{"id":8556,"date":"2019-12-19T12:03:10","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T12:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/?p=8556"},"modified":"2025-02-03T11:34:40","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T11:34:40","slug":"rialto-news-november-december-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/2019\/12\/19\/rialto-news-november-december-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Rialto news – November\/December 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Anita<\/a>Dodo Provocateur<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Anita Pati\u2019s prize winner pamphlet, which we published in the first week in September, had it\u2019s London launch on September 24th at The Poet an aptly chosen pub in Baring Street (N1 3DS). I put the post code in because I must have been one of the last people in London, without SatNav, or Wayz on my phone, to drive around Islington navigating with a copy of the\u00a0A to Z<\/em>\u00a0on the passenger seat. Anyway it was a cheerful evening. In case you still haven\u2019t connected with this pamphlet here\u2019s what some important people have said about it.<\/p>\n

\u2018Every poem in\u00a0Dodo Provocateur<\/em>\u00a0is taut with riotous language, utterly surprising and dizzyingly ambitious. Yet despite their linguistic fanfare and creative formalism they are ultimately poems which engage with and reframe the outsider \u2013 giving voice to the lost, the ignored and the marginalised.\u00a0Dodo Provocateur<\/em>\u00a0is a series of moving vignettes, which celebrate the unrealised beauty of Victorian Sewer Pumps, crime scenes, earwigs and extinct birds. This pamphlet represents a significant body of work from an important, articulate and restless new voice in British poetry.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0Richard Scott<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018In her explorations of displacement, alienation and fractured identity, Anita Pati engages unique sprung rhythms and invented dialects \u2013 as though she hears a music no one else has access to. Her poems are strange, risky, exciting and utterly original.\u2019\u00a0Kaththryn Maris<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Whether cataloguing a species\u2019 slow demise or a child\u2019s stirrings in the womb,\u00a0Dodo Provocateur\u00a0<\/em>is an exuberant box of treats, full of life and linguistic gusto. Flipping effortlessly between distant\u00a0colonial horizons and the house next door,\u00a0Anita Pati is a real original: a poet whose wry humour and slant perspectives on the world don\u2019t fail to surprise and delight.\u2019\u00a0Sarah Howe<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018In\u00a0Dodo Provocateur,\u00a0<\/em>Anita Pati\u2019s voice has emerged as original, provocative and restlessly reflexive.\u00a0 Addressing themes and subject matter ranging from childhood memories to extinction, racism, Jimmy Savile and the Pendle witches, the expression is crisp and striking and each poem partakes of a lexical virtuosity that echoes Fran Lock, Geraldine Clarkson and Imtiaz Dharker.\u00a0These poems are not satisfied and they quietly push the boundaries.\u2019\u00a0Steve Ely<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Anita Pati’s poems sound entirely her own. Every line in\u00a0Dodo Provocateur<\/em>\u00a0brims with music and meaning. These playful poems explore racism and patriarchy in Britain – a land of Shepherd’s Pie, Shakespeare,\u00a0Kwik Save<\/em>\u00a0and crime scenes – via an astonishing range of characters and forms. But in this least auspicious of places, Pati still manages to winkle out reasons for hope. We are lucky to have such ‘knuckly flowers’; such ‘beetley treasure\u2019.’\u00a0Clare Pollard<\/em><\/p>\n

STOP PRESS NEWS: Dodo Provocateur has been shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award. Results will be announced on December 10th.<\/em><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dodo Provocateur is available here<\/a><\/p>\n

The Rialto 92<\/em><\/strong>
\nA friend, a reader and writer of poetry, said to me last week that the current issue of the magazine is the \u2018most interesting and excitingly readable poetry magazines around at the moment.\u2019 This is not an opinion that has been widely publicised, partly we think, because we printed the issue at a time in the summer when many people were thinking to go on holiday \u2013 that after exams lull when a rest from reading becomes compulsory nation wide. Or it may be something to do with the Brexit effect which is steadily stealing people\u2019s lives and rendering them unable to think or talk about anything else.<\/p>\n

I want to take this opportunity, as well as to re-iterate my thanks to Edward Doegar and Degna Stone who worked with me on the selection of the poems, to endorse my friend\u2019s recommendation and to look with you at a couple of poems in the issue. \u2018For too long poetry has had a reputation for being overly difficult, elitist and obscure. Yet it seems to me that nothing could be further from the truth.\u2019 Thus says John Burnside writing in\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0(October 5). And here is a poem that surely backs him up.<\/p>\n

NIGHTINGALES<\/strong><\/p>\n

Who wouldn\u2019t feel a bit low
\nbiking back into town again
\nfrom another vain after supper
\nride round our nightingale woods
\nwhere they\u2019re two or three weeks overdue,<\/p>\n

and though it\u2019s worrying what we\u2019ve done,
\nit\u2019s a warm still evening \u2013 perfect
\nfor hearing them sing \u2013 and being
\nin no hurry to go in
\nI pedal on past my turning<\/p>\n

to check if it\u2019s true our local
\nThe Volunteer, shut up for years,
\nagainst the odds has reopened,
\nand yes, it\u2019s alive, lights, music
\nand inside this Saturday night<\/p>\n

as I swing round the corner
\na good crowd of mostly young men
\nin both bars with more arriving
\ndown the side street, one of whom
\nin reply to my\u00a0Evening<\/em>\u00a0calls out \u2013<\/p>\n

