Getting off the Hook

Last night Paul Muldoon gave the opening address for the DLR Poetry Now 2010 Festival. I use the term address because its primary sense, as a verb, is to make straight, to put things right, in order. This was a man with things to say, things of poetry, things of family, of suffering. Of pain. It was one of the most exhilarating evenings I have had in a very long time and I would like to write about it.

The title of the evening's contribution was 'Go Fish: Six Irish Poems'. These poems were: Louis MacNeice, 'Sunday Morning'; W.R. Rodgers, 'The Net'; John Montague, 'The Trout'; Seamus Heaney, 'The Guttural Muse' and 'Limbo'; Medbh McGuckian, 'The Flower Master'; Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, 'The Shannon Estuary Welcoming the Fish'. Just as Muldoon got up to speak before an eager audience a gentleman stood up and demanded to know where he stood on Provisional IRA violence in Northern Ireland. The room froze. Muldoon stood for a moment awkwardly and said that on a good day he stood for himself and there was a nervous laugh, nervously hoping it was all over. It wasn't. The man would not be satisfied with this and persisted. 'I am from Northern Ireland and you represent me, so I want to know where you stand'. Muldoon explained that politics changes, in a way that makes it a difficult subject-matter for poetry. With a bit of heckling from the audience who were saying to the gentleman that it was not the occasion, Muldoon managed to get started.

When it came to read the first poem he paused, looked up and invited the gentleman to read Louis MacNeice, 'Sunday Morning'. It was a stunning move, generous, comfortable, from a man who wanted to involve his audience, every one of them, in his task for the evening. The politics might not be settled and remain divisive, but reading a poem together. Yes, we can do that. The man got up and you know what, he read it rather well. There was a solidity and robustness to his reading that actually worked most unexpectedly. The man finished reading and walked out. It was a pity he did. He would have heard a lot had he remained.

Another gentleman was invited to read Montague's 'The Trout', but he had forgotten his reading glasses on the train from Limerick. His reading was difficult, stilted and halting. It was a powerful and apposite reminder that reading is difficult. And that reading a poem with ease can really not be how it is in the poem at all. Muldoon stood behind him like an angel at St Jerome's shoulder, prompting him when he fell. It was heartbreakingly beautiful and I am filled with emotion even remembering it.

The work of two other poets were read by the poets themselves, Seamus Heaney and Medbh McGuckian. Heaney got up and said: "The Guttural Muse, by Seamus Heaney". As usual claiming no special place, no special right.

Muldoon continued to speak and outlined with a dazzling display of learning and deep reading his sense of a theme running through these poems of fish and water, used in a whole variety of ways with very different effects. It was an extraordinary soundscape of Irish poetry, with Muldoon pausing over words with the delicacy of a carpenter touching a piece of fine wood, a man aware of what it is, of what it was, and of what it might be.

The address was punctuated with autobiographical details. As my medievalist readers will know, and any editors surely do, punctuation can change everything and so this punctuation was everything and changed everything. He spoke about child abuse, something of which as a child he was vividly aware. And he spoke about his sister and her experience. (I couldn't stop re-reading in my mind Muldoon's poem 'The Misfits', from Moy Sand and Gravel.) The abuse of power on the part of the Church is so widespread, so terrible, dreadful—in the sense of one being full of dread. He spoke of the Pastoral Letter issued by Papa Ratzinger, of its inadequacy, its sheer utter inadequacy.

Muldoon's address was marked by a sense of a fullness of time, a timeliness, of καιρός. It was political, social, and yes, it was poetic. The time is now. Muldoon's time is now. Us readers, our time is now.

Last night the poetry belonged to the audience; it was empowering. It was special.

DLR Poetry Now 2010

Questions of Travel, by Elizabeth Bishop

There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams
hurry too rapidly down to the sea,
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.
—For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,
aren't waterfalls yet,
in a quick age or so, as ages go here,
they probably will be.
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,
the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,
slime-hung and barnacled.

Think of the long trip home.
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here?
Where should we be today?
Is it right to be watching strangers in a play
in this strangest of theatres?
What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life
in our bodies, we are determined to rush
to see the sun the other way around?
The tiniest green hummingbird in the world?
To stare at some inexplicable old stonework,
inexplicable and impenetrable,
at any view,
instantly seen and always, always delightful?
Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?
And have we room
for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?

