A surreal dream of an exhibition at Tate Modern

It is rare that you visit an art exhibition and come away with both a sense of having been thoroughly entertained, yet also feeling that you’ve seen a work of revolutionary scholarship and been thoroughly schooled too.

But the Tate Modern’s new blockbuster, Surrealism Beyond Borders, nails on both of those counts.

 

Personally, I’ve long liked some Surrealism very much – and some considerably less so. But I’ve also seen it as a very European school, and indeed, a very masculine one. And the iconic status of Salvador Dalí as the popular leading Surrealist has also left me with a sense of it being a tad on the political right.

A perfect illustration of at least some of this is the one book about the school in my personal art library. Surrealism, written by Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy and edited by Ute Grosenick for Taschen, was first published in 2006. It is worth noting that the latter has worked on at least one title for Taschen specifically around women artists.

 

Now, it is a slender volume, made up of short pieces about specific, important works in the school.

 

Thirty-five works are featured, by 18 artists. Five are by Dalí, with four each by René Magritte, Pablo Picasso and Max Ernst. Of the artists here, only Meret Oppenheim (a single work) is female. Only Matta (Chile), Wilfredo Lam (Cuba) and Man Ray (USA) were born outside Europe. Of these, only Matta didn’t die in Paris.

 

So for instance, no Leonora Carrington or Dorothea Tanning.

 

Tate Modern has long been working to rectify some of this: its 2019 Tanning exhibition was excellent.

 

But however basic such Taschen guides are intended to be (and that basic nature does not mean that they are not good), this all feeds an idea of a movement that was almost entirely European – indeed, almost entirely centred on Paris, where poet André Breton penned the Manifeste du surréalisme in 1924 – and predominantly male.

 

Wrong. Wrong – and then wrong again. As this extraordinary exhibition makes quite clear. 

 

Indeed, the very title of the exhibition, Surrealism Beyond Borders, makes that point – that this is not just about geo-political borders, but about sex and gender ones too.

 

With Surrealist groups in Japan, South America and Egypt, it can hardly be seen as  exclusively ‘European’. And it is most certainly not a predominantly male thing.

Co-produced by the Tate Modern and New York’s Metropolitan Museum, we open with Marcel Jean’s Armoire surréaliste (Surrealist Wardrobe, left) from 1941, when he was trapped in Hungary.

It is both of and painted on wardrobe doors – complete with real keyholes – and has an impossible double landscape behind those parts of it that are open. It is classic trompe-l’œil, stunningly executed; a real mind messer and arguably precisely the sort of thing that I have most relished about Surrealism for years – superb technique in a super-realistic approach, married with a dreamlike subject.

 

On the same themes, it’s why I have loved Giorgio de Chirico’s works since studying art for A’ level. And Magritte too, though I have had very few chances to see works by either of them in real life and away from the printed page or digital image.

 

Here, we have de Chirico’s Le rêve de Tobie (The Dream of Tobias) 1917 (see final picture in this post) and Magritte’s La durée poignardée (Time Transfixed) 1938, both of which are wonderfully, gloriously executed.

 

Incidentally, as the Magritte is framed and under glass, you can get very up close and personal to it at this exhibition – and it is worth doing so, because the brush work is absolutely sensational.

 

These were personal highlights because they were works not seen before ‘live’ by artists I personally love, but there were plenty of new discoveries that were highlights too.

 

For instance, from 1961 we have Remedios Varo’s autobiographic triptych – brought together here for the first time in years – showing her strict Catholic upbringing (left), a group of female artisans weaving a mantle for the world (one – how apt for these times – masked) and a depiction of the artist and a friend leaving Spain for Mexico.

 

It is fantastical – and (as observed by The Other Half) harks back to Bosch and Bruegel, yet is utterly different from anything we’d seen previously of their work.

The exhibition also includes Fantomerne by Danish artist Rita Kernn-Larsen (second picture from the top), which she created after the shock of witnessing a drowning.

 

Then there is the anti-colonialism of Malangatanta Ngwenya’s Untitled from 1967.

