doubts and corrections

Miscellaneous blog/ error list

After signing off the proofs, I have realised that I wrote ‘Nicholas Spicer’ when the real spelling is ‘Nicolas’. Oh, shit.
John Kozak has supplied some details on the technical software terms used by Kevin Nolan in ‘Orlick’. "p 56

  plus the latest updates that find
  DSO battle ideograms, changing value of 1004 DWORDS

The only "DWORD" I know of in IT speak is an old Microsoft Windows internal usage for "double word", i.e. 2x16 bit words.

"DSO" could be "dynamic shared object" [*], a file containing code and/or data which can be pulled in as a program is running.   Such objects are typically used to extend or customise a program.  For example,  new icons or "skins" for a multiplayer game, "battle ideogram"?"

p 91

  "Zeiss were a famous maker of lenses and optical equipment in Jena"

Still are, I think.

Actually, after 1946 there was a Zeiss firm in West Germany, while the original, in East Germany (and in Jena), was state-owned. So the tie to Jena is not totally accurate. Their cameras were all made in Dresden... but one could qualify this statement forever.

Ian Heames writes to say:
The three-part poem-designating numbers currently in place under the indented quotations are accurate, but since the same numbering system is used for all three sequences collected in Arrays (i.e. Array One, To, and A.I. In Daylight all run from 1.1.1 to 3.3.3), any given three-part number could equally lead a reader to more than one other text rather than the text being quoted from. It might therefore make sense to attribute the indented quotations as follows:

p. 260:

     [2.1.1, p. 18 (Array One)]

p. 262:

     [1.1.1, p. 9 (Array One)]  

p. 263:  

     [2.1.3, p. 20 (Array One)]

With regards to including page numbers and sequence titles, either/or would work for navigating to the desired page, although including the sequence name might offer more of a bird's-eye view of the fact that the first of the three sequences in Arrays is the one principally under consideration.

If it'd also be possible for the attribution to follow after an empty line, to separate it from the poem text, that'd be appreciated, as the poems are choppy enough that un-spaced material could be mistaken for a continuation of the text itself.  

For the same reason, I've used square brackets for the attributions above (since the poems themselves make use of round brackets, as in the example on your p. 262).  

To triple-lock the disambiguation, the attribution line could perhaps in all cases also be deeper indented than the quoted text (as it is already on pp. 260 and 262, but not currently on p. 263).

I've also included very abbreviated references -- simply the page number in round brackets -- to the other, embedded, quotations, in case it'd be possible to add those in, as again that'd help a reader get to the material in question.

--

--

p. 261  

"Intact RQ-170 Sentinel body image", twice. correct to:  

"intact RQ-170 Sentinel body image", twice (pp. 16; 30).  

[The intervention regarding the initial capital letter is simply so that the page references can follow in sequence order. On p. 30, the line starts with a capital letter, but not p. 16.] 

--

“Exclusively peaceful metalloid cartouche butterfly” (p. 30)

--

‘recall how/ the RCP-120 would lose/ ammo to go clear”  

correct to:  

"recall how/ the RCP-120 would lose/ ammo to go clear” (p. 17)

[The quotation currently opens with a single rather than double inverted comma.]

--

My left thumb is so sore from tilting those worlds.

[Interesting to see this in italics! I really like the effect! With the formatting transformed, it's probably best left unattributed, so no intervention needed.]

--

p. 262  

  [first line of indented quotation:]

(  

correct to:  

)

[The round bracket should be closing rather than opening.]

--

The endpapers have a rather beautiful, originally painted, shimmering image

[That's nice of you to say! I should possibly mention that the endpapers were made in MS Paint, so 'digitally painted' might be a better fit than 'originally painted', but of course it's entirely your call!]

--

“orchid floods butterfly// orchid floods orchid/ with butterfly [...] it was a butterfly/ orchid” (p. 12)

--

“had had bliss from training/ had had bliss form/ seraphic droid epaulet” (p.10)  

--

starting with "Omega chrome Blue"

correct to:

starting with "Omega Chrome Blue"

(end of email) (this arrived several weeks after the book had been printed) (do I want to supply page numbers for every poem...no)

After looking at Wayne Burrows’ website, I am inclined to say that I missed a nuance in his double-poem which combines the funeral of M Thatcher with the funeral of Kim Jong-Il. He records a report from the Korean Central News Agency which describes supernatural phenomena linked with the departure from mortal form of Kim Jong-Il – and suggests that a similar belief in miracles and the intervention of supernatural forces was a feature of the celebration by Tory press and politicians of Thatcher's transfiguration. Indeed, these speakers attributed economic miracles to Her intervention in our humble lives.
Today we stand in the glow of cleansing propaganda
while peculiar natural wonders are observed
on Mt. Paektu, Jong Il Peak
and Tonghung Hill in Hamhung City,
in the transparent glare of white light shining
from the stones of Parliament Square and Westminster.