Take your beret off, you cunt.<\/em><\/p>\n

Michael Laskey<\/em>
\n(The Rialto, 92, page 11)<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a shocking poem, and it is beautifully put to together. There are four five line stanzas with a single flying last line; Michael uses a minimum of poetry devices, alliteration \u2013 for example three ws in line one and again in line five, two bs in line two and two rs in line four, etc; and then there\u2019s rhyme, \u2018again\u2019\/\u2018 vain\u2019, \u2018low\u2019\/ \u2018town\u2019 in stanza one, with stanza two having several \u2018ing’s and an \u2018in\u2019. And there\u2019s a lovely hinge where the long line at the end of stanza one matches the long line at the start of stanza two. But what is glaringly apparent is the accessibility of the syntax and the vocabulary: it\u2019s so clear what\u2019s going on, the poet is returning from one adventure, looking for nightingales, and sets off on another one, to check on the \u2018Volunteer\u2019 pub. Two stanzas to each task (there\u2019s so much balance in the four stanzas of this poem \u2013 like riding a bike maybe?), but there\u2019s surely nothing \u2018difficult\u2019.<\/p>\n

A word about the title: the most famous nightingale poem in the British tradition is Keats\u2019 \u2018Ode to a Nightingale\u2019, and the nightingale is persistent through European tradition (there are nightingales in the grove in Colonus where Oedipus dies, and, of course, Juliet says \u2018It was the nightingale and not the lark\u2019). There is no need for the reader to know all this to get the impact of Michael\u2019s poem. However the opening line is \u2018Who wouldn\u2019t feel a bit low\u2019, which is a delicious understated step backward from Keats\u2019
\n\u2018My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
\nMy sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk\u2026\u2019 and so on<\/p>\n

So, the first two stanzas are about loss and the environmental degradation\/ climate change that we are enduring. It\u2019s a \u2018warm still evening \u2013 perfect\/ for hearing them sing\u2019, but they aren\u2019t there and the poet\/narrator turns his curiosity to a rumour about a local pub, and cycles off to investigate. We move from change in the wider world to change in the local world. It\u2019s noticeable how the pace quickens in this second half, we still have the same eight syllable lines, but instead of the languor of \u2018warm still evening\u2019 we have the sharpness of \u2018yes, it\u2019s alive, lights, music\u2019 and the movement of \u2018swing round\u2019, \u2018more arriving\u2019.<\/p>\n

We now come to the climax of the poem, its last two lines. What we know so far about the poet narrator is that he\u2019s an energetic kind of bloke (possibly no longer \u2018young\u2019 (St. 4 line 2)), who likes to go for a bike ride after tea round the neighbourhood he knows, that he\u2019s alive to environmental concerns, admires the song of nightingales, recognises they\u2019re a diminishing species: but he\u2019s also part of his town (has a \u2018local\u2019) and is awake to the health of his community and happy to join in the celebration of a summer evening at the pub. However his cheery shout of \u2018Evening<\/em>\u2019 gets the reply \u2018Take your beret off, you cunt<\/em>\u2019. Raucous street language, or something more? Michael, who is very good at the \u2018show not tell\u2019 kind of poetry, leaves interpretation entirely up to the reader. The \u2018young men\u2019 whose song is very different from that of the nightingales, nevertheless sing in a way typical of their species at that stage of their development. Is their objection to the \u2018beret\u2019 anything more than youthful mischief? Whatever you think the poem is \u2018about\u2019 there\u2019s a great deal packed into its twenty one lines.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another remarkable poem by Michael Laskey in this issue, \u2018Between Ourselves\u2019 on page 21: impossible not to love both pieces of work. Final note about \u2018Nightingales\u2019: pubs named \u2018The Volunteer\u2019, I learn from the internet, can get their name from the establishment, during the Napoleonic Wars (when their was a perceived risk of invasion from Europe) of the Volunteer Corps, officered by gentry and manned by tradespeople and keen to repel foreigners (whatever their headgear).<\/p>\n

This Newsletter is turning into an essay. Before I get on with the News I just want to look for a while at another poem that I like in 92. This is a poem by Amaan Hyder. It\u2019s eight eleven line stanzas long (plus a final two lines), so I\u2019ll, unfairly, precis my remarks. Here are the first two stanzas.<\/p>\n

WHAT LANGUAGE DO YOU SPEAK AT HOME?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2004, I come out to you.
\nA cousin is getting married.
\nThere is family staying.
\nIt\u2019s poor timing.
\nI\u2019m told you are really struggling with it.
\nI say to you, in order to ease things,
\nthat I\u2019m actually unsure, that I shouldn\u2019t rush into this.
\nSo we leave it at that. What\u2019s good
\nto come out of this is that we can be open now \u2013
\nthis is what I say but we don\u2019t talk about it,
\nhave not talked about it, for fourteen years.<\/p>\n

