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Mariangela
Ian SeedThree texts
Rupert M LoydellVessel
Melita SchaumSome Guts
Simon Collings (with collages by John Goodby)Three Short Fictions
Meg PokrassThe Campus Novel
Peter RobinsonCharlie Boy and Captain Fitz: A One-Act Play
Alan WallSnapshot, Sachsenhausen and three more poems
Peter BlairSeven short poems
Lucian Staiano-DanielsFour prose poems
Olivia TuckThe Back of Beyond and two more prose poems
Tony KittTwo poems
Moriana Delgadofrom Reverse | Inverse
Lucy HamiltonSix haibun
Sheila E. MurphyKingfishers and cobblestones and five more new poems
Kitty HawkinsZion Offramp 76–78
Mark ScrogginsCome dancing with me and two more new poems
Marc VincenzPlease Swipe Right
Chloe Phillips‘Three Postcards’ and a prose poem
Linda BlackStill Life
Melita SchaumIn memory of
John Taylor with drawings by Sam ForderImmortal Wreckage
Will StoneNew in Translation
Snowdrifts
Marina Tsvetaeva, trans. by Belinda CookePoems from Prière (1924)
Pierre Jean Jouve, trans. by Will StoneSix Prose Poems
Pietro di Marchi, trans. by Peter Robinson -
A new Review of John Matthias’s Some Words on Those Wars by Garin Cycholl.
Anthony Howell’s review, A Clutch of Ingenious Authors: Michelene Wandor Four Times EightyOne: Bespoke Stories | Annabel Dover Florilegia | Sharon Kivland Abécédaire
Essays by Alan Wall
· ‘King of Infinite Space’: The Virtue of Uncertainty
· AI: Signs of the Times
· The Lad from Stratford
· Stanley Kubrick: Sex in the CinemaWill Stone’s Missing in Mechelen and At Risk of Interment
G. Kim Blank’s Civilizing, Selling, and T. S. Eliot Curled Up behind the Encyclopædia Britannica
Tronn Overend’s Samuel Alexander on Beauty
AND Conor Robin Madigan’s Master Singer, Simon Collings’s Robert Desnos, Screenwriter, and Igor Webb’s Never Again
New Fortnightly Serials
from The Ruinad
Anthony Howellfrom White Ivory
Alan Walland much more below this column.
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Audio archive: Two poems, with an audio track, from Heart Monologues by Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani | Daragh Breen’s Aural Triptych | Hayden Carruth reads Contra Mortem and Journey to a Known Place | Anthony Howell reads three new poems | James Laughlin reads Easter in Pittsburgh and five more | Peter Robinson reads Manifestos for a lost cause, Dreamt Affections, Blind Summits and Oblique Lights
Previous Serials
2011: Golden-beak in eight parts. By George Basset (H. R. Haxton).
2012: The Invention of the Modern World in 18 parts. By Alan Macfarlane.
2013: Helen in three long parts. By Oswald Valentine Sickert.
2016: The Survival Manual by Alan Macfarlane. In eight parts.
2018: After the Snowbird, Comes the Whale, by Tom Lowenstein.
LONDON
Readings in The Room: 33 Holcombe Road, Tottenham Hale, London N17 9AS – £5 entry plus donation for refreshments. All enquiries: 0208 801 8577
Poetry London: Current listings here.
Shearsman readings: 7:30pm at Swedenborg Hall, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1. Further details here.NEW YORK
10 reliable poetry venues in NYC.
· The funeral of Isaac Albéniz
· Coleridge, poetry and the ‘rage for disorder’
· Otto Rank
· Patrons and toadying · Rejection before slips
· Cut with a dull blade
· Into the woods, everybody.
· Thought Leaders and Ted Talks
· How Mary Oliver ‘found love in a breathing machine.’
AND read here:
· James Thomson [B.V.]
A dilemma for educators:
Philosophy and the public impact.
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Michelene Wandor on Derek Walcott and the T.S. Eliot Prize.
.Nick Lowe: the true-blue Basher shows up for a friend.
Anthony Howell: The new libertine in exile.
Kate Hoyland: Inventing Asia, with Joseph Conrad and a Bible for tourists.
Who is Bruce Springsteen? by Peter Knobler.
Martin Sorrell on John Ashbery’s illumination of Arthur Rimbaud.
The beauty of Quantitative Easing.
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The marital subtext.
A Fortnightly Review.
State of the Union
by Nick Hornby.
Directed by Stephen Frears.
Cast: Rosamond Pike and Chris O’Dowd.
Ten ten-minute episodes.
First broadcast on Sundance TV in May 2019, then available on BBC iplayer and again on BBC2 HD.
By MICHELENE WANDOR.
IN A WAY, this programme is reminiscent of Bedtime, a half-hour series written by Andy Hamilton, broadcast in 2001, and starring Sheila Hancock and Timothy West. From behind the privacy of their bedroom curtains, this mini-drama delved into the emotional intimacies of an older couple.
State of the Union is on the opposite, more public, side of the marital spectrum: Tom and Louise meet in a dreary, virtually empty, Kentish Town pub before they visit a therapist to discuss their marriage. I watched first because a friend recommended it, and was gripped by the springy, bantering interplay of the dialogue, the marvellously intimate, subtle, nuanced close-up performances and the careful, unob(and unin)trusive direction. End of story? Well, not quite.