But surely it would have been a pity
not to have seen the trees along this road,
really exaggerated in their beauty,
not to have seen them gesturing
like noble pantomimists, robed in pink.
—Not to have had to stop for gas and heard
the sad, two-noted, wooden tune
of disparate wooden clogs
carelessly clacking over
a grease-stained filling-station floor.
(In another country the clogs would all be tested.
Each pair there would have identical pitch.)
—A pity not to have heard
the other, less primitive music of the fat brown bird
who sings above the broken gasoline pump
in a bamboo church of Jesuit baroque:
three towers, five silver crosses.
—Yes, a pity not to have pondered,
blurr'dly and inconclusively,
on what connection can exist for centuries
between the crudest wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden footwear
and, careful and finicky,
the whittled fantasies of wooden cages.
—Never to have studied history in
the weak calligraphy of songbirds' cages.
—And never to have had to listen to rain
so much like politicians' speeches:
two hours of unrelenting oratory
and then a sudden golden silence
in which the traveller takes a notebook, writes:

"Is it lack of imagination that makes us come
to imagined places, not just stay at home?
Or could Pascal have been not entirely right
about just sitting quietly in one's room?

Continent, city, country, society:
the choice is never wide and never free.
And here, or there . . . No. Should we have stayed at home,
wherever that may be?"

It was with this poem that Belinda McKeon, in a lecture entitled 'One More Folded Sunset: Mapping the Poem' opened the 2010 DLR Poetry Now festival, offering an extended meditation on the place of poetry and the poetry of place in the work of Bishop and in the work of this year's amazing selection of poets. She is a very powerful reader and brings sensitivity and intellectual rigour in equal measure to her reading; these qualities and skills are much in evidence in her curatorial stewardship of the Festival.

The line-up of poets include a keynote tonight, at 8.30pm, with Paul Muldoon delivering an address entitled 'Go Fish: Six Irish Poets', and Muldoon will read his own work, alongside Anne Stevenson and Homero Aridjis on Saturday evening at 8.30pm. On Friday night, at 6.30pm, Justin Quinn, Luljeta Lleshanaku and Philip Gross will read, which I am very much looking forward to, while at 8.30pm, Derek Mahon and Rosanna Warren will read. On Saturday at 6.30pm Vona Groarke, Kevin Young and Joan Margarit will read, and on Sunday at 4pm John Burnside, Sylva Fischerová and John F. Deane will read.

It's going to be a great festival. Hopefully I'll blog again about it if I can sit down for long enough.

Charles Muscatine (1920-2010)

The great Chaucerian scholar Charles Muscatine has died. Read obits here, here , here, here, and here; read about his anti-McCarthy stance here. Fixing higher education never seemed so urgent.

Boccaccio visualizzato, ed. Vittore Branca, 3 vols (Einaudi, 1999)

The eagle-eyed amongst my devoted readers will have noticed that a little change has occurred on the side-bar listing those Books I Dream of Owning. That is because I no longer dream of owning Boccaccio visualizzato but now, in fact, possess the said wonder. I have been working on the visual traditions surrounding Boccaccio for a while now and will continue to do so for another piece of work I'd like to complete. So when the chance presented itself to acquire a copy of Branca's great catalogue, frankly I jumped at it. It was a great price too, but I shan't be so vulgar as to talk about such things.

The work was published in 1999 but it had been long awaited, and a series of publications throughout the 1980s and '90s signalled what goodies it was to contain. (For reviews, see those of Christopher Kleinhenz in Speculum 79 [2004], 455-457; and Evelyn Lincoln in Heliotropia 1/1 [2003], available here). The basic idea was to publish a catalogue of images based on Boccaccian texts; these images appeared in manuscripts, on panels (cassoni etc), in paintings, and other media, from the middle ages right down to the modern era. It is a veritable cornucopia and remains a foundational resource.

The first volume contains a set of more general essays. They are: Vittore Branca: 'Introduzione: Il narrar boccacciano per immagini dal tardo gotico al primo Rinascimento'; idem., 'Interespressività narrativo-figurativa e rinnovamenti topologici e iconografici discesi dal Decameron'; Paul F. Watson, 'Architettura e scultura e senso della narrazione: Guido Cavalcanti e le case dei morti'; Victoria Kirkham, 'L'immagine del Boccaccio nella memoria tardo-gotica e rinascimentale'; Creighton Gilbert, 'La devozione di Giovanni Boccaccio per gli artisti e per l'arte'; Andreina Griseri, 'Di fronte al Decameron: L'età moderna'.

