Before We Go Any Further: Tristram Fane Saunders
This week's blog is written by Tristram Fane Saunders, author of Before We Go Any Further, which is published this month. Use the code JUNEBOOKS for 20% off the collection and free UK P&P.
Index
Hullo. Good to see you. Thanks for coming by. We could talk about the book, but I don’t want to waffle. There are a hundred things I could say, but I’ve no way of knowing which will be – to you, specifically – of real interest. So, to answer the obvious questions first: yes, 10 years, no, Penge, with difficulty, mostly indoors.
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I loved Coleridge’s Conversation Poems before I’d actually read them. I mean, who could resist conversation poems? (Ditto Frank O’Hara: who wouldn’t eat a Lunch Poem?) The poems that excite me often sound like a real voice speaking, thinking things through, with the generous sense of a space left open for a reply. I’m not sure Coleridge’s actual conversation left much room for his interlocutors, but that’s by the by.
The painful, funny, beautiful (delete as applicable) mess that poems are is this: no reply is forthcoming. I’m where I am, and you’re there on the other side of the words, with WS Graham’s beast in the space between us.
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"Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo,” said Don Marquis, friend to the cockroach poet Archy, with whom I have much in common: we both write very, very slowly, by hurling our hard shells at a typewriter one key at a time.
Writing this bit here is, I guess, a way of listening for the echo. If you’ve stumbled across this, I’d honestly love to hear from you. To ask me about the book, or poetry generally, or, y’know, just talk about the weather, drop a line to tristramfanesaunders@gmail.com.
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“The poet’s first business is mentioning things,” said Louis MacNeice. I like poets who mention things: Marianne Moore, Timothy Donnelly, Karen Solie, Paul Muldoon. But now I worry I’m just namedropping, mentioning’s ugly cousin. Things are better than names, just as poems are better than poets.
While I was figuring out what, or how, to tell you about the book, I settled on mentioning some of the things mentioned in it. So, then, here’s an index. It’s arguably no less useful than the book itself.
For ease of reference, you could print this out and fold it into your copy of Before We Go Any Further. Alternatively, if you are reading this on a smartphone and lack access to a printer, simply affix your phone (screen facing outwards) to the book’s front cover with an industrial-strength adhesive, making sure to keep your browser open at this blog.
INDEX
Agar, Eileen—40
Alien vs Jaws, unproduced screenplay for—57
Andrew, St—73
Attenborough, David—18
Barabajagal—56
Battersea—74
BBC—29
bees—28-29
birds—see bowerbirds, moorhens, parakeets, pigeons, Raven, seagulls or Stone the Crows
birds and the bees—see sex
Bishop, Elizabeth—59
Blue Planet—18
Bogart, Humphrey—54
bonfires—74
bowerbirds—65
CGI—35
Cabinet of Dr Caligari, The—15-16
Canada—21
Christmas—38
Clifford—61
Clue/Cluedo—72
communication, failed–15-23, 25-26, 54-56,
communication, cautious optimism about—11, 26, 31, 69, 71, 75-80
continental drift—23
Crystal Palace Park & Penge—61-69
Cure, the—73
dams—24
Dickens, Charles—67
dinosaurs—66-68
diving helmets—17, 40
dog, red, big—see Clifford
Donovan—56
Dulwich—17
fandom—52-53
fly, trapped in my ear—70
Franklin, Benjamin—78
giraffe, blue, feathered—17
ghosts—39, 54-46
glass harmonicas—77-78s
Hanway, Jonas—75
Hawkwind—64
heads, aching, severed, hidden or misplaced–11, 15-17, 22, 26, 28-29, 40, 53, 57, 62-63, 66-68, 70
Heaney, Seamus—35-36
hijacking of this book by another author—43-51
hooves—42
honesty, impossibility of—21-22, 28-29, 36, 77-80
honey—28-29
Hulk, the—15
insomnia—15-16, 18-19, 21-22, 30
Jones, Owen (architect)—61
kink—73
kites—78
laptop, rusty—64-65
London, mental weather forecast in south-east boroughs of—17, 20, 61-69, 74
Lucia—65, 67-8
lunary—see honesty or mugwort
lunch—41, 61
lungs—29, 31
Macneice, Louis—13
maze, London’s largest living—62-63
melancholy—16-30, 39, 42, 54-55, 56, 61
memory, arguments against—27, 62-63
milk—21-22
monkfish, mobile teeth of the—18
moon—21-22, 30, 72
moorhens—64
mugwort—22
Naugler, Bradford—37
nettle tea—21-22
nothing—21, 27, 31, 35, 54, 61, 69, 76, 77,
Ortelius, Abraham—23
parakeets—64-65
pigeons, magnetosensitive heads of—11
Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur—79
Quinn, Harley—15
rats, white—69
Raven, trickster-god—21
Red Bull—18
Rimmington, Edith—17
Scott-Heron, Gil—64
seagulls—37
sex—15, 72, 73
silkworms & silkmoths—20
Sisters of Mercy—73
sloth, sculpture of—68
something—21, 25, 27, 28, 30, 61, 63, 67-68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 79
Stacia—65
Stone the Crows—64
suncream—71
surrealism—17, 40, 41, 42
talking clock—18
television—15, 18, 23, 25
things—22, 25, 29, 41, 42, 62, 65, 68, 70, 77-78
trivia—62
umbrellas—75-76
Ventnor Botanic Gardens—28-29
water—17, 21, 24, 26, 28, 29, 54, 57, 66, 75-76, 77
Wikipedia—65
X—52-53
you—11, 15, 17, 20, 23, 25-26, 28-31, 38, 40, 42, 54, 57, 65-69, 71-72, 74, 76, 77-80
Z—28
Watch Tristram introduce the collection.