Love and Death in Canada: Part Two of an interview with Wolf Carstens

Lone Striker continues its exploration of the world of poet and publisher Wolfgang Carstens, with a focus on the Canadian great outdoors...

Much of my own focus as a writer is on sport, and how sporting activities test people, create new crucibles for experience and shape the existence of communities. Of course, sport, in many cases, functions as a substitute activity for more bloody pursuits which used to be more common, such as hunting and war.

While you would be unlikely to find Wolf going to war, at least in a literal sense, any time soon, you might find him in the Canadian woods. Canada is a mysterious country to many Europeans, and its sheer size and natural wonders can make it seem alien and strange. Wolf thrives in this wildness, though, and believes that his own life has been shaped and his consciousness honed by his proximity to primal nature.

He certainly feels that it has made him more resilient, and better able to assess the real level of challenge which faces us in the everyday world.

"I think pursuing activities in the wild makes you mentally tougher," he said.

"I am, of course, basing this upon personal experience that suggests that most people give up way too easily.  When you have stood toe to toe with a Grizzly bear, have been bitten by Black Widow spider, or have had to build a shelter because you’ve been caught in a snow storm that lasted three days (all of which have happened to me), things like a blown tire on the highway, having to swim to shore because your boat capsized, or fending off marauders who’ve broken into your house (all of which have happened to me),  seems rather insignificant. 

"Yet, every day I see these sad sacks on the side of the road waiting for somebody to save them.  Every day people are crying about the silliest problems that you really wonder what they would do if confronted by a real conflict.

"I want to give props to my wife here.  She is not only the toughest person I know, but her 'never say die' attitude is truly remarkable.  We were camping recently and wanted to have a game of dice.  We had, however, neglected to bring dice with us.  In a move of ingenuity that would put MacGuyver to shame, she constructed dice out of cardboard, duct tape and white paint. 

Most people would’ve simply given up, yet her perseverance and unwillingness to surrender enabled the laughter and games to continue.  She’s always amazing me with small acts like this.  Her home-made dice were the inspiration for the poem Tracy Lee."

Fishing is an outdoor pursuit which Wolf enjoys, and the Canadian can see many links between the process of tempting fish out of the water and writing.

"Fishing and writing are very similar hobbies," he asserts.

"Both require preparation, patience and perseverance.  The solitude and monkish nature of casting a hook into a river is conducive to great thinking, contemplation and working through your inner demons.  When I fish, time slips away and the world disappears—whether it’s a Walleye or a poem, the reward is always worth the effort."



In the sports I've played over the years, there is sometimes a perfect stillness in the action, moments which are transmitted strangely into the memory banks, where everything slows down for a second and becomes eternal, like a moment lived forever. Out in the woods, those moments where perfection is suddenly and momentarily defined also exist, just framed by a different context.

Often, in the Canadian wilderness, that context can be truly terrifying.

"I’ve been in plenty of life threatening situations in the wild," Carstens explained.

"I’ve been up close and personal with bears, cougars, rattle snakes, and was once bitten by a black widow spider. 

"Saying that, however, it’s not always the usual predators you have to worry about.  I’ve also been attacked by beavers, ruffled grouse, and once even gotten into a fistfight with a duck. 

"The most memorable was standing toe to toe with a hungry Grizzly bear.  My adrenaline was through the roof!  It was the middle of the night and I was armed with a cane, a flash light, and my car keys. 

"Once I screwed together my courage and committed myself to dying, I unzipped the tent and confronted the creature.  As luck would have it, my van was parked nearby.  When I clicked the auto-start, the engine roared to life, the headlights snapped on and Motorhead’s Overkill started blaring through the speakers. 




"The spooked bear turned tail and ran.  It was one of the luckiest moments in my life.  It was a character-defining moment for me.  I’d made peace with my mortality and was fully invested and prepared to die right then and there to protect my family.  Since then, every other confrontation, whether man or beast, has paled in comparison.

"The life and death struggles in nature always impact me as a writer.  It is because of these struggles that comprise the underlying 'Live today. Tomorrow never comes' message at the core of many of my poems. 

"Here is something that happened to me recently.  I was driving down an isolated country road when a fox ran across the road in front of me.  He was being chased by a wild turkey.  The turkey, however, wasn’t so lucky because it exploded in a mess of blood and feathers on my front bumper.  In the rearview mirror, I watched the fox cross the road again, presumably to return to the turkey’s nest and devour the young. 

"Beyond the death scene here, it always amazes me to see the smaller and weaker animals stand up against a much larger enemy.  To return to my fist fight with the duck, it’s noteworthy that I was the one who backed down.  It was making a horrible sound and moving its head in such a strange and eerie way - and it scared me!

"Being alone in the wilderness makes you feel insignificant in relation to the greater whole.  You aren’t at the top of the food chain anymore."

Sport is a testing process for war, in many ways, making modest warriors of us all. I wondered if part of the appeal of the wilderness was similar, in that it takes us back to a place where everything matters just a little bit more.

"Let me answer with a story," Wolf said.

"Last year, a group of four young men were trying to split an gargantuan stump of green wood with their axe.  Every time they swung their axe, they would scream, 'Manpower!' 

"They tried for three days, taking turns, but couldn’t even crack the stump.  When they gave up, I retrieved the stump and worked on it with a hatchet for an entire day. 

"My kids were like, "it’s too big" and, "you’ll never do it."  When the stump finally split and sap oozed like sticky blood, I knew exactly what 'manpower' meant.  Once I had the stump chopped and stacked in a neat pile of firewood, I felt immense satisfaction.   It was a personal victory and a lesson in perseverance and overcoming obstacles to my kids.  Tests like these are ways to prepare yourself for future obstacles."