The second volume contains works of art of Italian origin. The first section is on Tuscany and northern Italy, and contains: Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupré Dal Poggetto, 'L'iconografia nei codici miniati boccacciani dell'Italia centrale e meridionale', with the relevant schede; Massimiliano Rossi, 'I dipinti - Introduzione: la novella di Sandro e Nastagio', with the relevant schede. The second second treats of the Veneto, and eastern Padania; Susy Marcon, 'I codici illustrati nell'area veneta', and schede; Giordana Mariani Canova, 'I codici dell'area padana orientale: tra Bologna, Ferrara e Mantova', with schede; Augusto Gentili, 'Boccaccio e la cultura figurativa veneziana fra Quattrocento e Cinquecento', and schede. The third and final section of this second volume treats of Lombardy, and western Padania: Antonio Cadei, 'I codici lombardi', with schede; Marichia Arese Simcik, 'I dipinti - Gli affreschi di Roccabianca (la novella di Griselda: Decameron, X 10).

The third volume deals with material produced outside Italy, concentrating on French, Flemish, English, Spanish and German manuscripts. The first section, on French and Flemish territories: Marie-Hélène Tesnière, 'I codici illustrati del Boccaccio francese e latino nella Francia e nelle Fiandre del XV secolo'; Brigitte Buettner, 'Il commercio di immagini: i mercanti, i Rapondi e il Boccaccio in Francia', with schede. Then the other geographical areas are covered in a section called 'Altre aree europee': Catherine Reynolds, 'I codici del Boccaccio illustrati in Inghilterra', with schede; and 'I codici di Spagna e Germania', and schede. A section on incunables ends the volume with Gianvittorio Dillon, 'I primi incunaboli illustrati e il Decameron veneziano del 1492'.

In a work with this much archival work being presented by such a variety of authors (the individual schede are by several different scholars), it is perhaps inevitable that there will be problems, but some are a little more serious. For example, the very famous catchwords in the Berlin autograph, Staatsbibliothek - Preussischer Kulturbesitz, MS Hamilton 90, are described in the scheda of that manuscript (Vol. 2, p. 62), prepared by Maria Cristina Castelli, with incorrect transcriptions of the catchwords themselves. It is a puzzling problem considering how famous this manuscript is, how often it had been described, and how easily available such transcriptions are, not least in Branca's own Cruscante edition. The coverage is by no means complete either and there are several interesting illuminated manuscripts not included. Branca himself was conscious of these problems and went into print subsequently lamenting how rushed the production process was and how he would have addressed them with more time.

Problems apart, however, it is a monumental publication and a testament to the editor's extraordinary energy and capacious learning that he even conceived of such a catalogue, let alone executed it. I am delighted to have it, and it is a delighted to open it.

Principles of the Weighty Tome, or How to Write Fat Books

Principles of the Weighty Tome, or How to Write Fat Books

1. The whole composition must be permeated with a protracted and wordy exposition of the initial plan.
2. Terms are to be included for conceptions that, except in this definition, appear nowhere in the whole book.
3. Conceptual distinctions laboriously arrived at in the text are to be obliterated again in the relevant notes.
4. For concepts treated only in their general significance, examples should be given; if, for example, machines are mentioned, all the different kinds of machines should be enumerated.
5. Everything that is known a priori about an object is to be consolidated by an abundance of examples.
6. Relationships that could be represented graphically must be expounded in words. Instead of being represented in a genealogical tree, for example, all family relationships are to be enumerated and described.
7. A number of opponents all sharing the same argument should each be refuted individually.

in Walter Benjamin, 'One-Way Street' (selections), in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott, ed & intr Peter Demetz (New York: Schocken Books, 1986; orig. Harcourt Brace, 1978), p. 79.

World Book Day, 2010

To celebrate World Book Day, I print a poem from a collection entitled Flood Song by a poet called Sherwin Bitsui (Copper Canyon Press, 2009, untitled poem on p. 6).


I am unable to pry my fingers from the ax,
00000unable to utter a word
0000000000without Grandfather's accent rippling
around the stone flung into his thinning mattress.


Years before, he would have named this season
0000000000by flattening a field where grasshoppers jumped into black smoke.

A Single Man, dir. Tom Ford (2009)

Tom Ford is a god in fashion. He stunned everyone when he decided to leave the Gucci group in 2004 and delighted everyone when he developed his own line. He is a man of apparently endless creative energy and has now turned his hand to film making.

I am writing this review because I find myself a little uncomfortable with many of the reviews I have read so far: these have generally been a bit snippy about the cinematography, calling it variously 'tart' or 'air-brushed'. Peter Bradshaw, in the Guardian, writes that the film looks 'like an indulgent exercise in 1960s period style, glazed with 21st-century good taste, a 100-minute commercial for men's cologne: Bereavement by Dior'.

