The Frank Skinner Show - Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast: Craig Raine

Episode Date: December 25, 2024

Frank and the poet, Craig Raine, explore a disused botanical garden. The poems referenced are ‘A Martian Sends a Postcard Home’, ‘Listen With Mother’ and ‘The Old Botanical Gardens’ by Craig Raine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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when you open a no monthly fee RBC Advantage Banking account and we'll give another $100 to a charity of your choice. This great perk and more only at RBC. Hello and welcome to Frank Skinner's poetry podcast. If you notice a slight tremor in my voice, it's because I'm a little anxious about this week's podcast, I'd like to look at the poetry of Craig Raine. Now you may remember I did a podcast about Don Patterson a while back and I first discovered Don Patterson by reading his criticism and it was incredibly impressive and made me feel a bit intimidated. It's slightly different with Craig Grayne. My first contact with him is I read a book called My Grandmother's Glass Eye, which was published in 2016. And it's him writing about poetry. And it's a scary book because if he thinks someone has written something which

is wrong about a poem, and as you know on this podcast, we try not to use the W word because we like to think that every intelligent poetry reader's opinion has some validity as far as interpretation is concerned. I would say that Craig Grayne doesn't really follow that and he's quick to call out people he thinks are talking rubbish. So you can imagine talking about his poetry is a little bit hair-raising. I should say to be fair it's a brilliant book incredibly informative and entertaining and has fabulous little gems like and I quote advertising and poetry are exactly the same minimumum Impact. Such a good quote because you think advertising a dark and cheap and dirty thing

and poetry a beautiful fabulous mind-expanding thing are exactly the same. Are you out of your... Oh, I see. Minimum Words Maximum Impact. Very good. So it's a brilliant book. I just find some of the bloodshed in it a little bit alarming. Nevertheless it is not scary enough to put me off talking about Craig Raine's brilliant poetry. I should give you an example of the the scariness I think. And I think this is fair but unsettling. He talks about paraphrase. Now I've said to you before on here that you're talking about some beautifully

constructed language which has been poured over and thought through to say something in a very specific and clever way. But I do find myself somewhat having to paraphrase it, which obviously is reductive, but I think it helps. And he agrees with that and that was heartwarming for me. Craig Raine says in My Grandmother's Glass Eye, paraphrase is an essential, if necessarily approximate, tool in literary discourse. So it's never going to be right but it is helpful and essential even. He does go on to say that it is improper, I'm quoting him again,

improper when the reading is like a jigsaw. A jigsaw in which a piece from another jigsaw, the critics own jigsaw, can be seen bulging from where it has been forced. So not a great fan of imposing anything on a poem and I try not to do that but as I say I find myself in poetry something else which I'm going to call him Craig although he's a bit scary, something else which Craig I don't think is a fan of. Anyway, despite all that, I want to read you some of his poetry and I want to read from a collection called A Martian Sends a Postcard Home, which was published in 1979.

The Martian bit is relevant because one of Craig Ryan's claims to fame is that he was one of the pioneers of the Martian poetry movement and the title poem, A Martian Sends a Postcard Home, of this collection is an example of what's called Martian poetry. And it is the idea that a Martian who doesn't understand, who has no pre-knowledge of things, sees them in a completely different light, a bit like children do. I might have mentioned before when I saw a robin in our garden and I said to my five-year-old son,

oh look at that robin red breast and he said it's not red it's orange and I said no no it's and then when I looked, damn it he was right. I'd been led to believing it had a red breast because they're called robin red breasts and also when they're on Christmas cards they're red chested etc but here was a new fresh insight on colored by previous conception so I'll give you just a few lines from the actual poem Martian sends a postcard home it's not one of the ones I want to look at in detail today, so there. But for example, this is a Martian trying to interpret the world, but it's so beautiful. Mist is when the sky is tired of flight and rests its soft machine on ground.

Then the world is dim and bookish like engravings on the tissue paper I mean if you're gonna write about mist listen to that it's when the sky is tired of flight and rests its soft machine on ground so it lands just for a bit of rest and then the world is dim and bookish like engravings on the tissue paper. Fabulous. One more. But time is tied to the wrist

or kept in a box ticking with impatience. And you see, he's seeing watches and clocks and that and trying to interpret. I'm gonna do one more because this is how it ends. At night when all the colours die. I mean, this is it gets dark. In other words, at night when all the colours die, they hide in pairs. So he's talking about people sleeping together.

At night when all the colours die, they hide in pairs and read about themselves And I thought oh does he mean that people read in bed and they read magazines or novels and that is about human beings No, cuz the last line is a killer I'm gonna give you the four of them at night when all the colors die they hide in pairs and read about themselves in color with their eyelids shut. Read about themselves in colour with their eyelids shut. They're dreaming!

That's how Martian describes dreaming. And there's lots of those, oh, I see moments in that poem. The first poem I want to look at from this collection is called Listen with Mother. And I have fair stop before that I am a practicing Roman Catholic, so that might give you a hint as to why I chose this particular poem. Okay, Listen with Mother. In case you're not familiar with Listen with Mother as a phenomenon, when I was a kid there with mother as a phenomenon.

When I was a kid, there used to be a thing on the radio where a very posh lady would say, are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. And then she would talk, tell stories, nursery rhymes, do songs and stuff like that. And the idea is that you would, as a child you would sit with your mother, you'd both be in black and white, obviously, and listen to the radio and the child would be entertained, informed and educated, I suppose.