 

Perhaps the major revelation is of Surrealism in Japan – Kikuji Yamashita’s The Deification of a Soldier, from 1967 (see below), is astonishing; a visceral response to the artist’s own experience as a Japanese soldier in WWII. There are other works by Japanese artists using Surrealism to express the horror of the war. All of them are absolutely worthy of inclusion in this exhibition – they are not present for the sake of it.

Yet Koga Harue’s Umi (The Sea) from 1929 (see top picture) is a lovely, upbeat work bringing together images that he had collated from magazines and postcards, presenting a positive future.

 

Then there is Laurent Marcel Salinas’s Naissance (Birth) from 1944. Born in Egypt – that there was a Surrealist group based in Cairo is just another revelation here – he signed a 1938 group manifesto, Yajya al-fann al-munhatt/Vive l’art dégénéré (Long Live Degenerate Art).

 

As only a slight aside, I was delighted – albeit rather surprised – that, at this point, the curators didn’t feel the need to point out the ‘degenerate art’ was a Nazi description for any art that didn’t fit their rather limited view of the world.

And in keeping with moving away from a very limited idea of Surrealism, in this exhibition, there is just one work by Dalí – his lobster telephone, while both Carrington and Tanning have works included.

There are two works by Picasso – it's difficult to see how Les Trois Danseuses (The Three Dancers) 1925 really fits, but Composition au Gant (Composition with Glove) 1930, certainly does.

However, even if the former doesn’t really ‘fit’, its inclusion still raises an interesting question of the overlaps and similarities between Surrealism and Cubism. Similarly, de Chirico never identified as a Surrealist, yet it’s difficult for any viewer looking at his works not to see him as one.

And Tanning has in other places (indeed, another Taschen book), been categorised as producing “fantastic art”. But what is Surrealism if not ‘fantastic’?

And here you have a perfect illustration of why this exhibition, is not simply called Surrealism Beyond Borders, but genuinely goes beyond the previous borders erected around the school, whether formally or informally.

 

The last time that The Other Half and I visited an exhibition was in May 2021, but the Tate Modern’s Making of Rodin was a tad disappointing. However, it had felt safe – timed entries so no overwhelming crowds and, of course, face covering.

This still felt safe, with continued timed entry and at least half people wearing a face covering. What it also did was succeed in being a really excellent exhibition.

• Surrealism Beyond Borders is at Tate Modern in London until 29 August 2022.

 

Belfast – seeing The Troubles through a child’s eyes

Belfast, the semi-autobiographical film written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, opens with what could be viewed as a rosy-tinted remembrance of life on a working-class terraced street in Northern Ireland’s capital in the late 1960s.

As nine-year-old Buddy returns home one summer evening, brandishing a wooden sword and a dustbin lid shield, playing at being the knight of his daydreams, the streets are full of children playing – ‘were there really so many children?’ you might think – while adults hang around chatting.

 

But just as you might be thinking that, a masked gang arrives to start a riot and things turn seriously nasty. They don’t care if children, women, the elderly – Protestant or Catholic – gets in the way.

 

Because this is August 1969, and the aim of the violence is really quite simple: to create a climate of fear that tells the Catholic residents on this mixed street that they must leave. Or terrorism, as we might call it.

 

The film shows a series of episodes in Buddy’s life at this time. His Pa (Jamie Dornan) is working in England as a joiner and can only visit every few weeks, so the family of Buddy (Jude Hill) and his older brother Will (Lewis McAskie) is held together by Ma (Caitríona Balfe), with help from grandparents Pop (Ciarán Hinds) and Granny (Judi Dench).

 

The character of Pa can feel like a bit of a type at times – he likes the horses to the detriment of the family finances, but he does also have greater complexity.

 

The family is Protestant but not particularly religious and gets along perfectly fine with its Catholic neighbours. However, as Pa continues to refuse the increasing threats of the local Protestant gang leader Billy Clanton (Colin Morgan) to get involved in their sectarian ‘improvement’ of the area, the danger for the family, as to the community as a whole, grows.

 

And while it seems fanciful when Pa tries to suggest emigration to Australia or Canada to Ma, when he is offered permanent employment in England, with the prospect of better pay and better housing, the increasing threat moves them closer to a decision.

