At BRIGHOUSE LIBRARY , TOMORROW at 7.15 p.m.

Guest readers: Gaia Holmes, Siobhan Morrissey & Winston Plowes

‘The poems, like their author, are tireless and irrepressible. All sorts of voices clamour to be heard here. Kightly has no time for the placid and silver-grey.’           Helena Nelson

And maybe a glass of wine. Just maybe.

Neil Clarkson’s debut collection Build You Again in Wood was launched yesterday at The Albert Hotel, Huddersfield, to an audience of about 25. Neil has been ill for a fortnight but struggled in and read excellently, gaining strength through the evening from the appreciative response to his wonderful poems. He demonstrated the versatility of his writing, taking us from the Yorkshire dialect through a whimsical but pointed take on social and political issues, concluding with the moving autism sequence. In the last-named he was accompanied between poems by the finger-picking of his guitarist friend, Tom.
Guest readers were Charlotte Wetton and Nigel King. They’ve never read better and did full justice to their marvellous material, which augurs well for their forthcoming Calder Valley Poetry publications.
A huge thank you to those who came along, braving the wake of Storm Doris. There was a lovely atmosphere in that Albert back room, as there always is.

Build You Again in Wood, the poems of Neil Clarkson, will be launched this evening at The Albert Hotel, Huddersfield (opposite the library) from 7.30 pm. Guest readers Charlotte Wetton and Nigel King. See you there, in your thousands.
‘… humour, audacious imagery and an anarchic and effective use of rhyme and rhythm …’ Stephanie Bowgett
‘Passion, compassion, deadpan Yorkshire wit and clarity of vision …’ John Duffy

Michael Haslam’s new collection Scaplings, Star Jelly and a Seeming Sense of Soul was launched last evening, the day after his 70th birthday, at the Stubbing Wharf, Hebden Bridge, in the company of a large audience of poets, friends and family. Michael’s poems (collection available from this website in a day or two) take us historically, linguistically and topographically around the upper Calder Valley, its cloughs and groughs, sikes and slacks, royds and goits and lumbs, and much more. He was on great form, explaining his 36-poem sequence, in particular his fascination with the enigmatic star jelly.
Guest poets were Peter Riley, who read a dozen new Pennine Tales, in which there are still lights in isolated farmhouses, moorland buses (the 594 Crimsworth Dene) and the Hare and Hounds at Lane Ends, and Mark Hinchliffe, with his paeans to Ted Hughes, Billy the Kid and others.
Thanks to all who came along; especial thanks to Michael Haslam and his poems.

IT’S TONIGHT! SEE YOU THERE.

The launch of Michael Haslam’s poetry collection Scaplings, Star Jelly and a Seeming Sense of Soul. Friday 17th February, 7.30 pm, upstairs at the Stubbing Wharf, Kings Street, Hebden Bridge, HX7 5HL. Guest readers Peter Riley and Mark Hinchcliffe. This is Calder Valley Poetry’s first publication of 2017, the first of four which are coming up in the next month. Please come along. It’s free. Someone might even buy you a half. (This is not a promise.)
‘… dialect and science, the meanings of place names, star jelly and deoxyribonucleic acid … the song of where he is, which is the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire and the world …’ (Peter Riley)

IT’S TONIGHT! SEE YOU THERE.

There are now two days to go before the launch of Michael Haslam’s poetry collection Scaplings, Star Jelly and a Seeming Sense of Soul. Friday 17th February, 7.30 pm, upstairs at the Stubbing Wharf, Kings Street, Hebden Bridge, HX7 5HL. Guest readers Peter Riley and Mark Hinchcliffe. This is Calder Valley Poetry’s first publication of 2017, the first of four which are coming up in the next month. Please come along. It’s free. Someone might even buy you a half. (This is not a promise.)
‘… dialect and science, the meanings of place names, star jelly and deoxyribonucleic acid … the song of where he is, which is the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire and the world …’ (Peter Riley)

Friday 17 February, 7.30 pm – Stubbing Wharf, Kings Street, Hebden Bridge, HX7 5HL. Scaplings by Michael Haslam.
‘A publication by Michael Haslam is an event of some significance.’
(David Herd)
(Guest readers Mark Hinchliffe and Peter Riley.)

Thursday 23 February, 7.30 pm – Albert Hotel, Huddersfield. Build You Again in Wood by Neil Clarkson.
‘… a singular and powerful poetic voice …’ (Stephanie Bowgett)
(Guest readers Nigel King and Charlotte Wetton.)

Thursday 2 March, 7.15 pm – Brighouse Library. Out of Bounds by Ross Kightly.
‘The poems, like their author, are tireless and irrepressible.’
(Helena Nelson)
(Guest readers Gaia Holmes, Siobhan Morrissey
and Winston Plowes.)