That connection with the effort and perseverance necessary to survive in the wilderness is something which is now missing in many places. Carstens feels that the ethical contradictions this situation presents go to the heart of many issues in developed societies.

"Most humans in our modern civilizations have probably lost a connection with the wild," he said.

"The most blatant example are those hypocrites that enjoy all kinds of meat yet adamantly oppose hunting.  They walk into the supermarket and buy their pre-packaged steaks but think hunting is cruel.  Last summer I attended a family reunion and out of the thirty people gathered, I was the only one who could start a fire with flint and steel. 

"I think this connection to the wild is important for many reasons, yet without experiencing the contrary view-point, I cannot comment with any certainty."

__________

Wolf Carstens was talking to Zack Wilson, the author of  'Stumbles and Half Slips', published by Epic Rites Press. Find them on Facebook and Twitter too.

Wild Wolf Revealed: Part One of an Interview with poet and publisher Wolfgang Carstens

Wolfgang Carstens is an impressive figure. Not just physically, either, though I certainly wouldn't want to have to tangle with him in a fight. The Canadian has had a huge influence on my career as fiction writer, publishing my first novel Stumbles and Half Slips, and several stories in various journals and magazine he's published.

But he is also a very fine poet in his own right, the author of collections such as Crudely Mistaken for Life. While his style is very accessible, his subject matter can often be challenging in terms of its subject matter and its sheer guts.

Very much a man who believes in the power of the printed word, I asked Wolf about his relationship with the wilderness of his native western Canada. Lone Striker's main focus is usually on how sport and literature interact. Wolf's sports are a little more primal than many people I know, though. A true outdoorsman, Wolf sees the processes and narratives of the wild as central to his being.

Certainly, living in Alberta means that Wolf's experience of nature is vastly different to that of most people in the United Kingdom, and in much of Europe. I wondered if being in a place 'on the edge' of the world had shaped Carstens' attitude to writing at all?

"The 'sense of being on the edge of the world' has always influenced my thinking," he said.

"When I experience natural phenomena like the northern lights or thunderstorms, I always try to put myself in the shoes of the ancient philosophers and try to reason as they would.

"I do not believe that original thoughts are impossible or that modern humanity has answered the great questions.  Modern views on so many philosophical issues (like consciousness and dreaming and free will) are not only incorrect, they’re primitive.

"The remoteness of my surroundings has given me time to think deeply about paramount questions that humanity continues to wrestle with.  I don’t think most people encounter these questions in the same way that I do.

"Maybe it’s because city life affords too many distractions; maybe it’s the copious abysses available in our electronic age in which to fall into; maybe it’s because most people are too afraid to be alone with their own thoughts: maybe they want the easy answers; and maybe it’s because most people don’t want to think deeply about philosophical issues.  I don’t know and I really don’t care.

"I do know, however, that everything begins with great thinking, and both writing and publishing are secondary to that."

Much of Wolf's best poetry is deeply rooted in the western Canadian experience. His narrators carry hunting knives as a standard accessory, there are continual reminders that he lives in a huge landscape where snow, rain, wind and the rest can often be a little bit more than just weather. The animals which one might encounter are also a little more threatening than wild goats or badgers.

"A closeness to the rawness of nature makes you acutely aware that you aren’t at the top of the food chain any more," he explains.

"I don’t place myself above and beyond other animals in the animal kingdom.  Many places are inhabited by bears and cougars and these two predators add an element of danger to the most mundane tasks.

"You need to keep your guard up because if you don’t, you’re likely to die very young.  Ironically, rather than become less sentimental about nature, it has made me less sentimental about humanity.

"When you’re constantly confronted by the savageness of nature, human death seems less tragic.  In fact, I think animal death strikes a deeper chord with me than human death.

"This has played an essential role in my own thinking and writing.  I don’t think being in the wilderness is essential for the development of a writer.

"What is essential is thinking through fundamental questions on your own and arriving at your own conclusions before you learn what conclusions others have drawn.  If the question of free will is important to you, for example, don’t research what others have said before you determine your own conclusions.  So many people start with the so-called 'experts' and it corrupts their thinking."

One thing which playing sport of any kind, especially those which require a great deal of action, often creates is significant moments. Moments where life slows down and becomes eternal. Carstens believes that something similar happens in the wilderness.

"I experience moments like that every day," he said.

"Whether it’s a Great Blue Heron soaring directly overhead, dwarfing your tiny shape; an Elk leaping out of nowhere into your personal space, sending your heart rate through the roof; seeing a Lynx creeping behind a bush, stalking your children at play; or stumbling upon a creepy abandoned house in the middle of the trees, there is that moment of crystal clarity.

"The events that frame those moments seem to be when you’re lost in your own thoughts, on autopilot, stumbling through life like a sleepwalker, when the realization of living creeps up and hits you like a ton of bricks!"

__________

Wolf Carstens was talking to Zack Wilson, the author of  'Stumbles and Half Slips', published by Epic Rites Press. Find them on Facebook and Twitter too.

Covenanters

This is a poem which is, in part, a reaction to a recent visit to Wigtown, and the Martyr's Stake, an austere memorial to Margaret Wilson and Margaret McLachlan. These two women died because they would not swear obedience to King James VII of Scotland and II of England. Wilson was 18 years old, while McLachlan was described as an elderly lady.