 

But for Ma – and for Buddy – the prospect of leaving their home, families, friends and much more is terrifying.

 

While Branagh’s film has already garnered awards and much praise, it has also been criticised in some quarters for being overly sentimental and for downplaying The Troubles.

 

I’m long enough in the tooth to remember reports from Northern Ireland – and of bombings in England. I remember bomb hoaxes at my girls’ grammar school on the outskirts of Manchester in the 1970s, when we would stand for ages in the cold while the fire brigade checked the building. Because you couldn’t afford to be casual.

 

I remember too, the revived IRA campaign – the bombs in the City of London, one of which rattled the windows of the flat that The Other Half and I shared, one evening when I was home alone. It was terrifying. And another on a morning when I looked out from our bedroom window and saw the cloud from the explosion rising around the Nat-West building, less than a mile away. The south-west of traditionally working-class Hackney is a stone’s throw from the City.

 

In other words, I most certainly would not play down the history of what happened.

 

But back to Branagh’s film specifically. It makes clear, for instance, that the British troops sent to Belfast to stop the violence seemed remarkably forgetful about who they were supposed to be protecting. It is full of the menace as it shows thugs taking over neighbourhoods and, tragically, dividing communities.

 

It nods to the role Protestant clergy played in the demonisation of their Catholic neighbours (and the hellfire-and-damnation sermon rings absolutely true for this daughter of an evangelical minister).

 

No, it is not some sort of Ken Loach take on Northern Ireland, but I suggest that, if it was, it would have fewer viewers overall, with the potential for less education of more general and less obviously politicised audiences. Perhaps some will actually go and read TA Jackson’s Ireland Her Own after seeing this?

 

Wikipedia describes it as a “comedy-drama”, but while there are some laughs, I think this completely downplays what Branagh has achieved. The Troubles are still raw – see Brexit and the Good Friday Agreement – and I think that this opens up the possibility for a wider audience to perhaps see it differently.

 

Plus, sectarianism and bigotry is as big a problem as ever, across the world. Just as Taika Waititi’s 2019 comedy-drama Jojo Rabbit viewed Nazism from a child’s perspective, and pointed up how children are taught – groomed – into intolerance, so this views the situation in Northern Ireland through a child’s eyes. Yet in avoiding adult sophistication, it makes similar points very clearly. And one could add that, for many English audiences in particular, it might be a slight surprise to see who the thugs are.

 

But back to this film. The cinematography from Haris Zambarloukos is wonderful. The use of music from Van Morrison works perfectly, the decisions on the use of occasional colour are interesting and Branagh’s use of pop cultural references works well.

 

On the performances, there is not a bad one to be seen, but perhaps the big plaudits go to Hill who is remarkable in the central role, and Balfe, who gives a powerhouse turn. Hinds and Dench offer the sort of support grounded in their vast experience and abilities that one would expect.

 

All in all, very much worth seeing.

This way something clever comes

For many of us, if we were not streaming much before the pandemic, that has changed since COVID-19 invaded and changed all our lives.

The Other Half and I, for instance, had one streaming service beforehand (Amazon, as a by-product of other things) and now we have ... well, at least three more than I’m aware of, all of which are for the screening of films or TV and not as a by-product of lower delivery charges.

In general terms, I’d say they’re pretty good value, but it strikes me that, in terms of cinema, that they could be seen as a very positive development.

Between 2016 and the start of the pandemic, the OH and I had developed a big cinema-going habit. For instance, we managed 21 cinema visits in 2018, with 19 the following year.

Of course, 2020 was the first year of the pandemic and we managed just five, of which Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (which we’ve seen in two different National Theatre stage productions) we streamed just before Christmas that year, which came at additional cost, since we'd just lost our wifi service after a big blow-out that lasted into February, and streamed it, therefore, by linking a 4G phone to the TV.

Last year, remarkably – and in spite of the very best efforts of COVID – we managed 12 cinema visits and one streaming of a just-released film (Green Knight, which was on nowhere near us in sensible terms).

