Don't Think It Couldn't Be You

[Peter Reading: Vendange Tardive (2010)]

i.m Peter Reading
born Liverpool 27 July 1946
died 17 November 2011

Well, it's happened again. I was just looking up a few details for my lecture on Peter Reading on Saturday when I saw that he had died:

They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead ...

- Callimachus, tr. William Cory

I have to say that the news left me feeling quite upset. It was almost exactly the same sequence of events as I experienced with J. G. Ballard a couple of years ago: you start checking someone's dates online, and next thing you know, you find out they've been dead for months ...

Don’t think it couldn’t be you -
bankrupted, batty, bereft ...

as he says in his most famous poem, Perduta Gente [Lost People] (1989), exploring the cardboard canyons of the homeless in Thatcher's Britain.

"Don't think it couldn't be you" -- now that Thatcher's been Hollywood-ised, another notch in Meryl Streep's list of accents, it's hard to remember that cold face presiding over Nuremberg-style rallies at Brighton, the faithful baying with ecstasy as she preached her crusade against the poor, the starving, the mentally ill:

grievously wounded veteran of the Battle of Bottle,
jobless, bereft of home, skint,
down in the cold uriniferous subway ...

It's a curious irony that she should have ended that way herself, her mind betraying her, all that self-reliance eroded into complete dependency on the social services she so deplored.

Peter Edwards: Peter Reading: Poet

But who was Peter Reading? The "laureate of grot" was one disimissive phrase (dreamed up by hollow-man pundit Blake Morrison) ... People who considered themselves quite well-informed on contemporary British writing would turn out never to have heard of him. To me, he was one of the very few justifications for even daring to speak of a contemporary British poetry scene.

You loved him or you hated him. For most readers, it was clearly the latter. His strange books, with cut-out newspaper clippings, classically turned verses, scribbled notebook entries all jostling for position on the page, were calculated to excite or offend.

When Perduta gente first came out I was living in Scotland, recently targetted as the victim of one of Thatcher's bigtime social experiments: the poll-tax. The subject matter Reading had chosen did not surprise us; what was really surprising was that no-one else seemed to be writing about these things. All the news round the streets was that the last time someone had tried to bring in a poll-tax, it had led to the Peasants' Revolt ...

[Lannan Foundation]

That's not to say that he was neglected, exactly. After his London publishers dumped him in the mid-nineties, Bloodaxe Books of Newcastle reissued his entire back-catalogue in three successive volumes of collected poems. He ended up being one of the most extensively available poets around: another factor in this being the decision of the Lannan Foundation in America to record his entire back-catalogue on a series of DVDs - 24 hours or so for him to read out 26 separate poetry collections.

And here they all are:

Contemporary Writers

Poetry:


1. Water and Waste. UK: Outposts Magazine, 1970.
2. For the Municipality's Elderly. London: Secker & Warburg, 1974.
3. The Prison Cell and Barrel Mystery. London: Secker & Warburg, 1976.
4. Nothing for Anyone. London: Secker & Warburg, 1977.
5. Fiction. London: Secker & Warburg, 1979.
6. Tom O'Bedlam's Beauties. London: Secker & Warburg, 1981.
7. 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5. Ceolfrith Press, 1983.
8. Diplopic. London: Secker & Warburg, 1983.
9. C. London: Secker & Warburg, 1984.
10. Ukelele Music. London: Secker & Warburg, 1985.
11. Essential Reading. London: Secker & Warburg, 1986.
12. Stet. London: Secker & Warburg, 1986.
13. Final Demands. London: Secker & Warburg, 1988.
14. Perduta Gente. London: Secker & Warburg, 1989.
15. Shitheads. Squirrelprick Press, 1990.
16. Three in One. London: Chatto & Windus, 1991.
17. Evagatory. London: Chatto & Windus, 1992.
18. Last Poems. London: Chatto & Windus, 1994.
19. Collected Poems Volume 1: 1970-84. Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 1995.
20. Penguin Modern Poets 3 (Mick Imlah, Glyn Maxwell, Peter Reading). Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995.
21. Collected Poems Volume 2: 1985-96. Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 1996.
22. Chinoiserie. Bay Press, 1997.
23. Work in Regress. Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 1997.
24. Apophthegmatic. Bay Press, 1999.
25. Ob. Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 1999.
26. Repetitions. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland State University, 1999.
27. Marfan. Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 2000.
28. Faunal. Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 2002.
29. Collected Poems: 1997-2003. Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 2003.
30. -273.15. Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 2005.
31. Vendage Tardive. Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 2010.

Secondary Literature:


• Martin, Isabel. Reading Peter Reading. Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 2000.

[Isabel Martin: Reading Peter Reading (2000)]

It is, however, revealing that the one major critical work about him was written in German, before being translated and published (in somewhat abridged form) in English. There was something a little "European" about his immense, concentrated pessimism; his decision to be a professional Jeremiah. The UK newspaper obituaries tend to concentrate on the his (alleged) "sense of humour" - as if that were a kind of excuse for daring to take things so seriously for so long, in such a thoroughly un-English way.

I suppose, too, that some saw a degree of affectation in his refusal to take up the usual "poetic" ways of making a living: the Academic teaching, the light journalism and reviews. Instead, after an early stint at Art College, he worked as a weighbridge operator for almost twenty years, a job which he claimed gave him "plenty of time to think."

That is, until a newly appointed manager tried to get him to wear a uniform. He promptly resigned and (according to Isabel Martin, his principal witness to the world) managed to achieve depths of indigence rivalling those of his characters Mucky Preece and Boris the Swine in Perduta gente, until he was rescued by the Americans.

