried to force it shut.

Cheers m'deer

I'm chuffed to be able to say that my poem 'Deer' has won the Norwich Cafe Writers' prize 2009, judged by George Szirtes and landing me a grand to spend in my fine local The Live and Let Live. * It's not a ghost poem as such, but it's certainly to do with hauntings of a kind. I'll be reading the poem on February 15th at the Norwich Cafe Writers' event, which gives us all a great excuse to visit The Fat Cat, Norwich's finest pub (in my humble opinion).

It's been a busy few weeks of readings in Greenwich, Covent Garden and elsewhere and with more to come: I'll be at Black's, Soho, on the 20th Feb with some other excellent tall-lighthouse poets. Lastweek saw me heading home for a local gig at Vox Sheffield. Reading some poems from 'A Pint...' in the bar, I was joined on stage by a sinister Rottweiler, dragging a chain behind it like Marley's ghost. It came up to the stage as I reached the last stanza of my poem, walked in front of me and settled down on the stage. Good job I wasn't reading this poem, or I might have thought it an omen:

Short Measure for the Gabriel Hound

Each time I read a cloud’s dark countenance
or watch two crows stitch out a warning
in the clear blue air, I can’t forget

the Bradwell miners, bound for home
without a lamp to guide them, night as heavy
as the earth they’d toiled beneath all day.

They heard the long grass stir. They stood
dead still. A beam, sharp as a skinning knife
shone from the moon down to the hill

and carved the huge shape of a hound; a dog so quick
they’d barely taken flight before they heard it bay
and felt its harsh breath at their heels. They ran

full speed with burning lungs until the dawn,
until the daylight overtook them and they went,
grim-faced, down to the mine

to meet their certain fate. Remember them
as you lie in bed, when the empty house
has fallen still, and you stare through open curtains

at a starless sky, imagine it’s a dog’s
black flank that passes you, bound
for somewhere else tonight.

* DISCLAIMER: I may actually use the money for useful things, like repairing my laptop, much as I could happily spend a fortune drinking real ale in The Live.

Poetry Book Society Choice

I was over the moon to find out recently that 'A Pint For The Ghost' is the PBS pamphlet choice for Spring 2010. The choice is awarded to what the selectors think is the best pamphlet published each quarter and my work will be featured in the next PBS Bulletin. The pamphlet judges this time round were Helen Ivory and Jacob Sam-La Rose, so I'm glad that they found something to intrigue them in my weird tales of haunted houses, roughed-up pubs and late night whisky drinking.


The show and pamphlet have also been nominated for the Ted Hughes Award, a new prize launched in 2009 to recognise a public contribution to poetry. Nominations continue until January 22nd, so if you want to put in a good word for 'A Pint..', you can do so via the Poetry Society's website here.


This calls for a celebratory pint. Luckily, the Cambridge Winter Beer festival starts this weekend, as if to oblige me!

I'm not dead yet...

...though you might be forgiven for thinking so. It's been far too long since I updated the blog and the explanation is sadly mundane: I've been without a laptop over the festive season thanks to chucking it on the kitchen floor at home (laptops, it seems, don't bounce).

Luckily, the new year brings exciting developments for 'A Pint...'. The show will be performed along with Robert Lloyd Parry's spine-chilling rendition of 'Oh Whistle...' in a suitably creepy warehouse location this March. The event is part of London Word Festival and you can find out more here. 'Oh Whistle and I'll Come To You' is without doubt my favourite M.R. James story, so I'm looking forward to being suitably terrified.

Before that, I'll be performing other new work at...

* Newnham College MCR (Cambridge) on January 22nd

* The Hold @ Oliver's Music Bar, Greenwich on January 28th (http://www.facebook.com/pages/clinic/131199806508#/event.php?eid=236876255788&ref=mf)

* VOX Sheffield on January 31st

...as well as working on getting the full recording of 'A Pint For The Ghost' finished, so I'll add some extracts to the blog as soon as they're ready.