The cinema has felt the safest place we can visit, because we can walk to and from our local, and it’s not difficult to choose screenings at the multi-screen cinema we regularly visit that have few people in attendance.

For instance, on my birthday late last year – Saturday 11 December – we went to see Stephen Spielberg’s West Side Story on our nearest Vue’s biggest screen, with approximately 30 people occupying the 430 seats. How safe can you feel these days, in an indoor space, outside your home? We felt perfectly safe that afternoon.

 

But streaming has also meant that we have caught films that we might not have pencilled in for cinema attendance. Just over a week ago, with Ormicron case numbers finally falling in London, we saw Spider-Man: No Way Home at the cinema. And thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

The day after, we got around to streaming Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog.

Wow. Just wow. I’m not sure that, even in a pandemic-free world, I’d have gone to a cinema to see that (which rather makes a fool of me), but a paid-for streaming service ensures that (presumably) the producers get a cut of the takings, rather earlier and presumably at a greater level than if one had to wait a year or more to watch it at home.

And presumably such a mixed release also increases the number of people who see the film.

 

But back to The Power of the Dog specifically. It is a simply stunning film: performances, visuals, music, themes ... all utterly superb. Over a week later, I simply can’t get it out of my head.

 

And similarly today, when the OH and I watched the Apple TV+-produced The Tragedy of Macbeth.

 

It has had a limited cinema release – however minimum a cinema release, that is what is needed in order to ensure that a film qualifies to be considered for the Oscars – but it’s mainstream release was, in effect, on Apple TV+ on Friday and we had signed up to AppleTV+ primarily because we wanted to see it.

 

This is another superb film. I have seen some comments suggesting that the two central performances are somehow ‘underplayed’. These seem to be put about by people who apparently imagine that Shakespeare must be performed in an histrionic manner and can’t imagine it not being so.

 

I’ve seen at least five stage productions, reviewing at least three (one in Spanish) and on that basis, I’ll dare to suggest that I have a clue.

Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as the Macbeths are simply superb. These are controlled performances – no hysterics, sure, but the control helps ensure that the descent into madness in both of them is utterly believable.

And Kathryn Hunter as the trio of witches is creepy beyond belief.

The cinematography – it was shot entirely on stage, entirely in B&W – is simply stunning. This is a visual masterclass. Some have suggested that it echoes Fritz Lang, but it’s much more a case of being influenced by German Expressionist cinema in general, with a nod to Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, plus a big dollop of the lonely, alienating nature of the paintings of Giorgio de Chrico.

The reality is that Joel Coen has created possibly the finest cinematic telling yet of Macbeth – and yes, that includes Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood – while having to work in a world where the cinema was not, physically, easy. And streaming almost certainly means that more people will view the film now, early in its release, than would have done so if its release was limited to a few cinemas, as many ‘arthouse’ films are.

We will only really find out in time how this all pans out, but perhaps streaming and cinema can live alongside each and, indeed, actually benefit each other. I very much hope so.

 

A poem for the winter solstice

 

Winter Solstice

 

Welcome to the shortest day of the year

The heart of the long, dark winter of the soul

When you don’t feel whole,

When the bowl is empty and the bole is bare

And a bear roars up at the stars somewhere

In deepest memories

That arc through the blood

Reigniting fear

As the year burns out and the world spins on

And the purpose of light is forgotten in the night.

 

Amanda Kendal 21 December 2021

Photo: DreamyPixel

West Side Story – winding up the gammons

There’s a film for me, somewhere a film for me ... Well, perhaps I have just found the one. Let’s be clear: I’m talking about Stephen Spielberg’s reworking of West Side Story. And that I was so dazzled by it is perhaps also why I am particularly aware of how much certain right-wing political types have decided they don’t like it – even if they haven’t actually seen it.

It has already upset Deborah Ross, who writes in Tory fan mag, The Spectator, that: “The original brought together Leonard Bernstein (music), Stephen Sondheim (lyrics, RIP), Jerome Robbins (choreography), Ernest Lehman (screenplay) and Robert Wise (director), while this has Spielberg and a new screenplay by Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Kushner. (Look! Another Jewish conspiracy!)”