Thursday 16 March, 7.30 pm – Victorian Craft Beer Café, 18-22 Powell Street, Halifax, HX1 1LN. I Refuse to Turn into a Hatstand by Charlotte Wetton.
‘… compelling and charged … I’ve been looking forward to this pamphlet
for a long time.’ (Helen Mort)
(Guest readers Anthony Costello and Steve Ely.)

Review of ‘Scaplings, Star Jelly and a Seeming Sense of Soul’’ by Michael Haslam

On 17 February 2017, Calder Valley Poetry will publish ‘Scaplings, Star Jelly and a Seeming Sense of Soul’’ by Michael Haslam. The launch will be held at the Stubbing Wharf, Kings Street, Hebden Bridge on Friday 17th February at 7.30 pm. Guest readers former Forward prize nominee, Peter Riley, and Deputy Chair of the Elmet Trust, Mark Hinchcliffe.

There are four reasons why this book should be on your reading list. The first is that the author is an outstandingly original, witty and entertaining writer. The second is that he is associated with an important and innovative group of late Modernist poets called, ‘the Cambridge school’. The third is that his vision of the Upper Calder Valley, its topography, geology and life, is as distinctive and powerful as Ted Hughes’s, but utterly different. Whereas Hughes’s was ‘grim up North’, Haslam’s valley is brimming with life and (pro)creative energy. Finally, he speaks with authority about labouring in the post-industrial present – an experience which is at odds with Hebden Bridge’s fashionable self-image.
Haslam’s style – his swagger even – feeds on bucolic and picaresque 16th century models. His landscape is full of folklore and fantasy. However, in this book, he also draws on the style and manner of the early Romantics, particularly Wordsworth, Blake and Coleridge. Whilst there are direct references to Kubla Khan and Jerusalem, thematically, this book is more like Coleridge’s masterpiece of alienation, Dejection: An Ode. (‘The oakleaves fall and my imagination of the real has failed’)

But unlike the Romantic poets, Haslam entertains seriousness, then trashes it. His words, he says, are ‘the eructions of a croaking poet’ (referring both to the frogs which breed in huge numbers in abandoned millponds hereabouts and to his own ageing process). Nature, life is the ‘procreative evolution personal to all’; yet for him, it is an increasingly distant phenomena. Not being dead’, he says, with mordant humour, ‘comes after being born’.

Notwithstanding all the comedy in the book, there is a valedictory undertone. Nature may be procreative but the poet is not. He is set aside, tragically aware that “ the body..[is] the thought of matter”: “ the lusty lads are up out and about in tractors…trailing such rich dung in the drying sun…I don’t think I am one of them”.

Some readers may have difficulties with the way this book plays with patriarchal tropes, like the female muse, the female landscape or just the fact that women appear mainly as the objects of desire (except for Peggy, who hangs out the washing). But I’d argue that you’d be wrong to dismiss this poem. Firstly, his thoughts are not meant to be definitive. ‘Enter Fool’ Haslam says of himself, ‘who rings a bell’. Secondly, nothing is fixed. Nature, Haslam says, is ‘transgender’. And we’re not meant to take any of this at face value. Finally, the subject is a man, him, facing physical decline and death. He handles that difficult subject with humour, humanity and honesty.

Sometimes to ‘understand’ the poem you have to follow the sound not the sense. He creates an entertaining verbal delirium: ‘Rhythm goes dumb and dumb be dumber’. In his own words, this playfulness can form ‘the pure idea of song’. His style is both visionary and visceral:
‘the peewits flap with rainclouds overlapping crying echoes
In the brain for love, come out for nought but doubt’.

And he can’t resist a pun: “Gravestones are dated”

Before I finish this review, I should say something about scaplings and star jelly. Both things are defined in the text. Scaplings are ‘wedge shaped lumps of offcut gritstone”. Star jelly is a gelatinous substance found on grass. Apparently, it has no DNA and thematically it counterpoints nature’s procreative energy and decay: ‘What is nor male nor female, wasn’t born and hasn’t died”, he riddles, echoing the most ancient poetry of our language.
I urge you to read this book. It will make you laugh, cry, astonish and possibly annoy you.

Cllr Jonathan Timbers
Mayor of Hebden Royd 2014-15.

The next Calder Valley Poetry publication will be ‘Scaplings’ by Michael Haslam. Launch to be held at the Stubbing Wharf, Kings Street, Hebden Bridge on Friday 17th February at 7.30 pm. Guest reader Peter Riley and one other. ‘A Michael Haslam publication is an event of some significance.’ (David Herd)