Stone kirks, white-washed inside
with clear, glass windows
to see the Lord's Light with clarity
among Scotland's southern hills.
A leal land, for a pious People,
sprung from Ayrshire touns sic as Sorn,
Gallovidians gallus with austerity
as they listen to Prophet Peden's
fause-faced preaching from found stone pulpits.

Later, the soldiers came.
They drowned Margaret Wilson of Wigtown.
   She choked her last
                                  in salty sands,
defiant, neck forced into a bow
                                         to drown,
Margaret McLachlan by her side.
[though the Anglicanisers turned her into Lachlinson
in their official recommendations.]  
They died in Ninian's Solway sands,
some echoes of the old purity of Candida Casa
                                                                       perhaps.
A stane stake marks it,
planted in dreich peat moss
to show the way to the lonely.
This choking, damp death,
                                        no thrill of redemptive fire,
just another refused oath.
Royal soldiers failing,
choking submission never coming.
A victory to sap the soul.

In the hills, the Conventicles
were armed and ready,
in the heaven of their Galloway glens,
pulpits handy-made from the same stane
later hacked to build the wee kirks
which would have ruled all Scotland
if only the Time of Saints had persisted.

The Document itself remains impressive.
A multitude of ready souls
                                      of all kinds
                                      of all pairts, all trades
scratched their names on the great Parchment.
No crown, or mitre, ever really moved this many,
stirred souls like this army
                                       of such stiff principle.

Orange drummers will beat
                                         and bleat
that these Covenanters are their folk.
But Peden's People never bent their knee
                                        to any crowned head
[save the thorny one
                              of the Prophet's theories and dilemmas].
Charlie's Tartan Army
claimed Scotland's souvenir tin image
when they marched to Derby and back.
A culture hi-jacked by the dreams of a Prince,
with Border baronet Scott later completing the job,
banging the drum for Bonnie Dundee and the boys
on the Teuchter's behalf.
                                    [Posthumously, of course,
                                     too much of the real Gael,
                                     'Garb of old Gaul' and all,
                                      being, by then,
                                      a Bad Thing.]
Woe woven into spun stuff
by a pair of alleged Poles.
Peden never foresaw this shroud, for sure.

Papist eyes tend to look away,
in frustration, perhaps, in fear.
And Bishops sneer
from Episcopal heights.

But this People
died for Scotland's Kirk
not a King.
And that, here, in itself,
is a remarkable thing.

_____________

(c) Zack Wilson, 2013

Zack Wilson is the author of 'Stumbles and Half Slips' from Epic Rites Press. Also available from Amazon.com.

Little Miss Mayhem: Interview with Annie Clarkson

Annie Clarkson is a writer from north west England, currently living and working in Manchester. A writer of intense honesty and sensitivity, her blog 'Forgetting the Time' contains some really superb writing.

Annie's work focuses on the edges of life, the places where the sweet, sad things happen. The writing is raw, but not in the sense of blood pouring from wounds and people fighting in the street, or taking drugs in public toilets. The rawness comes from the emotions evoked, and there is often a quite delicious sense of unease in the reader when she is at her best.

Recently, Annie has been throwing herself into a new sport, that of roller derby. As someone who is keen to explore the links between writing and sport, it seemed to present a perfect opportunity for me to do interview Annie about her experiences with a new sport, and how it might have changed her writing.

Roller derby looks very violent and fast to me, to whom it looks something like something out of a sci-fi film. It looks like it combines the intensity of ice hockey with the thrills of short track speed skating. There is a strong team element, and the team uniforms are often personally adapted into stylish, scary and quite sexy forms.

Firstly, I asked Annie what had sparked her interest in such a physically demanding sport.

"Roller derby is a fast and tough sport, on quad roller skates, where two teams compete against each other to score points, and it’s a full contact sport," she explained.

"But to start playing the sport you don’t need to be fast or tough. I definitely wasn’t. I was never really interested in competitive sport, even at school. I wouldn’t call myself an athlete, but through playing derby I’m faster, tougher and more confident than I was.

"I discovered roller derby about eighteen months ago. A friend of mine from my school days started playing – Abby Dasher.

"She invited me along and I watched a training session. I instantly thought, 'Nah, this sport is not for me, too tough and I’m not fit enough...'

But I followed her progress over the following months, and she was so excited by it. Her skills developed really quickly, and she kept saying, 'Come on Annie, you will love roller derby.'

"I decided to try it, and signed up for the ‘Zero to Hero’ training for beginners run by Manchester Roller Derby (http://www.manchesterrollerderby.co.uk/). I instantly loved being on skates and over the course of the training course, I fell in love with the sport."

The costume aspects of the sport always look like they are very important to me. Players also change their names and give themselves pseudonyms. These often seem like the names from a punk band.

Despite that emphasis on costume and looking great, Annie is keen to stress that the sport is very much not just about dressing up.

"The most important aspect of derby is playing the sport," she said.

"But, yes, the image side of derby is fairly unique to the sport, I think.

"A lot of players have derby names which are puns, plays on words, or show the personality or alter-ego of the player. They can be intimidating or witty, clever and fun.

"Some of the names I love are Cleo Fracture who plays for Rainy City Roller Girls, Marty McDie, Psycho-Sis, and Kate Push from Manchester Roller Derby (MRD), and Raw Heidi (London Rollergirls)."

"I love the fact that roller derby encourages personality, individuality and persona. As well as being part of a team and a league, we can be ourselves on the track or who we want to be.

"Some players put on the ‘war paint’ like stripes on their cheeks or paint their face for example as a skull like Skulldozer from MRD.