Ok. Fine. This is nicely expressed, but I think hugely unfair and if I may be so bold, somewhat misses the point. I would really like to read a review written by a fashion expert, because there is clearly another kind of language being used in the making of this film and it is one that has thrown a lot of the film reviewers.

The story is based on Christopher Isherwood's novel, published in 1964, and tells of George Falconer (Colin Firth) who is in the midst of a deep, sad, quiet grief at the death of his long-time partner Jim (Matthew Goode). George wakes up that morning and decides that today he will commit suicide: the pain is just too much.

The day is spent saying nice things to people who had never really noticed him before, and silently observing his surroundings. That is, his last day, because of this terrible decision, becomes filled with significance. George is a college professor teaching English to a class of students who are trying to make sense of the Cuban missile crises. Rather, they are trying to make sense of the crises as it is being presented to them by their parents, and, in turn, by their government. George takes the opportunity to run over time in a class that is dragging on to explain that fear is really what is at stake, not the threat itself. He goes around to his friend Charlotte (Julianne Moore), talks about the old days and the disappointments their lives have become and despite this closeness, even Charley doesn't understand what he is going through.

This is such an important aspect of the film. Nobody understands what George is feeling, the depths and the scale of his grief, his bereavement. And everything that Ford does reinforces it. The nostalgic glaze, the beautiful beautiful images throughout the film are all inextricably linked with the impossibility of George's life and the inevitability of his death.

Another critic complained that we are held at arm's length from George, that we never get to know him and that we never feel his grief. Well, not feeling his grief will vary from person to person, but being held at arm's length is very much the point. It is what he does with everyone, because he has to, and what presents his grief with such a terrible aspect of closed-ness, or inexpressibility. It is expressible because of its scale, but also because it is in the first place.

There is great sadness in this film, but it is not an emotional film. And that for me was its most powerful feature. I found it all the more powerful because I was not weeping at the end of it. Enough of the film assures me that Ford knows what he's doing, and in this too I believe he knew what he was doing. As viewers we are denied participation in the grief, and this denial is so subtly and delicately negotiated.

Quite unlike a cologne, this beautiful film has stayed with me.

I am bereft.

King's College London, RIP

Things are very bad at King's College London. Evidently there's a budgetary crisis and they have responded by cutting two of the most successful, important luminaries they could possibly have found, Professor Lappin in Philosophy and Professor Ganz, Chair of Paleography. It is hard to believe such a decision. The logic of it makes no sense, minimal costs reaping enormous benefits. The next time King's dares to boast about its rankings on any league tables, then one can only bow one's head in shame and disgust. If they go through with this, it is hard to see how it can recover.

On a completely different note, Vice Chancellors seem to be doing rather well, despite the cuts.





I print this from the Facebook group entitled 'Save Paleography at King's':

The following from Jeffrey Hamburger:

Dear colleagues,

The letter below brings bad news. I normally do not leap into such petition drives, but in this case I think it behooves all of us to read it and to act on it by writing a stiff letter of protest to the persons named as quickly as possible. If you, in turn, know of other groups (beyond Apices, whence this comes) to which this could be circulated, please do so immediately.

Yours, Jeffrey Hamburger



King’s College London is undertaking what they call ‘strategic disinvestment’ and have informed our colleague, David Ganz, on Tuesday that funding for the Chair in Palaeography will cease from 31 August this year, when David will be out of a job. This is part of a wider context whereby all academic staff in the School of Arts and Humanities at King’s have to re-apply for their own jobs before the 1st March. They think this the “most humane way” of losing 22 academic posts.

King’s Chair is the only established chair in Palaeography in the UK (held by our late members Julian Brown and Tilly de la Mare). I am, naturally, writing on behalf of the Comite to express dismay at the loss of the Chair but the more people who write in protest the better.


The person to write to is: Professor Rick Trainor, The Principal, King’s College, The Strand, London WC2R 2LS and copy to Professor Jan Palmowski, Head of the School of Arts and Humanities.




--
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art & Culture
Chair, Medieval Studies Committee

Dept. of History of Art & Architecture, Harvard University
485 Broadway, Cambridge MA 02138; Tel. 617 495-8732; Fax 617 495-1769

Women! or Woman

Mappa Mundi

Listen to Claire Armitstead's podcast on the Guardian website with the poet Phillip Gross, whose collection The Water Table (Bloodaxe, 2009) has won this year's T. S. Eliot Prize. Very interesting (though brief) remarks on good reading, on the importance of deep and engaged reading.