 

What? WHAT? REALLY? Okay, we’ll come back to this. Because like me, now you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.

 

After opening with asking why anyone would want to “remake” it, she grudgingly acknowledges that this film is “more authentic” than its 1961 predecessor. That’s in part the casting she’s referring to, where the Latino characters are actually played by Latino actors – and not with darkened skin to better match the much darker faces of the white cast members playing Puerto Ricans and heavily made up.

 

Perhaps it’s also that Kushner’s new book makes much clearer the racism at the core of the story, the grinding poverty and the way that these communities are being pushed out to make way for gleaming new developments for the well-to-do.

 

The presence of Rita Moreno in the new film – she won a best supporting actress Oscar for her role as Anita in the first film (and could be up for the same gong in the spring) – as repurposed character, Valentina, is damned patronisingly as “neat”.

 

Valentina

But, as she concludes her opening paragraph, Ms Ross feels that, “in being more so it is also peculiarly less so. Plus there is an elephant in the room. Two, actually”.

 

This is when she goes on to point readers to the ethnicity of the creative team/s, with the implication that that is one of the aforementioned elephants.

 

I’m not linking to the review – if you want to verify this, you can find it yourself, though I have the screengrabs.

 

“Apologies for always going back to the original ...” she notes further on in the review. But she didn’t, given that “the original” was the Broadway show and not the Robert Wise film.

 

Which was a missed opportunity, really, because it would have given her the chance to point out that Arthur Laurents, who wrote the original book for the original stage show, was Jewish too. And it’s a wonder too that she didn’t bother to note that he – and the majority of those mentioned above – were gay or bisexual.

 

One can argue that the fact of being Jewish – and gay or bisexual – actually is relevant in that it can provide the artists in question with an understanding of being an ‘outsider’ – of being ‘othered’ and even reviled; an comprehension that is clear on a number of levels in this show/film.

 

And nor was West Side Story the first musical that had social themes to it. Showboat, which premiered in 1927, highlighted racism too. It was created by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, from Edna Ferber’s 1926 novel. All the creative talents mentioned in this paragraph were also Jewish.

 

Hammerstein went on to work with Richard Rogers (Jewish), creating, among other works, South Pacific (1949), which also had themes about racism. As did The King and I (1944), by the same duo.

 

This is a mere skate over the subjects. But it is worth noting that, in Aspects of Wagner (1968), Bryan Magee notes of the composer’s antisemitism, that he had recognised a “Jewish renaissance” that happened a while after the ghettos had opened. And the creative arts were one area where ‘outsiders’ were freer to get on.

 

One could perhaps similarly say we’re seeing an LGBT+ renaissance now, for comparable reasons and particularly in the creative industries. Or think of how some sports have given black people opportunities where other vocations might still be more closed (and then there’s the inherent racism in seeing black athletes as being uniformally suitable for strength and power events)

 

In Spielberg and Kushner’s West Side Story, the ‘ghetto’ is the slums; the Puerto Ricans are working their way up and out of it, while the white (mostly Polish) gang members are those left behind when the more ambitious members of their parents’ generation moved up and out.

America, with Maria and Bernardo 

 

But back to (apologies) Ms Ross. “I suppose you could say that, whatever else, Spielberg has redefined West Side Story for a new generation, but the older generation? We’re allowed to be a bit grumpy about it,” she intones. 

 

In the interest of clarity, she is apparently 49. I, on the other hand, turned 59 the day I saw the film at the weekend, so I think that I can fairly say that she’s spouting sphericals when she invokes the “older generation”.

 

Reading further (I did it so that you don’t have to) it seems that actually, her “elephants” are the two leads, Rachel Zegler as Maria and Ansel Elgort as Tony, who she doesn’t think are really up to it. Now, it’s absolutely fine to think that, and to write it in a review – but she should have linked it to the “elephants” comment to make clear that’s what she meant.

 

Further, according to the Cambridge Dictionary: “If you say there is an elephant in the room, you mean that there is an obvious problem or difficult situation that people do not want to talk about.”