"Some players like sportswear. Others wear crazy tights, patterned socks, or colourful hot pants. There are many styles, and roller derby allows us to express ourselves on the track, be bold or alternative or whatever we want to be. Men’s Derby has its own styles as well."

The transformative aspect of the sport, where aspects of personality can be explored which are normally suppressed, is something which is important to Annie though.

"I guess it appeals to me, because I can be a different self when I train and play," she mused.

"Aggressive, more fearless, and it gives me permission maybe to access parts of myself that are not appropriate for my everyday life. Little Miss Mayhem can be a trouble causer, can deliberately set out to disrupt, she can shove people out of the way, be cocky and cheeky, wear clothes that I would never wear in my non-derby life."


Annie's writing often deals with people and events at the edge of things. She seems to relish her status as an outsider, despite it often being a lonely experience. Roller derby is a team sport, so I wondered how playing had affected her sense of self, whether she found the team ethic hard to absorb, and also whether it had changed her feeling of being an 'outsider'.

"Yes, it has, to some extent," she admitted.

"In life I often feel like an outsider and on the edges of things. I was never into team sports or team activities at all, preferring to rely on myself, and not feeling as if I belonged in a lot of groups that I joined, or that I was on the periphery of groups.

"I’m not sure whether this is part of my personality or not. But school sport was always a nightmare for me, people expected me to be rubbish, and therefore I never tried, I was always last to be picked for teams, and my confidence in any team or competitive sport was rock-bottom.

"Plus, being a writer can be isolating. It's a very individual, internal kind of experience for me, and I've explored aloneness, loneliness and being on the edges over and over in my writing. I indulged myself in this for a long time.

"Roller derby is very different. It's been an education for me and at first, it was a huge step out of my comfort zone. It has involved a lot of challenges in training, as I learned to trust team mates, work together, and play as part of a pack. I’ve been tested a lot, and sometimes found it hard.

"But I’ve been drawn into it, not just on the track but off-track as well. There is a lot of support and encouragement within the roller derby community, and nobody has ever made me feel rubbish as a player. I am learning. We are all learning. And, it’s taken maybe more time for me, than other people, but I feel very much a part of the team."


Annie also admitted that the sport has had an effect on her writing. Certainly, the sense of overcoming obstacles that sport can bring has seemingly brought about something of a change in aims and purpose in her writing.

"My poetry and short fiction has always tended to verge on the darker side of life," she said.

"It’s gritty and explored perhaps more complex and undesirable sides of life. I was working on a collection of fiction, but roller derby (and other things) have stopped me in my tracks.

"I want to write more uplifting stories, stories that might explore struggle, difficulty and darkness, but show more fight and survival. Roller derby is influencing what I want to write about, the kinds of characters and subjects, and the way I write. I’m still working through these changes.

"I’ve written a few derby inspired fictions, and will probably do so again, not necessarily using the sport as the subject matter but exploring some of the experiences, emotions and characters I’ve discovered through playing derby."

Annie is very clear about whether artists and writers can benefit from an understanding of sport, and how participation can offer new insights and perspectives, not least on the writer themselves.

"Roller Derby has become hugely inspiring to me in many different ways," she explained.

"It has brought me new ways of expressing myself as a person, access to a new community of people and experience, lots of endorphins and drive. It gets rid of tension and stress and the crap that can get in the way of being able to sit down and write, or get out there and live.

"I would encourage any writer or artist to get involved in some kind of sport or exercise. Any writer who has gone for a long walk and found some kind of inner stillness, or has observed things in a new way, or had an epiphany or realisation will already know this.

"I guess a more competitive or physical sport can have a similar impact. I come away from training, full of adrenalin and ideas and thoughts, and I want to communicate and express myself. It fires me up.

"Sport also gives the balance that I need between sitting at a typewriter on my own and getting out there and skating round a track with team mates.

"There is a similar dynamic of performance. Good writing can fill me with adrenalin, ideas and thoughts as well.

"Sometimes I have good sessions at training, sometimes I feel I could have done lots better, I get similar frustrations and excitements. Sometimes, I want to give up, sometimes it is all I want to do. Writing and roller derby are similar in that sense, although I think they belong to different sides of myself."

At an age where most athletes consider hanging up their boots, or skates, Annie has an inspiring determination to be the best she can be at roller derby, which is still a very new sport to her.

"My goals for 2013 are to make it into Furies, the B team at Manchester Roller Derby, to continue my training as a roller derby referee, keep developing my skills, stay fit and have fun.

"I guess what I’m saying is that the future isn’t widely ambitious or competitive. I’m nearly 40, and love roller derby because there’s plenty of room for people to be involved for different reasons: to have fun, to get or keep fit, and/or to compete.

"I had no experience of roller derby a year ago, and I was welcomed in as a new skater. Most leagues teach people to skate and even lend you the skates, helmet and pads at first. Manchester Roller Derby has a ‘Zero to Hero’ training course that teaches all the basic skills needed to play roller derby, and it’s a great way to try out a sport you know nothing about.

"Watching a roller derby bout is a real experience too, and I recommend it to anyone. It’s fun to watch, there is lots of interaction with the crowd, and it’s easy to pick up what’s going on.

"Roller derby is very much a growing sport, and the BBC wrote an article saying just that."


Annie's writing is on a little bit of a sabbatical at the moment, sadly for her readers. She is sure that a rich return to form is not far away though.

"I was working on a collection of short fiction, but it’s come to a halt as I re-think and re-explore what I want to write," she explained.

"I think this is one of those fallow periods where the ideas become really rich through not working at them. My plan is to come back to some old stories with a fresh approach, and eventually get back to finishing my short fiction collection. I think it will be richer and diverse a collection for giving it some time."

