Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 16hI was, as my old pal Nick Riddle used to say, flying by the seat of my pants without wearing any pants 010
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 17hI caught it in the end, everyone will be pleased to know 110
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 18hBut I love avant-garde poetry, live in Britain, but don't consider Prynne to be the only model to aspire to, and I love poetry which makes commitments, thinks radically and wants the world to be better. 031
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 18hI've long been suspicious of the Cambridge Exceptionalism of this group of Prynne acolytes as poets, and it helped me to unpick what felt like threatening critical discourse. Reading Living In History felt it outlined a modern classroom where I'd feel unwelcome, shut down and cancelled. 100
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 18hIn such a setting, it is exposed to daylight. Patronising adoption of some as victims and some as counter-revolutionaries abounds, and weakens not just the love but the politics of the whole enterprise. 100
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 18hUltimately Prynne did the same thing, but his shimmer was about a pretence of love (love surely means that others may have a point?). This critical book is the first to transfer that lyrical energy of Prynne-me-down raging cod politics into prose for an academic press. 100
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 18hRighteous magpies writing patchwork tone shifting poetry skimming into and out of quotes as if in-jokes, and with soi-disant revolutionary politics to accompany their likelihood of a lectureship shortlist when they've got a Cambridge degree. 100
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 18hThey also show lack of nuance, as if hopeful guesswork at the patchwork of assembled quotes as the revolution marches onwards. This reminds me all too much of the poetry of those born in the 70s and 80s who studied under Prynne. 100
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 18hFair enough, his is a fast moving sweeping survey and perhaps long quotes would have bogged down its pace. So I've provided them. I fear they don't just enrich his book, although it's a fine canon challenger, with several texts I'd never heard of. 100
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 18hI've now uploaded all five parts of my response to Luke Roberts' Living In History, in total over 40,000 words would be my guess. The main activity was to present long extracts from the texts that Roberts discusses. 100
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 21hThe fifth and final installment of my five part essay on Luke Roberts' Living In History 011
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 09/10/2026But in the case of the Tomlinson, incredibly expressive. I'd go so far as to say it made Tomlinson's work look more in keeping with the other contributors: something which got disguised as time went by 110
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Yeah, I know what you mean. But I still like a bit of playful unorthodoxy and I'm someone who loves to write argumentative critical prose 110
Reposted by Ira LightmanIan McMillan @imcmillan.bsky.social · 09/10/2026A MEMORY OF THE CHUCKLE BROTHERS HAMLET To me Or not to me 410816
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 09/10/2026O'Sullivan is so gestural, with those diagonal lines etc on other pages, that the underline feels like she is making a chopping motion with her arm as she reads that line or this, etc. It makes things gestural. 110
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 09/10/2026I think this is a separate issue of taste. There is a fab A4 publication from 1965, Sum: 13 English Poets, which comes to mind. It looks like typewriter type, and it uses underline on words in a Charles Tomlinson poem usually presented italicized. It works, feels raw, and more like U.S. practice 110
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 09/10/2026This edition I've photographed is from Reality Street. Etruscan did Red Shift. Did they also print Waterfalls in some selection? 100
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 09/10/2026For the line "Seventh of May Lapwing See from Other"? It's a good question but I'm glad myself of the fact it's got an underline rather than being in italics. It's the key nod and a wink about Bobby Sands, so I like how it stands out, like an actorly intensity. 100
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 09/10/2026The fourth installment of my five part essay on Luke Roberts' Living In History, in which I mention @billymills.bsky.social 273
Reposted by Ira LightmanFourfoot @fourfoot.bsky.social · 08/10/2026All of it or just a boner part? 481199241
Reposted by Ira LightmanNeil Norman And His Cosmic Orchestra @fubsyshabaroon.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Withnail & I, Claudius 27214
Reposted by Ira LightmanBeth Levin @betheena.bsky.social · 07/10/2026JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER ENGLISH,(1775–1851) ROCKETS AND BLUE LIGHTS (CLOSE AT HAND) TO WARN STEAMBOATS OF SHOAL WATER 1840 Oil on canvas Clark Art Institute Williamstown, Massachusetts 1103
Reposted by Ira LightmanRachel Parris @rachelparris.bsky.social · 07/10/2026Hey folks. In total honesty my tour is NOT selling well. I’ve sold 30 tickets in a 400 seater in Birmingham, and not much more elsewhere. If you like musical comedy, if you like standup, then please come see my show! And spread the word! The Rachel Parris Songbook tour starts in Nov! Link in bio! 🎶 851143945
Reposted by Ira LightmanNicolas Robert @robertsnickc.bsky.social · 06/10/2026#Painting by Nathalie Orselli #art 282067251
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 07/10/2026The third installment of my five part essay on Luke Roberts' Living In History 000
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 06/10/2026I'm much more a fan of cheeky and idiomatic translators than ones who naturalise. With the exception of Lowell, who I just find a bad example of projecting sentiment onto a tightly made original. 100
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Just to pull the eye away from the rest of the depiction, for a moment. 100
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 06/10/2026I felt the rest of the lines glide and wanted the crease in the French to fold away making a hidden disruption. So I went for the distraction of making my imaginary painting have an actual crease in the canvas, and the object put in the vanishing point of the perspective. 100
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 06/10/2026I was trying to get the feeling of a (modernist) painter's composition, and how s/he puts incidentals in the composition. My use of "vanishing point", not there in the original, is particularly egregious. 100
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 06/10/2026The appearance of "porte" twice in the original has tended, I observe, to make a translation quite phantasmagorical. A door here, a door there. As if in the flat plane of dream, where one image supercedes the previous. 100
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 06/10/2026One of my guides in translation is Bunting: that it's ok to name things with bathetic plainness in places, to allow the poem to keep going and make its first impression. 120
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Part two of my five part analysis of Living In History: Poetry in Britain, 1945–1979. Luke Roberts. Edinburgh University Press 000
Reposted by Ira LightmanBeth Levin @betheena.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Joel Graham- Brooklyn Bridge 0266
Ira Lightman @iralightman.bsky.social · 03/10/2026A new essay in five parts, all responses to Living In History: Poetry in Britain, 1945–1979. Luke Roberts. Edinburgh University Press iralightman1.substack.com/p/living-in-... with mention of @robertsheppard.bsky.socialiralightman1.substack.comLiving In History 1: HarwoodOne of a few 020