Now I have had a boyfriend for four years.
\nI have not mentioned him to you.
\nThe world has changed since 2004.
\nTime has passed. You have retired.
\nYou are less stressed. It is easier
\nfor you to become unwell. I think if I was
\nto come out of the closet again it would be easier,
\nbut I look back to what happened before.
\nI go back to my default which is not to speak,
\nto hide, to give space to those around me.
\nI don\u2019t want to change your life.<\/p>\n

Amaan Hyder<\/em><\/p>\n

Start with the title, which is admirably packed with meaning. It\u2019s surely not uncommon, growing through childhood into adolescence, to have a sense that you and those you share your home with don\u2019t speak the same language, that you and they \u00a0 inhabit separate realities. This poem is about this. It is also, as Amaan\u2019s community has Asian origins, about a literal difference between languages, between English and Urdu. And again it is about the difficulties of conversations between straight and gay communities. And there is also, I\u2019m sure, behind the title that darker question, \u2018Where do you\u00a0really<\/em>\u00a0come from?\u2019 Multilayered.<\/p>\n

One of the things I find exciting about this poem is the use of short sentences. They look to be simple but are in fact skilfully crafted. They freshen up the commonplace phrases \u2013 \u2018poor timing,\u2019 \u2018really struggling,\u2019 \u2018shouldn\u2019t rush into\u2019 \u2013 that are the staple of this poem\u2019s language, its clarity and accessibility. It\u2019s such down right likeable piece of writing. And the poet comes across as being good hearted, generous and kind. It\u2019s intelligent poetry, I commend it to you.<\/p>\n

We still have copies of issue 92 available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Rialto 93<\/em><\/strong>
\nIs advancing towards readiness. A little of what\u2019s in it? Well there are some new poems by Hannah Lowe, and there are poems by each of the shortlisted poets from the last pamphlet Competition: altogether 43 poems so far so we are well on the way.<\/p>\n

Nature Poetry Competition<\/em><\/strong>
\nWe have launched (December 1st) our newest Nature Poetry Competition. The closing date will be May 1st 2020: the judge this time is Pascale Petit (whose long poem \u2018In The Forest\u2019 was such a star start to R 92). Full details are up on the website<\/a> and there will be a flier in the next issue of the magazine. I was remembering this morning how much I enjoyed compiling the Whitgift School Selborne Society\u2019s Annual Report of Birds of the Croydon Area. It was certainly preferable to doing most of the schoolwork. Nature has become centre stage in the world of politics. We seem to be waking up to the knowledge that we are poisoning the planet and ourselves and also to the knowledge that we have a responsibility to the (diminishing) multitude of life forms that we share the planet with. All of which is to say that we welcome poems from the width and breadth of\u00a0your<\/u>\u00a0contact with Nature. We are once again working in association with the RSPB, Birdlife International, and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI). There will be a celebratory reading with the winning poets and Pascale at CCI in September.<\/p>\n

Pamphlet Competition No. 3<\/em><\/strong>
\nWill be soon open for Submissions.<\/p>\n

Subscriptions<\/em><\/strong>
\nWith the next issue we will be increasing our prices. Always a difficult subject. As you know we have for most of our history had a discounted subscription rate for anyone on a low income. This we will be continuing to do. I know what it is to be unemployed or to be working in low paid work with no sense of getting anywhere. I am also very aware of the way that the gap between the living standards of richer people and of the rest of us has stretched and stretched.\u00a0 Enough. The prices we\u2019ve so far decided are as follows.<\/p>\n

The Cover Price will go up to \u00a39 per copy.
\nThe UK Subscribers\u2019 rate will be \u00a325 for three issues.
\nThe UK Concessionary (Low Income) rate will be \u00a319 for three issues. We don\u2019t require proof of your status, you can self-assess this.
\nThe Rest of the World Subscribers rate will be \u00a345 for three issues.
\nThe Europe Subscribers\u2019 rate is yet to be decided (as is the nation\u2019s relationship to Europe).<\/p>\n

For Institutions, (Libraries and Universities etc.,) we are introducing a new multi-use rate
\nof \u00a360 for three issues. We\u2019ve been generously out of step with other magazines forever\u2026<\/p>\n

Costs for Single issues (UK, Europe, Rest of the World) will be posted on the website shop once we have researched them.<\/p>\n

Those of you whose subscriptions are currently (R92) needing renewal (and thanks to all the prompt renewers) can still renew at current prices.<\/p>\n

Midwinter<\/em><\/strong>
\nIt will soon, once again, be St Lucy\u2019s Day (Friday 13th December, day after the General Election). Seasonal Greetings and thanks to you all.<\/p>\n

Michael Mackmin<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dodo Provocateur Anita Pati\u2019s prize winner pamphlet, which we published in the first week in September, had it\u2019s London launch on September 24th at The Poet an aptly chosen pub in Baring Street (N1 3DS). I put the post code in because I must have been one of the last people in London, without SatNav, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8558,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8556"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8561,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8556\/revisions\/8561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}