Ouse Muse

It's a struggle organising poetry events. The web has made publicity easier, and getting performers isn't always the hardest part. Venues are a problem though - cost (£100/night isn't unknown for a pub-room, even though the pub makes money from people buying drinks), location (city centres are expensive, church-halls are lifeless), atmosphere (you don't want too much noise from a nearly bar, but you want to be close to the action), and access (without wheelchair access, grants and help from the council become more difficult) are all issues.

Yesterday I popped over to Bedford to see Stephen Payne (Smiths Knoll and HappenStance) perform. The evenings are run by Ian McEwen (Templar and Cinnamon) who's found a good venue and a list of good poets. Ouse Muse has been going for a while and is well worth a visit. A wide range of styles are presented, and there are open-mic opportunities.

Storia della bambina perduta

My Italian isn't good, but I can battle through novels, the most recent one being "Storia della bambina perduta" by Elena Ferrante. Reading in Italian emphasises my tendency to see a text as a construct, a contrivance. In "Close Calls with Nonsense", Stephen Burt advises readers who are searching for a poem's "meaning" to "Look for self-analyses or for frame-breaking moments". It works for prose too - when authors want to get a point over, they will flip from "show" to "tell", or dissolve the fourth wall. I've picked out some tell-tale moments in my write-up. They are perhaps in character, suited to the occasionally reflective Elena whose first-person narrative it is. Some other characters however become rather overloaded with plot functions at the expense of believability.

There are few admirable characters, but as she writes on p.429, "Only in bad novels do people always think the right things, does every action have a cause, are there pleasant and unpleasant people, good and bad, and a happy ending"