Since this week I heard a very engaging paper by Dr Alfred Hiatt, of Queen Mary, University of London's excellent English department, entitled: 'Maps in and out of literature', I'm going to reproduce a poem from Gross's previous collection, called Mappa Mundi (Bloodaxe, 2003).

Mappa Mundi

I
In the land of mutual rivers,
it is all conversation: one flows uphill, one flows down.
Each ends in a bottomless lake which feeds the other
and the boatmen who sail up, down, round and round
never age, growing half a day older, half a day younger
every time... as long as they never step on land.

II
In the land of always autumn
people build their houses out of fallen leaves
and smoke, stitched together with spiders' webs.
At night they glow like parchment lanterns and the voices
inside cluster to a sigh. Tell us a story, any story, except
hush, please, not the one about the wind.

III
In the land where nothing happens twice
there are always new people to meet;
you just look in the mirror. Echoes learn to improvise.
So it's said... We've sent some of the old
to investigate, but we haven't heard yet. When we
catch up with them, we might not know.

IV
In the land of sounds you can see
we watch the radio, read each other's lips, dread
those audible nightfalls. We pick through the gloom
with one-word candles home... however... only... soon...
while pairs of lovers hold each other, speechless,
under the O of a full black moon.

V
In the land of hot moonlight
the bathing beaches come alive at midnight.
You can tell the famous and rich by their silvery tans
which glow ever so slightly in the dark
so at all the best parties there's a moment when the lights go out
and you, only you, seem to vanish completely.

VI
In the land of migratory words
we glance up, come the season, at telegraph wires
of syllables in edgy silhouette against a moving sky
like code, unscrambling. Any day now they'll fall into place
and be uttered. Then the mute months. The streets
without names. The telephone that only burrs.

Global University

Desmond invites stars to help start global cultural university

(SIMON CARSWELL Finance Correspondent)

BUSINESSMAN DERMOT Desmond has invited 163 luminaries from the fields of music, film, theatre, literature, academia and business to submit ideas to help him establish a “global university” for culture and the arts.

Mr Desmond first floated his idea to establish a university of the arts at the Global Irish Economic Forum, the brainstorming event held at Farmleigh in Dublin which was attended by well-known Irish figures from around the world.

The financier wrote this week to the 163 individuals inviting them “to be a founder, a designer and an architect of this initiative” and requesting their expertise to assist in the initiative he is calling “Cultural Odyssey”.

Mr Desmond said in the letter that Ireland should “exploit its deep and world-renowned cultural legacy and talent to establish a global university focusing on culture and the performing arts”.

“As the world economy continues its inexorable shift to becoming knowledge-based, we have many competitive advantages,” Mr Desmond wrote. “The combination of our cultural pedigree and our technological leadership suggests to me that we can create a lasting opportunity for Ireland’s future generations.”

Mr Desmond enclosed a list of people he has invited to participate in the project. They include musicians Bono and U2, Enya, The Corrs and Van Morrison; Hollywood actors Daniel Day-Lewis, Colin Farrell and Liam Neeson; film directors Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan; and writers Brian Friel, Roddy Doyle and Sebastian Barry.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin has also been asked to participate in the project. Among the business figures invited to submit ideas are telecoms and media entrepreneur Denis O’Brien, former Intel chief executive Craig Barrett, and Gary McGann, chief executive of packaging group Smurfit Kappa.

Mr Desmond has invited participants to join private discussions on the project’s website. The discussions will range from “syllabus development to architectural concept, from education futures to entertainment futures, from physical location to models of excellence for university design”.

The businessman says the process will be “a fluid, dynamic, responsive approach to collaboration, and your input will change the shape of the conversation”.

Mr Desmond says the project should be united with other similar cultural initiatives within the third-level sector.

This would “optimise the outcome” and “ensure absolute fairness and integrity in any proposal we bring to Government”, he said.

“It is my belief and conviction that the unique Irish spirit is undefeatable,” Mr Desmond says in his letter. “It is this uniqueness that makes you the outstanding world talent that you have become.

“Through the combination of these elements, we can all be part of creating a new chapter in Ireland’s history for future generations.”

The Irish Times, Sat. 5 Dec 2009

* * * * * * * * *

Do we not already have a university of the arts? Or several, really? They're called...universities. Institutions such as Trinity College Dublin, for example. I do not understand why we should spend all this money setting up a university when the arts and humanities departments in the ones we have are being starved of funding. And these are the universities that produced some of these great figures, as if they achieved what they have in spite of their education and not because of it. The mention of output should alone be cause for blood running cold. What does that mean and how can it be envisaged as relevant to the arts? I'm all for thinking dynamically and critically, qualities often great admired by university teachers and tutors amongst their students. Why do we need a new university? I don't think the case has been sufficiently made.