One thing she is in no doubt about is the transformative power of sport, whatever it is, to build communities and bring people together.

"YES, it can! Roller derby offers sport, fitness and skating, but it is also socially vibrant," she asserted.

"People can be involved in different ways. I've socialised with my team and made many friends. I’ve been to karaoke with derby friends, eaten food, been to the pub, been to people’s houses.

"I’ve skated as a volunteer for Cancer Research, made cakes, roller disco’d, and within our league there have been clothes swaps, car boot sales, some players skated as part of the Pride parade for George House Trust.
"There is an awful lot of love and support within the league, and I know it sounds like I’m just blowing roller derby’s trumpet, but it’s for really good reason.

"I’ve seen people help others to move house, babysit for each other, dog-sit, give lifts, advice, hugs and a whole lot more. It is a growing community, and leagues are cropping up throughout the UK for women and men.

"MRD has people taking part from all parts of Greater Manchester and beyond, and what I most love is that it’s welcoming to anyone...the sporty, the non-sporty, men, women, people of all shapes, sizes and levels of fitness, and people from all kinds of backgrounds.

"I guess the commonality is that everyone wants to skate and learn and play roller derby. But there is so much more to it than just sport.  

"I loved the Olympics and Paralympics. It was so inspiring to watch and, like many people, I started to think I wanted to be fitter, expand my experience of sports.

"I think seeing the athlete’s warm up and compete, hearing about their training regimes, and seeing them push themselves beyond their own limits to achieve new personal bests, it made a lot of us think, maybe I can push myself further as well, maybe we can all play sport."

Annie Clarkson was talking to Zack Wilson, the author of 'Stumbles and Half Slips' from Epic Rites Press. Also available from Amazon.com.

Poem: Plantations

PLANTATIONS

Would these placards 

bend so feebly in febrile hands

if the song of Gaza 

was a chant of "Tiocfaidh Ár Lá"?

If the rockets Hamas fired

landed in Brum pubs 

     or Shankill shoppers' streets?

When Sands was starved

or the blood ran down Derry's Walls

did these opportunists goose-jerk

their English knees in protest?

Not that some of us remember.

Irish names, Irish blood,

Irish bombs and bullets

ballot boxes, Bogside battles

     between saints and scholars

seem and smell not the same to you

Not the same struggle you see

here in a Holy Land. On television.

It was too hard

for your heart to turn

to see any truth in your own tin pot

troops taking casualties

RUC, SAS, IDF, UDR, BBC

Shoot to kill, shoot on sight

all slid by when it was

for your protection.

'Sniper at work here'

the sign warned in a sunny 

section of Ulster's pleasant 

Orange and Green land.

You were shocked

because the sign was a warning for you

     who doesn't even know what 

     a Philistine really is.

One man's freedom fighter

is another's terrorist,

whether on rainy sod or desert road,

crowded camp or green lane.

If you choose to choose sides

then you have to take your share

of the burden of blood.

How does the heft of a rifle feel

in your hand?

Care to carry one home?

Pacifists praying for peace in these plantations.

Failing to see 

conscience creeping out of a killer's eyes.

Swords only have double edges

when the devil doesn't live next door.

_________

Copyright Zack D. Wilson 2012.

Zack Wilson's  debut novel 'Stumbles and Half Slips'  is out, from Epic Rites Press. Also available from Amazon.com.

 

'All Time Top Three' by Steve Ely

Following on from the excellent interview with South Yorkshire poet Steve Ely, here's some of his work. I'll let it speak for itself, but remind you that his new book 'Oswald's Book of Hours' is available for pre-order from Amazon.

All Time Top Three

In reverse order:

Away, Kirkby Independent, 1993:

taking a long ball from Wack,

over my shoulder and onto my chest

in the channel by the right hand edge of the box,

with Popeye screaming for it square

and the centre half closing and jostling,

I let it bounce once

then took it on the full

and watched incredulous

as it screamed thirty diagonal yards

rising all the way

over the keeper into the top left corner of the net.

At home against the Harlequin, 1997:

I sprung the offside trap,

nipping in on a dinked ball from Growler.

The keeper dashed out into the ‘D’

making himself big

and leapt at me, a reckless imminent impact.

I did the only thing I could

and sliced across the waist high-bouncing ball,

sending it high and vertical over the keeper

before taking the clatter

and picking myself up

to see the topspin I applied

drop the ball into the net

and Benno diving on me and shouting 

“Who’s this fucking Brazilian we’ve got playing for us?”

Away, Spion Kop, 1987:

the ball broke towards their centre half

with plenty of time, but looking complacent,

so I sprinted at him

made it a 50/50 and won it,

the ball spinning loose

ten yards further towards their goal.

I jumped up and went after it,

two-footing the covering full back

sending the ball squirting

to the edge of their box

where I emptied the lunging keeper

and smashed the ball into the unguarded net

for my second and last goal

of the game, nevertheless completing my hat-trick

(Guy Marley, who scored a header

from a corner in the first half

was unregistered,

so Jamie, our manager and press liaison

credited his goal to me, incidentally bestowing

the back-page headline, 'Ely Hat-Trick Sinks Kop'

on the back page of the Hemsworth and South Elmsall Express.)

_______

 Zack Wilson is the author of 'Stumbles and Half Slips' from Epic Rites Press. Also available from Amazon.com.