 

Given that a number of critics have already queried the performances by the central pair – here is ‘lefty’ critic Mark Kermode casting doubt on the quality of Elgort’s performance in discussion with Simon Mayo on BBC Radio 5, so pretty mainstream as just a single example, and uploaded here the day before Ms Ross’s review went live online – it’s difficult to conclude that she’s somehow the only one who wants to mention it.

 

Let’s be generous and assume that this is all just sloppy writing and the Speccie doesn’t employ any actual sub editors to tidy up the dross. I can only see four other explanations, otherwise. Perhaps the real ‘elephant in the room’ is that:

 

• it’s intended as a dig at some sort of cohort of people who shout about ‘Jewish conspiracies’ while still loving musicals, perhaps without knowing that many of the creatives behind them are (whisper it) Jewish;

 

• it’s intended as a dig at ‘lefty-liberal types, who like this sort of thing, with its lefty-liberal ethos, even though they probably all hate Israel – and therefore, all Jewish people – except when liking works by lefty-liberal Jews’. Which intended meaning would be antisemitic itself anyway;

• it really is a “Jewish conspiracy”, because it wouldn’t have been made otherwise;

 

• it’s a straightforward, antisemitic dog whistle.

 

Now, I’m possibly overthinking this, but I’ve never seen anything like it in a review before. It shouldn’t be ignored.

 

A last little point of pedantry: “You will thrill as the overture strikes up,” she trills. Except you won’t. Because there is no overture. There is a prologue. Facts, eh?

Anybodys, from 1961 (left) and 2021 (right)

But it’s not just in the UK. On the other side of The Pond, one US Twitter user, @LethalityJane, shared two tweets from users (IDs blanked out), with some facts to skewer them.

 

The first tweet responded to had claimed: “I will never understand Steven Spielberg’s obsession with wanting to remake West Side Story – a legit American classic – into some woke bullshit. As if the original could ever be improved on. I hope it’s a massive failure.”

 

Another tweet from someone else said: “As I recall West side [sic] Story never had a trans character. One more bow to the woke class not going to see it” [sic].

 

In the interests of showing that gammons are not the brightest, it’s a joy to report that, as Lethality Jane points out, the first film had a character called Anybodys (and think about that name), played by Susan Oakes, a ‘tomboy’ who wanted to run with the Jets.

 

Discussing this with The Other Half, he observed that the whole ‘tomboy’ thing is a trope where such incorrect behaviour will be corrected once the girl meets a real man and is ...

 

Well, indeed – straight romance as a form of conversion therapy.

 

There’s even a 1965 UK musical that works on this precise premise – Charlie Girl – which I saw with my parents and sister in a 1986 revival, when my father got very enthusiastic over Cyd Charisse’s legs.

 

The new film doesn’t say the word ‘trans’, but it doesn’t need to because more people today are more aware of what a ‘tomboy’ could really mean, which has come with a concomitant development and broadening of language usage – even for gammons.

 

A further note of interest is that Anybodys is based on Balthasar in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet(that play being part of the inspiration for West Side Story), who is a servant of and informant for Romeo. Now there was a writer who liked to play with gender ...

Maria and Tony

In terms of the new film being ‘woke’ in general, that could reference the trans character, or be a reference to the Latino cast or even to the racism. In which case, the person being angered has merely illustrated that they don’t know anything about the original show (or the earlier film) or, as I have touched on above, the history of the American musical theatre.

 

As to the film itself – it’s outstanding. Not just because Kushner’s new book does add the grit and clarity to the themes that would have been harder to make so clear in the original Broadway (and Hollywood) versions. The music and lyrics of Bernstein and Sondheim shine through powerfully and the choreography from Justin Peck, which nods toward Robbins’s work, is excellent.

 

Of the cast, I initially had doubts about Elgort’s Tony, but once he hit the first real big note on Maria, my eyes pricked and I had goosebumps everywhere. Zegler makes an angelically pretty Maria, but a feisty one too. And there’s a sense here of the character having much more agency than previously.

 

Riff

Ariana DeBose as Anita, David Alvarez as Bernardo (leader of the Sharks) and Mike Faist as Riff (leader of the Jets), give really top-notch performances, while Ezra Menas combines grit and vulnerability as Anybodys.