The Sacred Made Real (National Gallery London, 21 Oct 2009 - 24 Jan 2010)

Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664), 'Saint Luke contemplating the Crucifixion', 1630s. Oil on canvas. 105 X 84 cm.
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado (Cat. 4/X6135).

This beautiful exhibition traces a very interesting interaction in seventeenth-century Spanish art between sculptors, who carved and then prepared their work with white gesso, and painters, who finished the work, delicately layering it with flesh tones of remarkable verisimilitude (a process known as encarnación). Many of these wooden pieces remain relatively unknown outside of Spain and indeed many remain outside the purview of standard histories of art. This is because they are not works of art at all, but rather objects of devotion still in use. But as the curator of the exhibition, Zavier Bray, clearly shows, they are of an extremely high artistic quality. What he also notes is the influence of these sculptures on artists. In the example of Valázquez's 'Christ after the Flagellation contemplated by the Christian Soul' (probl. 1628-9), he notes that the little boy, representing the soul, is being invited by the angel to look at Christ's back. This was a space in some sculptural pieces that was reserved for particularly bloody and gruesome attention and Velázquez's experience as a painter of such figures of Christ would have easily given him an insight into such compositions.

There is something very remarkable about many of these pieces and it is hard to remain unmoved by them. Particularly powerful is the 'Sala de Profundis', Room 6, which has a few benches by the walls and a single image, Zurbarán's 'Saint Serapion', 1628. It hung in the mortuary chapel of the Mercedarian monastery in Seville. The space is quiet and sad. The piece is understated. It will remain with me for some time.

Go to see this exhibition.

Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664), 'Christ on the Cross', 1627. Oil on canvas. 290.3 X 165.5 cm
The Art Institute of Chicago, Robert A. Waller Memorian Fund, 1954.15.

Rose Book-Collecting Prize 2009-2010

Cambridge University Library is offering students the chance to win £500 by building their own book collections.

The Rose Book-Collecting Prize was endowed in 2006 and is believed to be the first of its kind offered by any European university. As well as the £500 prize money, the winner will be offered 10 years’ free membership of the Friends of Cambridge University Library.

The contest is open to all current undergraduate and graduate students of the University registered for a Cambridge degree. To enter, students should submit a list of their collection together with a short essay, explaining the theme and significance of the collection, by the first day of the Lent full term. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to talk about their collection to the judges.

The judges will make their decision based on the intelligence and originality of the collection, its coherence as a collection, as well as the thought, creativity and persistence demonstrated by the collector and the condition of the books. The value of the collections will not be a factor in determining the winning entry – a coherent collection of paperbacks is a perfectly valid entry. Previous shortlisted entries include ‘Collecting the Gothic’, ‘Missionary travels in the South Seas’, ‘The handwritten record: manuscripts and annotated books’, and ‘German and Austrian travel and first hand experience in Asiatic dominions of the Ottoman Empire, 1871–1918’. In 2009, the prize was won by Boris Jardine (Trinity Hall) for his collection ‘Modernism in print’. For examples of winning topics at other universities, see winning collections.

The prize will be awarded in the Easter Term. It has been funded by Professor James Marrow and Dr Emily Rose in honour of Dr Rose’s parents, Daniel and Joanna Rose.

Professor Marrow said: “By establishing a prize through the UL, we want to stress and call attention to the importance of a great central library, which is the focus of the research activities of the university, and which serves a much wider range of purposes than the college libraries.

“Book collecting brings people together and we hope that a prize administered through the UL will help collectors from different colleges in Cambridge to meet one another and enjoy the company of an enlarged group of similarly-minded individuals.”

Book collecting prizes are fairly common in North American universities. Started by Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, in the 1920s, these contests have encouraged generations of young collectors to become booksellers, librarians, and accomplished bibliophiles.

Full details of the Rose Book-Collecting Prize and how to enter are given on the UL web page at

http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/newspublishing/book-collecting.html

Closing date is Tuesday 12 January 2010.