Reading's books are complex, intertwined, Dickensian in their balancing of form and content. Their message is grim, but his late shift from social to ecological lamentation certainly showed a refusal to settle into any reconciliatory "final manner" - no Shakespearean late romances for him. The very last one, Vendange tardive seems, in retrospect, prophetic of a mind at the end of its tether. There was little more to say that hadn't been said already, so many times over, but those last words of Perduta gente somehow had to keep sounding out:

Woe vnto woe vnto woe
vnto woe vnto woe vnto woe

It seems a fitting epitaph.

If you'd like to hear the man himself in action, reading from his later works in the Lannan Foundation archive, here are a few links:

• Peter Reading reading Civil (2002) [Video Recording]


• Peter Reading reading ∂ (2003) [Video Recording]


• Peter Reading reading -273.15 (2005) [Video Recording]


• Peter Reading reading Vendange Tardive (2010) [Video Recording]

For the rest, what can I say? A great soul has passed. No-one can claim he didn't warn us, though, to the very utmost of his ability. We'll regret not having listened more carefully as the last tree falls in the ash-pits of the future.

•
[Peter Reading: -273.15 (2005)]

Under which king?

[Stephen King: 11/22/63 (due out November 2011)]

Under which king, Bezonian?
Speak, or die ...

So the ranting, bombastic soldier Pistol to poor Justice Shallow in Henry IV, Part Two. I don't want to put you on the spot to quite the same extent, but the other day, when I found myself pre-ordering various novels online, I began to wonder when and how it is that an author crosses over from a subject in which one takes a general interest to an indispensable, habit-forming drug.

I realised that had happened with Stephen King when I ceased to be able to wait for his books to appear in paperback (let alone in second-hand shops) before I bought and devoured them. I think that happened somewhere around the time of Needful Things (1991), a good twenty years ago. I have to say that the Master has seldom disappointed, though there have undoubtedly been some ups and downs along the way.

So it's not surprising that I would want to guarantee my copy of his latest tome well ahead of the crowds (and, given what appears to be the imminent demise of High Street bookselling as we know it, that I should end up doing so online).

What did surprise me was the discovery that there were some other writers who had imperceptibly slipped into the same status for me. I find him a bit frustrating at times, but there's just something so very congenial about the literary territory of kooky occultism and historical conspiracy theories Umberto Eco inhabits, that I found I couldn't resist the lure of his latest:

[Umberto Eco: The Prague Cemetery (due out November 2011)]

I mean, seriously: Prague? A cemetery in Prague? Nineteenth-century craziness instead of his usual medieval and renaissance craziness? The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Umberto Eco? What's not to like?

That one went on the list, too. As did:

[Haruki Murakami: IQ84 (due out October 2011)]

Again, I have slightly mixed feelings about Haruki Murakami. The fact remains that I appear to have collected all of his books. I've seldom bought one new before, but the prospect of a 1,000-odd-page epic did rather attract me, I must confess. Even though I don't profess to understand him, I find myself compulsively reading and rereading him almost against my will. I do have my theories about what it's all about, mind you, but I seem to be happy to keep on reading in a state almost of suspended animation -- a little like the heroine of Sputnik Sweetheart, perhaps ...

An American, a European, and a Japanese: all novelists, each putting out another big fat tome later this year - more or less in time for my birthday and the beginning of summer vacation ... I can almost taste the suspense.

It did make me think, though. Who else is on my list? Well, just to continue the rollcall of global regions, there's my favourite Latin-American novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa:

[Mario Vargas Llosa: The Dream of the Celt (due out 2012)]

This latest novel of his hasn't been translated yet, and so it won't actually appear till next year. I did use to try and force myself through each of his new books in the original, but now I'm content to wait for the English version. This one is all about Roger Casement and his adventures in the Congo and on the Amazon, I gather, so I don't want to miss any of the niceties through my rough-and-ready Spanish.

I know that Mario has a lot of critics who find him a bit dubious politically, but I do think he thoroughly deserved that Nobel Prize they finally awarded him last year. The sheer scale of his achievement is pretty impressive, and it's hard to think of any of his contemporaries (Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Carlos Fuentes? certainly not Isabel Allende ...), who's still writing at the same level of intensity and commitment.

What about the Antipodes? Of course I have many favourite New Zealand authors whose work I follow. When it comes to snapping up each book the moment it appears, though, I guess the one who springs to mind is Martin Edmond. I talked in the previous post about his latest, Dark Night Walking with McCahon (2011). Here's one from last year, though. This is the second of two books of poetic prose he's put out (so far) through Dunedin's Kilmog Press:

[Martin Edmond: Hypnogeography (2010)]

Nor is it just novelists and prose-writers I follow. Here's the new book from one of my favourite poets, Canadian classical scholar (and all-around extremist) Anne Carson:

[Anne Carson: NOX (2010)]

The book's appearance - a long, corrugated, paper scroll in a hard cardboard case - is almost as eccentric as its contents. She's long since become an indispensable writer for me.

Who else? Here's another poet I find it impossible to ignore, British "laureate of grot" Peter Reading:

[Peter Reading: Vendage Tardive (2010)]

Reading has shifted his principal target somewhat from bourgeois complacency and greed to an even more extreme set of Philippics against environmental destruction. He's a very angry man. Long may he prosper.

Of course there are far more names I could mention, but I've tried to confine myself to those for whom there's no question that I'm going to get the latest book. I'm possibly even keener on Paul Muldoon than on Peter Reading, but I don't find myself rushing out to buy every one of the former's publications. An element of selectivity (as is only right!) enters into my relations with most authors, I'm happy to say.

Nor (while I'm on the subject) do I buy each new critical book of critical prose that appears by Umberto Eco or Mario Vargas Llosa. I do find I have to get each of their novels, though ... whether I like it or not.