 

But if you don’t well up when Rita Moreno sings Somewhere, there’s probably little hope for you.

 

The camerawork is stunning – the haunting opening simply incredible. The whole is a thing of brooding danger and energy; at once both dark and a blaze of light. It’s been said by some to be Spielberg’s best work in two decades – personally, I think it’s one of the finest things he’s ever achieved throughout his entire career.

 

And if it upsets a few gammons? Well, that’s the chocolate glaze on top of the cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake.

Brilliant, timely poems from Roger McGough

Safety in Numbers

Penguin

When I started to voluntarily read poetry in the very late 1980s, it was via the Mersey Sound poets I was pointed toward and whose work I discovered I loved. Poetry, before then, had been the absolute worst pat of my English literature studies at school!

Lord love a duck – I ended up, for my sin of not understanding how to revise properly – having to study Keats three times! Even now, I can only bear part of that poet's Sonnet to Autumn – and that is all of his work that I can stand!

 

Before our actual O’ level studies began at my (state) girls’ grammar school in Manchester, we had briefly been introduced to something or other by Seamus Heaney, and that had piqued my interest at least a little, but I had no opportunity to follow it through.

 

I wrote a couple of quite lengthy poems in my late teens, including one that was a Lancashire spoof of Romeo and Juliet ... “Archibald, Archibald, wherefore art thou, Archibald” ... which might say something. Juvenilia, eh?

 

But while I dabbled over the subsequent decades – dabbled in terms of reading verse, not in terms of writing it – that was exclusively in terms of occasional forays into the world of Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten, whether individually or collectively as the mainstays of the Liverpool poets.

 

Then, right at the start of the first UK lockdown, I suddenly took up my computer again and started poeting. Out of the blue, it became a way to express myself – about lockdown and the pandemic itself, and aboutr some pretty big Life Events that had occurred in the few years immediately beforehand. I didn't expect it or look for it, but that was what happened.

 

This might seem like a long sell, but I’m penning (keyboarding?) a blog, not writing a newspaper piece, so ... bear with, bear with. Or if you don't want to, then fine – farewell.

 

But in early lockdown No1, I started consuming poetry in previously unknown amounts – what does a poetry overdose look like?

 

Anyway, when Penguin’s new edition of Liverpool poet Roger McGough’s verse, Safety in Numbers, was advertised for pre-order, I leapt to do just that.

 

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a collective experience on a rare scale. McGough himself is 84 (looking good on it, though, judging by his social media avatar ... I can only hope for similar for myself).

 

But if you imagine that the age thing is irrelevant, it’s not. Divided into age – and healthy/unhealthy – older people have been massively affected by this virus. Yet as this collection illustrates ... ‘old people’ are not ‘dead or nearly dead’ people.

 

And what is age anyway?

 

It’s a brilliant collection. McGough creates remarkably easy verse to read, but don’t assume that that means it’s either easy or sloppy intellectually speaking. It’s neither. This is brilliant challenge for all of us in these harrowing times.

 

It borrows from some of his previous poems, twisting them to make new points. It deals with the sense of one’s own impending mortality – not least in the wonderful Pascal’s wager-like In My Corner. 

 

Advice on Writing a Poem suggests don’t! Don’t write any poetry ... but then cites some of those who have ignored such advice, up to and including Amanda Gorman. He’s bang up to date and still self-deprecatory in the best possible way – and don't treat him as someone who has the final word.

 

There are threads running through the collection about ageing ... about memory and the dread fear of memory loss (see Norse mythology and Odin – this is old stuff), which he tackles apparently lightly, yet with great heft. He touches on climate change and the despair at politicians globally doing little.

 

There’s the fear of the pandemic – and the unspoken, for many of us – question of whether we will ever see ‘normal’ again and even, what was ‘normal’ in the first place?

 

Throughout, there is a rhythm that makes this a sublimely easy collection to read. But do not be deceived: while hugely enjoyable and accessible, McGough has serious things to say to us all today.

