A Young Person's Guide to Anglo-Saxon Poetry

My translations of Wendish seafaring discourses from the Anglo-Saxon are awaiting publication. The companies I have approached have been, alas, steadfast in refusal, and many have been quick to point out that both my style and subject are antique and irrelevant. One saucy fellow described my work as 'irredeemably at odds with the preferences of today's reading public.'

'Problem is, it's crap,' he added charmlessly. I think they are all quite wrong; in the meantime, it occurred to me that young people these days might take a dear pleasure in writing their own alliterative poetry, yet are inclined to hold this particular verse-form at a little distance. The narrator's CV in any Anglo-Saxon poem can seem a little daunting: most have fought/lost/been maimed in at least two full-scale epic battles; many have wandered the earth for an unaccountable period of time, meditating on their own terrible grief and physical discomfort; few have not buried most or all of their friends, lovers, liege-lords and family members; one or two even begin to show signs of critical mental illness.

Apart from the alliterative technique which is easily mastered, there is a fairly steady formula for Anglo-Saxon verse:

1) Choose your setting. There are only really three options open to you, which makes this a pretty painless choice. You can choose either a) the aftermath of a horrific battle or b) a small boat hopelessly lost miles out at sea or c) a dream in which the narrator converses with a valuable holy relic. All settings will compel the narrator to dwell diseasedly on dead companions and personal misery, so your choice will only have implications for your poem's scenery and decorative imagery.

2) Marshal your cliches. Here is a list of stock words and phrases that constitute the bulk of any Anglo-Saxon poem. Repetition of any or all of them should give your poem that sense of tedious, self-indulgent lamentation that is the trademark of all Old English verse: 'noble/brave/beloved kinsman', 'freezing waves', 'bitter sorrows', 'breast-cares', breast-companions', 'breast-chamber', 'miserable', 'grieving', 'far from home', 'generous lord', 'covered over with earth/snow/frost (or all three)'.

3) Leave room for considerable ambiguity in the text. This is not strictly a criterion of Anglo-Saxon poetry, or even of poetry in general, and prosecution of this advice will In No Way improve the quality of your (in most cases) decidedly amateurish poetry. However, years from now when the accidental series of events that constituted your life are scrutinised by the fickle vulture of posterity, your poems will receive greater attention and critical acclaim if they prove 'difficult'. See the poetry of William Empson for conclusive evidence that this is the case.

From the Diary of Anchovey Hamiltonne

I dide preapare mieselfe fore a fancie dresse partie, inne the mannere of a Bannannae, an afrik fruitte of some renowne. Itte was a pore partie, ande one manne was verie rude to mee. I rite this in a foulle moode.

Two can play at this game.

Ezra goes to the publishers

Harold Pinter: A visit to the Publishers

Isaac Hamilton's Curiosities of Literature

Extracts from the diary of Anchovey Hammiltonne
(Hammiltonne, an ancestor of mine, is undoubtedly the most minor of all the minor Elizabethans. His plays are well preserved, in good quarto and folio versions, but have been assiduously avoided by every literature department in the western world. The only exception is in France where he is considered the finest playwright of his day for reasons that French academics are unwilling or unable to divulge.)

March 02 1594
Wente too see Kyd, who is verey ille from a poxe whiche he caught offe a spanish whore. I declared itte to be a Spanishe Tragidee. Hea muste have been verrie ille, for he smilled not at the jeste. I wente home in ille tempre, but when I repeatted the jeste to mie courtesan she laughed verrie merrielie. I entered upon her with great haste. Afterwards I beat the eidle wontonne with my shoe, at felle asleape atte once.

March 03
Johnsonne has killed anothere mann, and no tavernne will give mee creditte. I wille go to visit Will Shaekespere.

March 04
Hadde a poore meal with Will. Only fisshe was served. I coulde notte understande why, and he woulde not telle me. Afterwards we went to the taverne. I drank greatly of sack, while Will tooke but littel. He seemed moste friendly withe a certaine Ethiopeianne servinge girle, and they exchanged much affecsionne at the tabel. We were home and in bedde earlie, but a greate hungere woake me fromme sleap. I creppte like a mowse to the kitchenne, and was shoakked to sea Mr Marlowe, who I hadde thoughte deade, eatinge heartily of breadde and wrighting atte the taebel. Itte seemes that a certainne madde Jesuitte seeks to kille Mr Marlowe as a spie. Shagespeare, who was the onlie manne to warne Mr Marlowe, offered his house as a refugge, untille the daunger should passe. Mr Marlowe has beene passing his workes to Sheeksbeare to bee performede. He askede mee with greatte eagernesse if I hadde seene hisse comeddie Titusse Andronicusse. I saidde no, but a plaiy of the same name bie Sheakspere had been moste popular. He looked most greene. We dranke much ale at the kitchenne, ande I retirede so drunkenne thate I trippelly befouled Master Will's seconde beste bedde.