Beneath my admiration a couple of things prompted some curiosity. First… what was the whole thing actually about?
Beneath my admiration a couple of things prompted some curiosity. First, how did the gender-dynamic in this imaginative piece actually play out? Was it conventional, or original, or challenging stereotypes? Then, more deeply, what was the whole thing actually about? — besides the obvious and fascinating incursion into the issue of what a ‘marriage’ is or could be, and the specifics of this troubled moment in a relationship.
The gender issue first. She drinks white wine, he drinks a pint, So far, so gender-conventional. However, there is subversive play with entrenched expectations: she is not only a scientist (gerontologist), but she is the breadwinner, supporting him, an out-of-work music journalist. Does this arts/science divide have spin-offs in –again, conventional – assumptions that women can express emotions and that men can’t? My sense, as I was watching, was that on the whole, Tom talked more about what he was feeling. Sure, Louise expresses regret, is sometime tearful, is clearly a feeling, passionate woman. However, there is an interesting clue in the linguistic style: Louise asks many more questions than Tom, and this, in itself, puts her at some distance from her own emotional expression, constantly directing attention onto him. It is almost as if her ‘character’ operates at times as a proto-therapist, and this gives Tom more emotional ‘knowledge’. So the question here is – do some of the role reversals leave her with too little emotion, because he is given the lion’s share?
There is another interesting play with gendered assumptions. Louise (and an unnamed minor female figure) both physically ‘attack’ their men; the latter hits her bloke just after they emerge from the therapist’s house, and Louise pushes Tom hard, so that he falls over in front of a car, as they are crossing the road. Neither of these physical actions has any serious consequences — indeed, it gives rise later to a degree of wittiness between Tom and Louise, which I won’t give away. A touch of domestic ‘violence’ from the women, contrasting with the dominant reality that most recorded domestic violence is by men. Also, at one point the man from this unnamed couple comes into the pub, and he is crying — a small challenge to the idea that men find it hard to, never, rarely, shed tears. Later, his other half arrives and they leave the pub together, she holding him by the hand, almost as if she is leading a child – just subtly in the background of the main Tom-Louise action. The woman seems – even if very briefly – to be dominant, while the man is emotional. Subtle role reversal?
Although their marriage may be in crisis, the subtlety of the dialogue and their familiarity with each other’s minds demonstrates great intimacy. Tom and Louise do crosswords together, they seem to have no conflicts over their two children. Despite the crisis, they unravel – over narrative intervals – sexual issues, each enlightening the other, sometimes defensive, sometimes just not necessarily finding the right words. There are differences of opinion certainly; even Brexit gets a mention. They play off each other, batting metaphors to and fro. This is the stuff that happens between two people who know each other very well indeed.
The second major question – what is the whole thing about? – can be answered in two ways. The most obvious is that, via this very specific relationship, a clear major theme is the nature of marriage, and particularly long-term marriage. Must there be, need there be, sex? Is sex lust, love, desire, duty, feeling? Over time, does boredom win out? Do all marriages drift into permanent marital crisis? Where does friendship fit in?
None of these questions are asked crudely, and that is a great tribute to the nuanced drama this is – it is billed as a ‘comedy series’, but I suspect that is more to garner viewers than an accurate description. Without giving anything away, it is possible to say that after ten episodes, there is a significant rapprochement between them. This has consequences for the therapy, which, again, I won’t give away in terms of plot.
So what is the whole thing about, beyond the theme of marriage? The answer to this lies in the format and the way the story plays out within that – in other words, what is conveyed via the subtext. Tom and Louise meet ten minutes before the therapy session, which conventionally lasts for fifty minutes. In these ten minutes (as if borrowed from the ‘therapy’ hour) they range over issues and feelings which would normally ‘belong’ in the therapy sessions. We never see the actual therapy sessions (of course not – they are private) – but we are privy to the way Tom and Louise show their ability to deal with the issues – and we also are privy to the consequences this has for their life together outside the sessions.
In view of the ending (which I am not giving away, though by now you may well have guessed it!), this means that the overarching subtext is that therapy is not necessary, or that it may not be necessary, or that it may be superfluous. It is as if the ten-minute ‘sessions’ are, in fact, a successful substitute for therapy. That, it seems to me, to be the surprising but, actually, fascinating subtext of this mini-drama.
However, given the delicacy of the enterprise, the ending leaves us with a twin message: Tom’s very last affectionate line to Louise as he goes to get them another drink (back to man-buys-woman-drink), spoken out loud. Sotto voce, as he goes to the bar, we just about hear him say ‘same again’. How about that for subtext?
State of the Union is also published by Penguin Books, set out as a novella, rather than as TV scripts. Or just stream it (on Sundance) or watch it on the BBC iPlayer. See what you think.
♦
Michelene Wandor is a poet, playwright and short story writer. She has also written a critique of Creative Writing — The Author is Not Dead, Merely Somewhere Else: Creative Writing Reconceived (Palgrave).
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Publication: Tuesday, 29 October 2019, at 11:02.
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