finally
a day will come when
woken by the xylophone
of sunthroughblinds
you’ll realise
that the beach was not the place
where horses tore the sand
to ribbon
that the scent of him has lifted
from the last of the sheets
that he isn’t coming back
that it hasn’t rained
but the birds are pretending that it has
so they can sing
Sylvia Plath: Poet in the City
23 September
It’s 50 years since writer and artist, Sylvia Plath, took her own life at just 30. Urbane, urban spoken-word charity, Poet in the City, organised a reading and discussion event of the her work in the wonderfully Scandinavian-feeling wood interior of King’s Place Hall One.
Actress Juliet Stevenson read from Plath’s work, lading it with the needed line-by-line dramatisation of certainty and uncertainty, confusion, bafflement, and brazenness, all unfolding among her sonorous words and the unsettling imagery. The most striking poem of her introductory set was “Stillborn,” where Plath – contrary to our every understanding of her work – finds she cannot make her poems live. They smile and smile and smile in their pickling jars, but never speak of her, she says.
Andrew Wilson is author of a new biography, mining several new personal sources and much new material only released this year. He wanted to give us Sylvia as “angry young woman” and argued that the young writer had a lot of to be angry about. He spoke of sexual frustration (“dragging my damp desire from date to date”); her gender’s supporting role despite her liberal arts education at Smith College (potential fiancée deciding that she was to resign her writing to be his doctor’s wife); and her family’s poverty following the death of “Daddy” (sharing a room with her clingy mother in a two bed house with her brother and grandmother, dimming the lights so boyfriends wouldn’t see the rips and stains in the wallpaper.)
Plath also had to contend with others trying to control her work: three huge archives, assembled mostly by her mother, contain over 200 still-unpublished poems (among miles of hair, drawings, letters) – which may never see the light of day if the Estate doesn’t agree to it; meanwhile, Ted Hughes, husband, dated her “juvenilia” to the period just before the two met.
University of Exeter academic, Dr Jo Gill, questioned both the artlessness and honesty of the confessional style of poetry that Plath did so much to develop. While this “Lady Lazarus” revealed everything – bones, ash, man-eating teeth – she was also engaged in a masquerade, and in silence and self-censorship, and in disappearance. Gill said other academics are looking beyond the hoary old chestnuts of sanity/Hughes/suicide: Plath’s environmentalism, her mid-Atlantic-ness, even her poetry in light of the Cold War were all being examined.
Finally, Mexican-American singer and poet, Liza Garza, wanted to put the humanity back into Plath – to see her as a mother, a sister and a friend. In a surprisingly tense moment, she admitted how scared she had been of having her own young artistic voice dissected by the academics and writers (like those who flanked her on-stage). Garza, above all, wanted to celebrate Plath’s resiliency in the face of the many challenges she had faced. Like Frida Kahlo, Garza said, Plath’s vulnerability was on show for all to see in her art – and yet it did not invite pity. She was no victim.
Fifty years after she left us, much “tension” (that academic word standing in for things that cannot be properly squared or decided) still exists in both Plath’s work and among critical following. Poet in the City, did a massive job of assembling experts who passionately believed in the supremacy of one aspect of this amazing poet (her voice, her vitality, her mind and her humanity) The speakers created more than the sum of their parts live on stage and brought new sparks and crackle to this astonishing writer.
Cycling back from King’s Place in Kings Cross, I felt like my inner poetic battery had been plugged back into the mains. I wanted to suddenly re-address all work under construction to some hated and / or revered “you.”
I realised how terribly important that the moment of a poem be a critical turning point or a point of realisation. That every object observed could be made special by a kind of outrageous ceremonial noticing, like in Plath’s work – from going into the cellar with a torch, to watching mushrooms grow, even just to being on a moor. Plath makes the moment NOW bleed.
Set list
Recording of Sylvia Plath
1) Spinster
Juliet Stevenson
2) Wuthering Heights
3) Stillborn
4) Full Fathom Five
5) Daddy
6) Crossing the Water
7) Magi
8) Ariel
9) Morning Song
10) Arrival of the Bee Box
11) In Plaster
12) The Rival
13) Child
14) Cut
15) Words
16) Sheep in Fog
17) Wintering
Recording of Sylvia Plath
18) Mushrooms
For today, issue 1 is available to view online absolutely free!
Follow the link to view issue 1 free of charge:
…LAST DAY TO GET YOUR SUBMISSIONS IN!
Any submissions sent after midnight will be automatically forwarded for consideration for the next issue.
A stellar selection of poetry, images and writing from those who have navigated the wacky internal space of the mind to share their very human insights into life on earth and beyond.
From nearly encounters with strangers on trains, textual break ups to the slow fall into fidelity, this unassuming zine welcomes us back to an honest childhood questioning of what we see and reminds us what it is that makes us happy.
Includes a light-footed interview with poet Max Wallis signposting writers to performance launch pads and terrestrial pitches for publishing.
Shamshad Khan on Astronaut, issue 2.
It’s that time again: submissions are open for issue three! The deadline for submissions is the 15th July 2013. Like with all things, we’d advise you order a copy of any previous issues to get a feel for the kind of things we publish (zines will cost you three earth pounds and can be purchased from the ‘Previous Issues’ page) and you should read the guidelines on the ‘Submissions’ page carefully. In the mean-time, I’d like to refute any nasty rumours going round…
Visit the ‘Previous Issues’ page to pick up your copy!
The second issue of Astronaut is headed straight for the capital! Come along, hear some great poetry from guests and zine-published writers alike, listen to some music, drink some beer and eat flying saucers.
HOSTED BY JOHN HEGLEY
READERS INCLUDE
Nicola Gledhill
Joshua Seigal
Harry Man
Jamie Baxter
GUESTS INCLUDE
Tim Wells
Joshua Idehen
Kareem Parkins-Brown
(more tba)
£4 entry, includes a copy of the zine and flying saucers. Or pay £5 and get a copy of the first issue too!
RSVP on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/events/583734581671376/
-Reviewed by Alana Tomlin–
Astronaut brings a brief assortment of poetry and short prose from, the title implies, ‘outer space’. What this actually means is that it is writing brought together in a clean, refreshing way – young writers, and new ideas. As always, being a first issue, it faces the challenge of being noticed and, even harder, to be bought and read. In response to this the magazine’s overt association with ‘outer space’ perhaps indicates that the editor, Charlotte Henson, realises that a new magazine’s primary duty is to explore ‘alien’ literary territory, and to be proud to publish what is discovered there. The alien here is by no means experimental or avant-garde; it is a space sometimes hinting at the surreal, just beyond the boundaries of what can still be interpreted as mainstream or traditional writing, and ‘alien’ writers who have not yet been published in dozens…
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