Fig 1: The Frontispiece for Hammiltonne's final work - A Prettie Pottle Pot of Ha'Pennie Witte or I Hate Mye Bloodie Publisshere

Misery memoir fraud gets egg on face, mothers speak out, small children weep uncontrollably

Caveat emptor! The line between fiction and biography (auto- or otherwise) is one we should not fear to cross - at any time, without warning or respect for ordinary decency. Crappy hard-childhood memoirs are (to plagiarise Tom Lehrer - I don't think he'd mind) 'the particularly fashionable form of idiocy' among the young middle-class. Most people don't actually give money to charities, but they feel they're doing their bit to counter abuse, poverty and deprivation by reading about them in books and producing, on occasion, an earnest, charitable tear.

The only losers in the 'fraudobiography' debacle are those 'who associate authenticity with artistic merit'. If I thought it would boost sales, I would not hesitate personally to lay claim to all of the positive accomplishments of the characters in my books. Alas, when the best part of the subject matter comprises 8th-century Wendish seafaring exploits, the title Dogtooth: The Autobiography might arouse more than a little suspicion.

Chairman Mao: Hero of Harriet Harman

Chairman Mao, that gregarious Asian

Was skilled in the art of persuasion.

He said "wayward Tibet,

You will be my death yet.

The best form of persuasion's invasion."

In other news, a group of Jewish schoolgirls have completely missed the point.

Harriet Harmen: Hero of the Left

The people's flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyr'd dead
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts' blood dyed its ev'ry fold.
Then raise the scarlet standard high,
Within its shade we'll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here.
Look round, the Frenchman loves its blaze,
The sturdy German chants its praise,
In Moscow's vaults its hymns are sung,
Chicago swells the surging throng.
It waved above our infant might
When all ahead seemed dark as night;
It witnessed many a deed and vow,
We must not change its colour now.
It well recalls the triumphs past;
It gives the hope of peace at last:
The banner bright, the symbol plain,
Of human right and human gain.
It suits today the meek and base,
Whose minds are fixed on pelf and place,
To cringe before the rich man's frown
And haul the sacred emblem down.
With heads uncovered swear we all
To bear it onward till we fall.
Come dungeon dark or gallows grim,
This song shall be our parting hymn.

Rimnasium 7

There is no way of laughing at his with your own cock

This is Bat Country

An evening spent in the company of my university's union representatives is an evening I shan't get back. My misfortune at wandering into the post-election-results-party meant that I hobnobbed with the great and the good; ranging from the bizarrely amalgamated 'Medical & Postgraduate Students' Officer' to the curiously titled 'Pre-Clinical President' not to mention the ubiquitous 'Anti Racism Officer'.

The evening was of some benefit (I've given sufficient reason for my train of thought) - upon returning home I happened upon this article concerning some really rather groovy sounding psychedelic drugs. I have a particular interest in getting my hands on 70mg of 'dipthong'. Ultra-sensitive canine hearing? Yes please.

Remember to chase the rainbow!

I was in the reception area of a local hotel yesterday, waiting to meet an elderly couple of my aquaintence, and I saw a discreet door marked library. I stepped inside to find that the room had one bookshelf, taking up rather less than half a wall, and even this was very far from full. These were its contents:
A complete edition of the Waverly novels
About 35 percent of an editions of Dickens
A number of leather bound works by Burgess and Maclean (dissapointingly I'm talking about Alan Burgess and Alastair Maclean)
Two copies of Home Doctor
A work designed to help those seeking to defend themselves in court
An illustrated atlas of the British Empire
A handfull of travel guides

Clearly nobody will ever read any of these books, apart from possbly the travel guides, although I do like the idea of taking a holiday in order to spend long hours by the fire identifying symptoms in the Home Doctor or planning subtle legal defences to get you off your latests public decency charges. I think it is clear that the patrons of this hotel, like so many students of my aquaintence, find an area called 'Library' a congenial place to shout loudly down their mobile phones and drink carbonated beverages.

Afterwards we took a turn round a nearby cathedral, and I read a number of charming epitaphs and inscriptions, including the grave of a young chap killed by greek brigands and a monument to the coal miners of the area. This cheered me up considerably. Remember, there is always someone worse off than yourself, and that person is very often a miner.

Pro patria mori

I do not favour the fence; but I think in the case of Kosovan secession from Serbia, it is dangerous, at least at this early stage, to relocate. While the Albanian cause may be worthy, their majority unquestionable and their solution practical (and certainly, with regard to their mud-slinging, violence and in-some-cases combative supremacism, they give no worse than they get), two things bother me about Kosovan independence: 1) The use of international muscle to facilitate Kosovo's secession in spite of the wishes of democratic Serbia, a country that is still trying to find its feet after several decades of absolutist rule, bloodshed and unpredictable political geography, seems only to have consolidated the USA's already damning reputation for flouting UN consensus - one cannot help feeling that Russia's legally-grounded objections are more than reasonable; 2) What of the not-inconsiderable Serbian population of the new Kosovo? 10%, at a glance, which is actually more than I originally thought. It seems only fair that as most of this number is concentrated in the northern part of the country, they should be allowed, if they wish, to secede and/or be reunited with Serbia. After all, why sympathise with one manifestation of nationalist idiocy and not another?

