Skip to content

Cluster index: Ian Seed

Mariangela.

Ian Seed: ‘Duncan remembered she had not wanted to go into the photo booth at Turin Porto Nuovo station the evening he had left on a train. She was cross, thought she wouldn’t look good on a passport photo.’

The Touch.

Ian Seed: ‘Another day over, he walked down the steps into the metro at Piazza Duomo. It had been raining and there was a smell of damp clothes, mingled with a more distant odour of sweat. People hurrying home. Not that Martin was in any rush.’

The wheel in the tree.

Ian Seed: ‘I walked into a square behind Corso Garibaldi, one of the few quiet spots in that area of Milan. I looked up at a tree’s bare branches against the night sky, and suddenly remembered the front cover of Penguin Modern Poets 12. I knew I’d made the right decision, even though I had little idea of what I was going to do next.’

A resumé of Resistance.

Ian Seed: ‘”Curriculum Violette” offers us a fleeting and yet powerful portrait of the life of Violette Szabo (1921-45), a French-born British agent who fought alongside members of the French Resistance and who died in Ravensbrück concentration camp.’

High Street report.

Ian Seed: ‘I recognised the voice of the famous poet P. He was complaining about the paparazzi who kept bothering him whenever he stepped outside the building where he lived on King’s Street, Chelsea.’

Leave-taking.

Ian Seed: ‘Just a few hours before, we’d tried to make love. It’d been coming on for weeks now, part of the unspoken reason that Monique and Julien let me stay there. Julien had confided in me once that he could no longer get an erection with Monique. They’d been together too many years, sweethearts since their days in high school in Zurich. He had another lover.’

Seven small fictions.

Ian Seed: ‘Free now, I wondered where I could live without being thought of as useless and strange. Perhaps in Rome I would find work explaining to foreigners the meaning of pictures for sale along the river embankment, some of which had been painted by an Italian friend before we lost touch.’

Five poets remark on prose poetry.

Peter Riley: ‘To avoid endless problems of definition, it would help if they were called “short prose pieces”, which is one thing they undeniably are. This was Eliot’s idea (who hated them). ‘

More new translations from ‘The Dice Cup’, tranche 4.

Max Jacob: ‘When I went inside, two women wanted to know which of them I liked best and I liked both of them best. A fine gentleman showed us how to dance the English Chain and the lesson went on and on. While the dance was being organised, the gas lamp (did we have a gas lamp?) was turned down and then the flame was increased as the music grew louder, thanks to a technical innovation as bold as it was ingenious…’

Even more new translations from ‘The Dice Cup’.

Max Jacob (Ian Seed’s translation): ‘He had come down…but how? Then couples larger than life descended too. They came from the air in cases, inside Easter eggs. They were laughing, and the balcony of my parents’ house was tangled in threads dark as gunpowder. It was terrifying. The couples settled in my childhood home and we watched them through the window. For they were wicked.’

Back in the building.

Ian Seed: ‘Things went downhill for Elvis with tragic momentum after 1974. I have to admit that for a few years I didn’t listen much to his music anymore. I couldn’t tie in my discovery of poets such as T.S. Eliot with my admiration for Elvis. ‘

New translations from ‘The Dice Cup’.

Ian Seed: ‘In 1894 Jacob left Quimper to study law in Paris, but abandoned his studies two years later to become an art critic. In 1899 he decided to become a painter, supporting himself through a series of menial clerical jobs. When he met Picasso in 1901, the two became friends immediately. Picasso expressed his admiration for some poems Jacob showed him. From this time on, Jacob regarded poetry as his true vocation.’

Discovery and rediscovery.

Ian Seed: ‘It feels like cheating. I have not had to struggle with my narrative prose poems in the way that I do with other kinds of writing, and yet I believe that the best of them are the only writings of mine that are somehow genuinely themselves. They have needed just a little nurturing from me in order to make their own way in the world.’

New translations from ‘The Dice Cup’.

Ian Seed: ‘Max Jacob’s father was a tailor and the owner of an antique shop. Jacob’s large family, including uncles, aunts and cousins, often make an appearance in his poems. In 1894 Jacob left Quimper to study law in Paris, but abandoned his studies two years later to become an art critic. In 1899 he decided to become a painter, supporting himself through a series of menial clerical jobs. When he met Picasso in 1901, the two became friends immediately.’

Nine small fictions.

Ian Seed: ‘They pointed up at us and laughed, but the laughter had anger in it. I led my wife by another alleyway back to the hotel. I hoped they would not follow us, but a large crowd soon gathered outside and began to shout and shake their fists.’