At this point I feel that every sentence in the book could be more accurate. This is an unavoidable stage in the creation of a book, and of course the book would be twice as long if I re-explained everything.

Schubert. I blithely say that Schubert's music was designed for small, intimate, groups, but that could hardly be true of his Symphonies, and he wrote nine. A lot of his music was only heard in performance in small rooms for private parties, but not all. If he wrote very simple lieder, those could be delivered in concert-halls to large audiences, giving all those people the impression of intimacy. A lot of his music was published in his lifetime, even if he was so prolific that a lot of his music was not taken on by publishers (and was printed from manuscripts up to forty years after his death in 1828). The retreat to the small-scale is not directly or certainly linked to political oppression making the public realm gleaming and empty. The link is of a mythic kind. What I wrote captures the myth, I suppose. Mellors wrote a sequence of poems about an imaginary East German poet who wrote a sequence of poems adapting or parodying the sequence of poems which Schubert set to music as Die Winterreise, but really the work is not about East Germany or Schubert.

I say at p.83 that there are 84 poets in Identity Parade, but the real count is 85. I think there are very few mistakes in the text, after I spent a year editing it. The publisher sent me a spreadsheet of quotes I had used which had 116 rows... I took on a lot of different poets, and the logistics of that were formidable. I have just looked at an exercise I did to count how many of the IP poets had studied in some way at Oxford or Cambridge... I came to a figure of 27%. I suppose the great issue of our period, or perhaps only up until a few years ago, was the attack on meritocracy. The popularity of UKIP relied on channelling such an attack. Anyway, the figure of 27% shows a continuing reduction, as a share of the whole, so the "widening of the apex" which is my thesis. People now seem keen to suppress the fact that they were selected for a great university - I may have to abandon my count project, since if people are unhappy about their biography it is intrusive to probe into it. I suppose that, if you do well in an exam, you have concentrated for three hours. Most people can't do that. If you have high verbal intelligence and can concentrate for three hours, that would seem like good equipment for writing a poem. I think meritocracy is working really well for an increasing number of 18 year-olds - just not for all of them.

Info has come in from Wayne Burrows to the effect that there was a “break” in the central areas of poetry about ten years ago. A loss of confidence. This is what produced the present set-up, with its pluralism and lack of normative focal points. I find this interesting because there is a lack of dates in my account. I come up with a stretch of roughly 30 years without many events. Wayne came up with a change at Poetry Review (I think he said this but maybe I did) and a change at Faber, with them getting rid of a set of people and signing up Sam Riviere, who is conceptual and internet-oriented and altogether a new thing. So this is worth discussing.
My feel is that you could have a new-style Poetry Review because there were already hundreds of poets at work who were writing the poems which PR could pick up. So there was a process before that Event… arguably the process is big and the Event is small. And Faber are respected, but they are possibly 1% of the titles coming out. I am not sure if you can screen out the other 99% to any great extent. I can see that the version of P Review edited by Emily Berry was a breakthrough, but that was from 2015, I think, and there was a Maurice Riordan phase between Sampson leaving and Berry starting. I haven’t read the Riordan issues so I haven’t made my mind up. (There were a couple of guest editors too, like Bernardine Evaristo and Charles Boyle.) If I had to pick One Big Thing it would be the regime of Robert Potts and David Herd at Poetry Review. 2003-5, I think. They definitely caused shock and made Top People say “I’m not against change but you’re moving too fast”.
The version of the mainstream which I detest was breaking up during the 1980s… it just wasn't being taken up by younger poets. It didn’t just stop but it was fading, year by year. So I think there was a process of moving towards pluralism which involved the audience, and the poets, and the critics, and the publishers. And the retailers, I suppose. But I don’t see major events or things changing in a single year. It was a broad process. And I think pluralism is really stable. You knock it over and it still works a different way up.
If you accept that Emily Berry was a star editor, it might follow that she gives a misleading impression of sudden change and improvement. She didn’t write the poems, but she gave them the air, and other editors wouldn't do that. Conversely, someone else might want to give the impression that nothing was changing, so that older poets weren't slipping out of date and into inactivity. They would conceal underlying artistic changes. This is problematic. I think Berry was a star editor, so the conclusion might be that things hadn’t changed that much between 2010 and 2015.
Staring at individual poems in a magazine can be frustrating, as you don’t see any pattern at all. But if you read several hundred pages, a low-resolution pattern emerges. Probably. But with P Review, there are sudden changes when an editor leaves.