I am, as I say, on the fence, waiting for rain. On a lighter note, I enjoyed this stock limerick:

There once was a [person] from [place]
Whose [body part] was [special case].
When [event] would occur,
It would cause [him or her]
To violate [law of time/space].

Isaac Hamilton's Curiosities of Literature

- An Almanace fore the Unwarie

On this day in 1994 V.S. Naipul loaded a leatherette bound collector's edition of A Dance to the Music of Time into the great Western Cannon, and aimed it at Paul Theroux. Fortunately a quick-witted Derek Walcott distracted him with a well timed display of avarice and sloth, giving just enough time for Chinua Achebe to aproach the great novelist in a canoe, and throw a spear at him. A fine day for postcolonialism!

Word of the week - Ernsugir: (n) eagle-sucking; the noise made by an eagle's wings in flight. Derived from, and confined to, Old Iclandic.

Internal Memo of the Week: The Visum et Repartum, an early eighteenth century governmental report on the exhumation and disection of a graveyard of Serbian Vampires.

Place Your Bets.

Apparently comparisons can be made between the rogue trader, Jerome Kerviel and Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, according to an interesting article at marketpsych.com.

It also demonstrates the similarities between "rogue" traders and trading geniuses. If the only difference between the crazies and the geniuses is success, then our view of success at least in the professions of chance is flawed. Using the often fallacious proof by abduction we interpret success that could have been random as the result of skill.

My point is, Jerome Kerviel may make a fantastic story and skapegoat, the root problem is how we view and reward success(and therefore incentivise behaivour) in environments such as the markets.

This post borrows heavily from Taleb's Fooled by Randomness- a very good book.

Ubuntu: An African Tale

On the advice of my attorney, The London Prodigal, my long, largely cryptic and possibly defamatory post on Google vs. Gates has been shelved in favour of some coverage of the unsung heroes of the software world. The Africans.

Together, they collaborate to create Ubuntu. An operating system whispered from the reeds of the Okavango. A “software ecosystem” if you will, in fact just by using it another child lives.

Unfortunately Africans have neither demonstrated the skills nor possess the infrastructure to actually do this. So the concept of African software innovation can be used solely for marketing copy by Mark Shuttleworth. The great African patriot.

Rowan Williams in Sharia Law Outrage!

Buggers for the Bottle: Part VII, in which Aristotle is shown to possess little capacity for reason

Yesterday afternoon I laboured until close of day to translate the final instalment of my Wendish seafaring discourses from the Anglo-Saxon. I donned my best gloves and made for the Muted Slughorn. Seeing, as I crossed the heath, that January 26 was not long for this world and that night was surely in the offing, I resolved to make it a brief visit. When I arrived the front room was deserted, but from the furthest recesses of the building I could hear distant shrill voices, the tinkling of martini glasses and animated conversation. Not wishing to disturb the barman, snatches of whose velvet baritone rose, unmistakable, above the fervent offerings of the live Jazz band, I went behind the bar and poured myself a few gentle measures of spiced rum and ginger wine. I shuffled over to a table, and had barely raised mug to lip when the door flew open and Hamilton tore in, making a beeline for the bar. Clearing the counter in a single leap, he proceeded to mix and drink all manner of frantic concoctions, not stopping to consider whether the bottles he was grasping – albeit with commendable suction – were spirits, culinary lubricants, bathing unguents or domestic cleaners. Knowing from experience that intervention was futile, I returned to my drink without a word. After a short time he relented and joined me at the table with a small wooden breadboard of single malts. Knowing that it would very soon fall to me to make some sort of enquiry in respect of his behaviour, and though he was still livid and flushed from the ordeal, he pre-empted the overwhelming interrogative and, fixing me with a look of combined alacrity and rage which only the most hardened insomniac could have mustered, articulated with superlative cogency, given his weakened state, that for all the damned good it did, one might very well dismiss the entire corpus of literary critical theory! Not wishing to seem timid in the teeth of such an astonishing claim, I laughed a careless, ‘might-one-indeed?’ sort of laugh; but really I was paralysed with terror. I straight returned and reeled into bed. I slept badly and woke with a headache. Two Anadins later I was feeling better, though still quite weak. I took up a book of Aristotelian political conjectures and read:

“Those who live in a cold climate and in Europe are full of spirit, but wanting in intelligence and skill; and therefore they retain comparative freedom, but have no political organisation, and are incapable of ruling others. Whereas the natives of Asia are intelligent and inventive, but they are wanting in spirit, and therefore they are always in a state of subjection and slavery. But the Hellenic race, which is situated between them, is likewise intermediate in character, being high-spirited and also intelligent.”

The simplicity of the author’s argument, and the gleeful, contrafactual abandon with which he presented it, soothed my troubled mental state and fortified me sufficiently that I was able to take a little breakfast.

A phenomenon which I have often observed