Notes on a Scandal, and some Watches

This video has recently been released by Vedomosti, a Russian business daily newspaper. These are extraordinary timepieces, pieces of art really. I realize that only a tiny number of people will ever be able to enjoy them and those people will have to be very wealthy. Money often comes at a price, I know this too. But while the owners may not be good people, the watches are amazing. The most expensive is that belonging to Vladimir Resin, the deputy mayor of Moscow, who wears a DeWitt La Pressy Grande Complication. Medvedev is wearing a Breguet Classique Moon Phase; the Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov wears a Bovet Fleurier Minute Repeater. Valentina Matviyenko, the governor of St Petersburg, wears a Harry Winston Avenue Captive (worth about $26,000 while declaring an income of $58,777!). There's a good showing of Ulysse Nardin, Breguet and Patek Philippe. Interesting too is the absence of certain brands: delighted, for example, to see no JLC. With the exception of the Breguet Classique and perhaps the Patek Annual Calendar, which are both very classy watches I will admit, the others are all bling and no watch!

CFP: Error: Aspects and Approaches, Lincoln College, Oxford 16-17 April 2010

ERROR: Aspects and Approaches

An international Conference at the University of Oxford, April 16-17 2010

This conference is aimed at early career scholars and graduate students. A volume of proceedings comprising selected papers will appear in the Medium Ævum Monographs Series. Contributions are welcomed from diverse fields of research such as history of art and architecture, history, theology, philosophy, anthropology, literature and history of ideas.

Papers will be 20 minutes or less. Please email 250-word abstracts (text only, no attachments please) to oxgradconf@gmail.com by 5th January 2010.

Suggested topics might include:

• Misunderstanding; Miscommunication; Misinterpretation; Misattribution; Mistranslattion
• Scribal error; Mismatch (image vs. text); Retractions; Textual variance
• Factual error; Received error
• Personification of error
• Mistaken identity
• Political mistake
• False confessions; Lying
• Confusion; Deception
• Knightly errance
• Theological error; Spiritual error
• Scientific error
• Disharmony/Discord
• Medievalism; Early Modern and later (mis)corrections
• Epistemology; Logic
• Crime and misdemeanour

The conference fee is expected to be in the region of £25 (twenty-five pounds). We hope to organize a conference banquet in Lincoln's lovely hall on the Friday night and will provide details of this as soon as they are available. All updates and further information can be obtained from www.medieval.ox.ac.uk/omgc.html

H. Wayne Storey, Transcription and Visual Poetics in the Early Italian Lyric (Garland, 1993)

The return to Cambridge this term began with a quick visit to the local bookseller: joy. Part of the library of a distinguished bibliographer in early Italian print culture had become available and I picked up a few marvellous things. Mainly stuff I've used and wanted, and I had to leave a few things behind too. Very pleased with Franca Brambilla Ageno, L'edizione critica dei testi volgari, Medioevo e umanesimo, 22, 2nd rev & exp edn (Padova: Antenore, 1984); Nicolas Barker, (ed), A Potencie of Life: Books in Society: The Clark Lectures, 1986-1987, British Library Studies in the History of the Book (London: British Library, 1993); Michele Barbi, La nuova filologia e l'edizione dei nostri scrittori da Dante al Manzoni (Firenze: G.C. Sansoni editore, 1938, 2nd ed. 1962); Alfredo Stussi, Introduzione agli studi di filologia italiana, Manuali: Filologia e critica letteraria, (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1994); Ezio Raimondi, Tecniche della critica letteraria, Piccola biblioteca Einaudi, 440, (Torino: G. Einaudi, 1983); Ezio Raimondi, La dissimulazione romanzesca: antropologia manzoniana, Intersezioni, 72 (Bologna: Mulino, 1990); Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier (eds), Storia della lettura nel mondo occidentale (Roma: Laterza, 1995); Arrigo Castellani, (ed), Nuovi testi fiorentini del Dugento, 2 vols (Firenze: Sansoni, 1952 - can't believe I found this) and Corinna Salvadori, Yeats and Castiglione: Poet and Courtier (Dublin: A. Figgis, 1965 - delighted to have this). However it is H. Wayne Storey, Transcription and Visual Poetics in the Early Italian Lyric, Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, v. 1753 / Garland Studies in Medieval Literature, v. 7, (New York: Garland Pub, 1993) that I am really pleased to have found since I was about to order it from the States.