Steve Ely: Poet of Sunday Leagues and Sainted Rebellion

Steve Ely is a poet and author from Yorkshire, England. When I first came across his work, thanks to social media, it struck as very different indeed from much of the poetry that was being written. Consciously intellectual, with historical subject matter and archaic language, it celebrated an England of northern saints and doomed peasant rebellions.

It also challenged the reader to understand the references. It was poetry to be read, rather than consumed in seconds and forgotten. The work had gravity.

From my point of view, Steve's viewpoints on history and culture seemed to resonate with some of my own. When I first read Steve's work, I had just read the late Mick Imlah's 'The Lost Leader'. Imlah's book, with its reference to Bonnie Prince Charlie in its title, was a poetic treatment of Scotland's history. Often obscure in its references, it used poetry to both inform and make wider historical and contemporary points. It used the past to illuminate the present.

Steve's work seemed similar to me, certainly in some of its textures and fundamentals, its stating points and attitudes. He writes about football players as well as monks, Falklands War heroes as well as medieval saints.

This is ambitious poetry, stimulating work which goes far beyond the merely observational or solipsistic. I spoke to Steve about his writing, his sporting passions and what drives him to express himslef in the way he does. Of particular interest to me were his references to sport in literature, and how playing and watching sport had contributed to his work.

Firstly, your writing seems to indicate an intriguing and, to many people, probably baffling mix of the archaic and the radical. You use Catholic faith, Anglo Saxon language and archaic forms in your writing, as examples, but you are also a socialist and a self-professed hater of Tories, as well as liberals. How do you reconcile what seem to be such competing instincts? Is it hard work to make a coherent whole out of such varied and seemingly competing instincts?

 In a word, yes!  I’m a former socialist – I was in and around the left for large parts of the early eighties and early nineties (with an interlude in the Green Party) and I retain some of the atavisms of the left, such as a knee jerk animus to Conservatism.

But I haven’t been a member of a political party since 1996 and my political activism since then has been non-existent.  However, since my second, unpublished, book of poems, JerUSAlem, which was an exploration of American extremism and concepts of the American Dream, pretty much everything I’ve written has had a political edge.

Over the last four years I’ve been exploring the roots of England in my work and my embracing of Catholicism is part of that.

But I’m a poet, not a politician, and although you’re right to suggest I’m working to a synthesis of sorts, I’m not looking to reach a manifesto position – I don’t see that as being my job.  I want to raise important themes through my work and challenge my audience.  But most of all I want to create striking and evocative work with a powerful affect.

You have written about war as well as sport. What do you make of Orwell's 'war without the shooting' reference to sport?

I think Orwell’s statement is often understood in the simplistic sense of, ‘young men used to go to war and sow their wild oats of allegiance and violence but now there aren’t as many opportunities to fight in wars, so playing and supporting sport is a surrogate outlet for the same emotions’.

It’s an interesting perspective, with some truth in it, but ultimately obfuscatory.  If you’re part of a team – as player or supporter – you inevitably get that electric sense of belonging, mutual responsibility, support and communal striving in which your individual identity is harnessed in, and to some extent subsumed, in a greater whole.

Given that sport, by definition, involves asserting yourself against an opponent in a context of physical exertion and high emotion (competition), violence and aggression will never be far beneath the surface.  When overlaid by aggravating factors of politics, religion or long standing rivalry (Celtic-Rangers, Fenerbache/Galatasary), for example, it can be seen as analogous to war. But I wouldn’t push it beyond an analogue. Sport isn't war.

So, if sport cannot be called 'war', can it be called 'art' with any justification?

At its best, sport is an art form, or a thing of beauty at any rate. The movement and grace of Barca in the 2010-11 season, the vision, technical accomplishment and audacity of Ibrahimovic’s last goal against England the other night, Bergkamp’s goals against Argentina, Leicester & Newcastle, Carlos Alberto’s winner in the 1970 world cup final – these things take the breath away – like Lawrence says about the ‘shout’ of the tortoise - ‘it sounds on the plasm direct’ - not just an aesthetic, physical or intellectual impact – the moment impacts whole body.

What do you think watching sport offers writers in the way of inspiration or understanding?

Having played team sport all my life, the thing sport has brought me is an appreciation of the importance of what might simplistically be called team spirit – that the individual is always part of a larger collective and has a responsibility to fulfil a role in that collective that is reciprocated in the care and support the individual receives from the team. 

Or, as we used to say when I played for the Travellers FC - ‘one in - all in’.  That’s what Camus meant when he said, "all that I know of morality and obligations I owe to football." Bill Shankly and Brian Clough called it socialism. It’s certainly Catholic Social Teaching in a brightly coloured shirt.

The other week saw a great clash in Glasgow between Celtic and Barcelona. Both those teams have strong religious/ethnic/nationalistic identities, albeit in Celtic's case that of a non-native tradition. Do you think that attaching such strong cultural significance to sports teams is healthy?

The fervour generated in the Old Firm matches can provide legitimisation for psychopaths – there was a horrible incident a few years ago when a Rangers ‘fan’ slit the throat of a Celtic fan outside Ibrox in an unprovoked attack, purely because the latter was wearing the hooped shirt. 

That was exceptional, but there’s no doubt that this ‘sectarianism’ gets more or less routinely out of hand.  But, for better or worse, Rangers and Celtic have become emblematic of the identities of many of their supporters, and the affective power arising from that, alongside the context of wider politico-religious conflict, is what makes the Old Firm. 

You regret the excesses, but ultimately, would you have it any other way? 

Barca is different.  For the almost forty years of Franco's dictatorship, Barca was the only expression of Catalan identity and nationalism the Catalans could get away with, and it is why Barca is ‘mes plus un club’.