 

This really is a superb collection and well, well worth spending time over.

 

Abba provide a new step on a life’s musical voyage

When Abba last released an album of new work, it was 40 years ago. It was a different world. I was ... coughs ... a mere teenager, studying for A’ levels that included music.

Like millions of other listeners, the Swedish quartet had been a part of life since Waterloo, but while I liked their music, I didn’t own any discs or cassettes.

With little pocket money – and a mother reluctant to buy ‘pop’ music for her daughters at birthdays or Christmas – musical presents tended to be classical.

 

My parents were – but were not – music snobs: they had a relatively small collection themselves, including at most, a handful of genuine classical albums, plus my father’s aspirational acquisitions of several boxed sets of Readers’ Digest ‘greatest ever classic tunes’, which I have little memory of ever spinning on the deck.

 

Indeed, as a family, we listened to little music, though I remember my mother listening to Ed Stewpot on the radio at the weekends in the kitchen. Memory can be unreliable – not least as the decades move on – but my only memory of hearing classical music at home was at Christmas, when helping my mother decorate the house as she played her boxed set of Solti’s Messiah.

 

Beyond that, there were occasional spurts of my father’s beloved Johann Strauss II, together with an album of the very poor man’s Waltz King, Waldteufel.

 

That I was studying music in 1981 was down to the lucky accident of having been introduced to classical music, via Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé Suite, at my first (state) girls’ grammar school some years earlier.

 

To invoke Sondheim, I’ve been through Cassidy, the Rollers and more (and already loved lots of show music enough that I could sing almost entire scores from memory), but Kijé made a big difference to my life.

 

If I was listening to something more contemporary – I couldn’t cope with most 20^th classical music until relatively recently – then it was the likes of Kraftwerk, Ultravox and OMD.

 

And yet, and yet ... when my Abba-loving sister ditched her one Abba recording, a seven-inch Chiquitita, guess whose collection it ended up in? It was a number of years before I actually bought any Abba – and then it was Gold, on CD. In recent years, as The Other Half and I have actually invested in a quality record deck, amp etc, I have bought a number of works on vinyl by Ultravox, Kraftwerk and OMD – and Abba Gold.

 

Yet as my love and appreciation and knowledge of classical music has grown over the decades, so has my love of Abba.

 

In crossover mode, I also bought Benny’s Deutsche Grammophon piano album on CD. Because ... if Deutsche Grammophon think it’s worth being connected with ...

 

I left it until late, but I did actually pre-order the new album. And then our needle broke – just before it arrived. So today, I have had the chance to listen.

 

First up, and most important, this is Abba. It sounds like Abba because it is Abba! No ... 40 years haven’t seen the band morph into something different. And honestly, if you want Abba influenced by all the trends in pop music over the last four decades, then really ... you don’t want Abba!

 

So, a few notes on the album itself – to note, I have the blue 180g vinyl release.

 

I’ll start with the concluding track on side one, Just a Notion, which was first recorded in 1978, but never released. This has a deliciously punchy disco beat, great piano line and just the right number of minor chords to be a classic Abba track.

 

I absolutely love it. I have it playing digitally as I’m writing and I’m basically dancing in my seat. Bittersweet, as with so much of Abba – both melodically and lyrically – really superior, feelgood pop. It is fab!

 

That’s my track of the album – but that’s not to say the rest is poor. Far from it. I Still Have Faith has similar qualities.

 

Don’t Shut Me Down is a fine track and, as with so much of Abba’s oeuvre, it’s deceptively bright music to accompany lyrics that reflect less-than-perfect grown-up lives.

 

Some have whinged about Little Things, the Christmas track, but really, while it’s not stunning, but it’s nowhere near as offensive as some are pretending. No ... it is NOT worse that execrable St Winnifred’s School Choir and Grandma, I love You. And if you think it is, then you should seek help.

 

The album concludes with Ode to Freedom, another contemplative track, that, the more you listen to it, grows with you.

 

Indeed, this is all typically deceptive Abba – it’s candy floss but it's not; it's far more than that and, I suspect, people will still be listening to and discussing this in another 40 years when I will likely be long gone.