This is an important and interesting book about the early lyric anthologies and the hermeneutics of scribal/authorial compilatio. As the author says in his introduction, 'The proposal is a simple one: that some early Italian poets composed their lyrics with an eye to the manuscript forms in which their poems would be copied and circulated' (p. xxi). The following is what one might call a 'brief notice': the book is in two parts, the first deals with 'Pre-Petrarchan Experiments in Written Poets', comprising four chapters. The first, 'From the Margins: Origins and Theory of Appropriating Official Space', second, 'Transferring Visual Ambiguity: Semantic-Visual Orientations of a Medieval Text', third, 'The Editorial Redefinition of Margins: The Memoriali bolognesi and the Literary Culture of Chigiano L. VIII. 305', and fourth, 'Guittone's Last Booklet: The Visual-Semantic Orientation of the Trattato d'amore'. The second part of the book concentrates on 'the visual poetics of Petrarch's Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta' in three chapters: first, 'Petrarch's Concepts of Text and Textual Reform', second, 'Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta: Manuscripts and Scribal Forms', and third, 'Organizing Strategies: Aperture and Closure in Petrarch's Fragmenta'. It is an excellent book and well worth reading.

Don Paterson, Rain (Faber, 2009)

Don Paterson is one of the most extraordinary poets writing in the UK at the moment. What is extraordinary is that he writes extraordinary poetry. What is even more extraordinary is that he keeps doing it. Again and again. And now Rain, his first collection since the gorgeous Landing Light (2004) has been published and gone and won the Forward Prize. Not only that but last year's prize for best poem was won by one of the poems in this collection. It is all deserved, richly so.

His work is characterized by a great formality that never makes its presence over-felt in the line, coupled with a simplicity and directness of imagery that will leave you stunned in its wake. This collection is marked by an elegy for the poet Michael Donaghy. This seven-part sequence entitled 'Phantom' sits alongside the other long poem, the utterly wonderful and magical 'Song for Natalie 'Tusja' Beridze'. I've read criticism that this threatens to unbalance the collection but considering that he was closely associated with Paterson in their muscial group 'Lammas' I think that it is entirely appropriate. I read the two side by side actually, one informing the other.

The first poem in the collection is called

Two Trees

One morning, Don Miguel got out of bed
with one idea rooted in his head:
to graft his orange to his lemon tree.
It took him the whole day to work them free,
lay open their sides, and lash them tight.
For twelve months, from the shame or from the fright
they put forth nothing; but one day there appeared
two lights in the dark leaves. Over the years
the limbs would get themselves so tangled up
each bough looked like it gave a double crop,
and not one kid in the village didn't know
the magic tree in Miguel's patio.

The man who bought the house had had no dream
so who can say what dark malicious whim
led him to take his axe and split the bole
along its fused seam, then dig two holes.
And no, they did not die from solitude;
nor did their branches bear a sterile fruit;
nor did their unhealed flanks weep every spring
for those four yards that lost them everything,
as each strained on its shackled root to face
the other's empty, intricate embrace.
They were trees, and trees don't weep or ache or shout.
And trees are all this poem is about.

There's so much to say about this poem, about the work of poetry, about what poetry should do and what poetry actually does and that mysterious and vast space in between. These poems explore this space with a deftness and a great sureness.

This is a beautiful collection from a great writer.

Miglior acque has been on holiday and before that working on the book. He's been reading nice books too, some of which he'll blog on soon. Top of the list is the wonderful new Hilary Mantel novel Wolf Hall, which has been shortlisted for the Booker. It tells the story of Thomas Cromwell from his origins up to July 1535: it is beautifully written. Also read was Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first in the Millennium Trilogy, good stuff and looking forward to reading the rest of them. Peter S. Hawkins, Undiscovered Country: Imagining the World to Come (Church Publishing Inc, 2009) is a beautiful meditation on the afterlife read alongside the Commedia. Valentin Groebner's Defaced: The Visual Culture of Violence in the Late Middle Ages (NY: Zone Books, 2004) is an excellent essay on violence and its representation in the middle ages (going to read Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others on the plane this afternoon - heading back to Cambridge now).

Have been thinking of investing in Alberto Asor Rosa (dir.), Letteratura italiana, 18 vols (Einaudi, 1982-1996): I've been using it a good bit lately and think it would be great to have to hand. Am I crazy? The postage from Italy is a scandal (literally).

In Our Time with St Thomas Aquinas

Sandro Botticelli (attrib), St Thomas Aquinas, O.P. (c.1225-1274),
Abegg-Stiftung Museum, Riggisberg, Switzerland

Listen to Martin Palmer (Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture), John Haldane (Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews), and Annabel Brett (Lecturer in History at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge) talk about St Thomas Aquinas with Melvyn Bragg on BBC Radio4's In Our Time.

The Chaucer Blogger is Back

After a long and lamented silence, Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog is back with learned musings the economic downturn and King Richard issuing laws on Twitter. Great fun. Picked up, with thanks, via JJ Cohen on In the Middle.