Take that away, and all you’ve got is Man City, or Chelsea.  You can’t separate politics and sport, because sport is not just about entertainment – it’s about allegiance, activism, commitment, engagement and identity. So often, sporting teams emerge from very specific communities and are the flagship of those communities.

Every time Nottingham Forest play at Oakwell, chants of ‘scab’ echo around the ground – and the thing is, they used to before the 1984-5 strike – the folk memory of the terraces was remembering the aftermath of the 1926 strike, when the Spencer’s bosses union split Cook’s NUM. 

‘Politics’ in sport ramps up the intensity and makes for a more electrifying experience – but you’ve got to rein in the nutters.

What sports do you like? Who are your sporting heroes and why?

Football is my main sport.  I played to a decent standard Sundays (and sometimes Saturdays as well) for over twenty years. 

I was a striker.  I began as a Stan Bowles-type dribbling inside left, evolved into a Steve Claridge type workhorse and ended my career as a Grant Holt style lump. 

As a kid I supported Sheffield United and saw them play River Plate in 1978 just after Argentina had won the World Cup. United had just bought Alex Sabella (now the coach of the Argentinian national team) from River and the pre-season friendly was part of the deal. 

Leopoldo Luque, Daniel Passerella and Ubaldo Filliol of the cup winning team played. United won three-two, with Alan Woodward scoring the winner from the spot.

Aged about sixteen, I switched teams and started watching Barnsley with my mates, largely because I was sick of going to Bramall Lane on my own – nobody else I  knew supported United.  I had a season ticket at Oakwell for six or seven years but I haven’t been for ages now. 

I never really felt an emotional connect with Barnsley, because I was a latecomer to them, I suppose. 

I also watch a lot of Rugby League on Sky. I used to play league as a young kid. 

At middle school we had a teacher, Mr Milnes, who was from Featherstone, and he introduced the game to the school. We were very good at that age – we used to beat sides from Cas and Fev, who were not hapy that a team from outside the league heartlands was besting them. 

I love the mercurial geniuses: Maradona, the greatest of all time, Messi, who will supercede him, Best, Gascoigne, Rivaldo and Dennis Bergkamp, for his purity.

From League I like Rob Burrow and Sam Tomkins, for the same reasons.

Your own English nationalism is very different from that of groups like the EDL. You also have an Irish connection. What made you think of yourself as English? Is being from Yorkshire more important that being English to you?

My concept of England is based on the concept of the people in the land and the corollary opinion that, over centuries, the people have been expropriated and the land degraded and destroyed.

I suppose I’m a utopian in the tradition of William Morris - my project is heuristic and archaeological, seeking to bring to light neglected aspects of Englishness – the Anglo-Danish heritage, the pre-reformation English Catholic Church, the traditions of resistance running through the silvaticii rebels against the Norman occupation, the Peasant’s Revolt, the Pilgrimage of Grace, the radicalism of the English revolution, the nineteenth and twentienth century working class movements and the particular experience of ‘the North’, as well as the wider heritage.  

From these, to use Eliot’s idiom, I assemble the fragments ‘I shore against my ruins’.  

It is a tragedy that discourse of Englishness, or of English nationalism, is pre-sullied by the reactionary racist populism of the EDL or the fascist successors of Moseley’s BUF from the NF to the BNP.  

It’s up to the rest of us to wrest the discourse of identity and nationality away from those motivated by confusion, fear and hatred.  And a precondition for this is engagement with the past to re-discover the wellsprings. 

For all our alleged national obsession with ‘heritage’, (the ‘mad parade’ of the Sex Pistol’s in God Save the Queen), there is probably no developed country in the world in which the person on the street is more ignorant of even the basics of the history of the nation to which they belong, not to mention their local history.  There has certainly been no European nation quicker to throw it away. 

Yorkshire is important to me as county and regional identity should be to everyone - but ultimately, county identity should find its place in that wider polity of the nation. 

I’m also, for better or worse (sometimes better, often worse), very class conscious, almost instinctively so. At the core of my developing, incoherent worldview is what might be called transcendental parochialism.

I vision a time when people can name the birds and animals in the farmland near their town, know the significance of the funny old building on the corner and the gnarly old tree in the town square, understand why the river running through their village is straight and not meandering, know who the guy on the statue was, why they’re living in a tower block, their local and national history (etc) – as well being engaged in current affairs and global issues. 

I suppose I’m tacitly proposing a kind of informed civic engagement in which people secure in their identity and interests and with a sense of solidarity with their corporate community, are empowered to assert their interests and shape their world.

In my recent work, I use archaic forms – Old and Middle English, quotations, epigraphs and references from/to ancient and neglected texts, the spellings and syntax of the Wyclif and King James Bibles, for example – to emphasise my vision of the essential continuity of England and the English. 

Historical and literary studies impose a series of arbitrary disjunctions – Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, Anglo-Saxon, Norman, Mediaeval, etc. 

This has the effect of severing ‘the past’ from the present, resulting in its neglect. The very term ‘History’ in the popular conception implies something definitively past, therefore irrelevant and thus something that can with good conscience be ignored. My forthcoming book Oswald’s Book of Hours (February 2013 – available for pre-order on Amazon!) and my work in progress, Englaland, are synchronic and synoptic looks at England. The tributaries flow into a single stream.

Lastly, would you have preferred to write a bestselling book or to be a sports star yourself?

Well past the time when it was a clearly a pipe-dream, I clung to the forlorn hope that I could ‘make it’ as a professional footballer, go on to play for England, score in a Cup Final and so on. 

It was never my ambition to write a bestselling book, as such, because that seems to imply a certain pandering to the audience which inevitably compromises artistic vision. 

I write what I have to, what I’m driven to and if anyone else likes it, that’s a bonus.  So professional footballer it is.  I could’ve written in the afternoons when the rest of the lads were playing snooker.

Steve's novel 'Ratmen' is available from Blackheath Books.

Steve Ely was talking to Zack Wilson,  the author of 'Stumbles and Half Slips' from Epic Rites Press. Also available from Amazon.com.

Dreams of a Girl in New England: A Review of 'Meat' by Erin Reardon

As I look to get most of what I've done available at this blog, it's time to look at one of my favourite poets of recent years, Erin Reardon.

This is a review I published at Parasitic a few years back, about here book 'Meat'. I'm sure you can still buy it if you ask nicely.

Remember you can buy my book, 'Stumbles and Half Slips', from HERE.


“I’m not a spinner of saccharine sticky love poems” asserts Erin Reardon, in this chapbook collection of poetry. That’s not entirely true. There is definitely love poetry here, and it’s occasionally sticky. The stickiness is, however not caused by anything sugary sweet and innocent.

Various bodily fluids trickle across the pages of ‘Meat’. The fluids one associates with sex, violence, heartbreak and over-indulgence. There is a coarseness in the poems that’s actually delightful, Reardon relishing dirty details like the girl in infant school showing her septic scabs to the boys. Reardon is very definitely a girl though, coarse not so she can be one of the boys but rather to shock them from time to time.

This is very female poetry, but there are no tales of sugar and spice and all things nice. Rather, there are gin addled hangover mornings where the narrator is “vomiting the last/Of [her] rancid soul”, using the diet pills for “too many toots” not to fit into a wedding dress in time. The self-loathing is of a different stamp to the kind in Sunday magazines.

There is much more here than just girls behaving badly bodily function though, and to dismiss these erudite and musical poems as simply Beat inspired lifestyle shock smears would be to severely underestimate the depth, subtlety and shade that the work possesses.

The speaker of the poems can be predatory, hunting the male in as deadly a fashion as the girl in the Scott Walker song, but this is no ‘Sex & the City’ vapid status fuck search, but rather a need as desperate as any crackhead’s with an underlying vulnerability that does not so much feminise the hunt as humanise it. Reardon shines a spotlight on the unpretty hunger in all our souls for love or its approximation, and the inevitable disappointment and regret that ensues.

As she writes in ‘Autumnal Equinox’ they will always let you down. “He’ll lure you in with flowers…pretend he’s got a pussy too/Push your buttons of fidelity/’Til you’re squealing at the moon”, the supposed devotion driving the girl mad. ‘Acquiescence’, with its refrain of “What kind of man are you?” explores similar territory, it’s lines “when she reaches out to cradle you/And you bite her on the tit” reflecting the place we all end up in eventually, the place where the wires don’t cross properly anymore and the sparks are damp fizzles. The place where everything is mere functionality, the fulfilling of procedure described in ‘Gangrene Prophylactic’: “I will squat/On your erection/Just so you can hear me say/I need you.”

Obsession and addiction are recurring themes. Addiction not just to chemicals natural and synthesised, but also to hope and optimism, often embodied in a sick fascination with the boys who disappoint the speaker time and again as she reaches for the bottle, pill jar or syringe that can help to bleed their “medical caress from memory”. Addiction to the hope they bring, “She hated her skin/Until/It found his.” (Eating Matches) But they always leave her let down and seeking solace.

The kind of solace often found by religious faith, and Reardon’s Roman Catholic education casts an obsessive shadow of worship and abasement over many of the poems. Questions to mothers and fathers, both earthly and divine, are stamped out, the lies of their “communion wafer tongues” refuted and their roles challenged. The humiliation inherent in such abasement/worship is explored too, and the theme of a Virgin ruined by Christ Reborn recurs throughout. As she says in ‘Glory Be’, “if I can’t trust the word of Christ reborn…Who can I trust?”

At times, there is almost a twisted desire to be humiliated, Reardon’s narrator seemingly reaching the conclusion that there’s only one thing worse than having someone humiliate you and that’s having no one humiliate you. “We was born to be abused” she despairingly decides in ‘Born Into It’.

But it would be to mislead the reader to imply that this was a blood and cum, menstrual heart fuck bitch drama circus. There is much hope and beauty here too. The hope found in the eyes of the doomed boys and the steps of the dancing girls that dream above the vomit puddles and the broken glass.

This beauty can be found in ‘Black Coffee’ with its “blessed blue jay shrieks/Among the trees, a new bud lingering…Tranquil as we knew how”, or in ‘Centred’ with its “heart/As heavy as a boulder/Haunted by…love”. Throughout, a wistful regret at all the trauma and wasted days hangs on the shoulder of the narrator, best summed up in the closing poem ‘The Best Days’ with its Eleanor Rigby references and closing lines “my best days/I’m still waiting/For them/To begin” which provides a fittingly melancholy ending to a skilfully written and craftily sensitive chapbook, the sadness seasoning the coarse, vocal “Boston-Irish” clamour with a sweet beauty and dark longing.

This meat is pink and cooked to perfection, its “sulfur taste” definitely one to be savoured. Get thyself to a butcher’s.

Originally published at:
http://parasitic101.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/dreams-of-a-girl-in-new-england-a-review-of-%E2%80%98meat%E2%80%99-by-erin-reardon/

Zack Wilson is the author of  'Stumbles and Half Slips', available from Amazon HERE.