So, I'm gonna give you the first bit. We pecked at the shallow tide marked marble and sketched across like Italians arguing. What on earth is going on? You ask yourself, listen with mother. mother, we pecked at the shallow tide-marked marble and sketched a cross like Italians arguing. Well if you've ever been to a Catholic Church you'll know that on the way in there is a little sort of dish fitted to the wall which contains holy water. You dip in it and you cross yourself. You make the sign of the cross.

So we are entering a Catholic church. We pecked, you just touch it very delicately because you don't want to take too much sacredness away and then end up wiping it on your jumper. We pecked at the shallow tide marked marble. That marble bowl, if marble is what it is, at the door of the church has always got a mark where the holy water has sat.

The sort like you get in a bath, you know, that kind of mark. We pecked at the shallow tide marked marble and sketched a cross like Italians arguing. So you then make the sign of the cross in the name of the father and of the son of the Holy Spirit and it looks like Italians arguing like a big gesture. Sixpence safe in my glove, a clean handkerchief and the sacred heart spiky as a cactus on the front of my missile I tiptoed and genuflected like a little Quasimodo crippled by embarrassment late again.

So this is a child entering church we presume from the title that he is with his mother. I suppose we're presuming it's a he, I'm taking that because it's a male poet. It doesn't need to be. So here he is. We pecked at the Shallow. Already they seem reticent, already they seemed slightly dwarfed by the splendor of this church. Now it might not be a grand church although it's got a marble dish for the holy water but it can be intimidating I think to enter a Catholic church, especially in the old days. We pecked so we're just a little bit reticent. We pecked at the shallow

tide mark marble and sketched across like Italians arguing six pence safe in my glove There will be a collection at the church the plate will go around and Probably his mother has given him that money for the collection and he's the glove in those days was Like the closest working- class people had to a safe any money or anything of importance you'd put in your glove. Summer was a reckless time for security. A clean handkerchief again, I'm presuming this is a similar period to when I was growing up. It's been dated by the reference

to the radio show as I would say, you know, fifties, late fifties, early sixties maybe. And a clean handkerchief then was absolutely essential. The first time I moved in with a woman, I wasn't able to speak to my parents about the fact I was living with someone unmarried. As I say, we're a Catholic family, so we all had to pretend it wasn't happening. And the one acknowledgement my father gave was one day he stopped that woman and said, can I just say, make sure he never leaves the house without a clean handkerchief. And that was the one reference to us living together. Sorry I'm breaking up Craig Rains couplets. Clean handkerchief and the

sacred heart spiky as a cactus on the front of my missal. The missal is a book that you take into church and it's got all every day's prayers in so you turn to the right day and off you go and the Sacred Heart is a the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a heart it's great that I don't have to look any of this up it's it's a heart with a crown of thorns on it so it's spiky as a cactus on the front of my missile. I tiptoed and genuflected like a little Quasimodo crippled by embarrassment, late again. You've seen people do that thing where they do that tippy toe stooped walk

if they're late for an event. I get it, people do it across the front of the seating in theaters sometimes at my gigs, thinking that you become invisible if you bend down and walk on your tiptoes. It doesn't work. So he's entered like at a tiptoed and genuflected like a little Quasimodo. Quasimodo of course being the hunchback of Notre Dame from the famous novel and indeed cartoon, crippled by embarrassment late again. He was crippled by spinal deformity, obviously Quasimodo, so it fits to be crippled by embarrassment as you bend down like Quasimodo.

Genuflected, by the way, is when you kneel just before you enter the pew. I tiptoed and genuflected like a little Quasimodo crippled by embarrassment late again. And these descriptions get better and better. Listen to this. The snore of Latin, the radiator's vertebrae, an altar boy boys baseball boots under his cassock. It all comes back vivid and meaningless. So the snore of Latin, everything was in Latin in the mass those days. So most people didn't know what was being said. The radiator's vertebrae,

the way that a radiator sort of looks like a bone structure, looks like a backbone is stunning. And altar boys baseball boots under his cassock and that is again still true to this day. You see the altar boy and think, oh yeah, this beautiful image of the priest's helper, this sacred figure, and then you look down and see a pair of Yeezys underneath, under his cassock, the robe that he wears. It all comes back vivid and meaningless. That phrase, vivid and meaningless, really nagged at me when I first read it. Vivid, so he remembers, he's looking back now, we see that when he says it all comes back, we know this is something that didn't happen yesterday. It's something that happened when he was a child, when Listen With Mother was still on the radio. And this is a form of listening with mother,

but it's a sort of colder, less child-friendly version of the radio show. It's in Latin. You have to sit on a hard bench and no one is going to say, are you sitting comfortably in a Catholic church? Believe me. I took a Jewish friend to a Catholic church recently and she was horrified that there weren't cushions to sit on. Okay I'm meandering I feel the scary figure of Craig Reign standing behind me with a big stick so I need to give a bit more respect to this. Vivid and meaningless troubles me because it's clearly still vivid in his mind from the fabulous descriptions.

I'm not sure I'm convinced that it is meaningless to the speaker but that might be me injecting myself into the poem. Okay. I never liked God, but struggled with him like algebra and trigonometry. Relieved to get outside under a pointillist sky and let the snowflake sacrament melt on my outstretched tongue. I'm leaping across a few lines and losing something of the form of this.

I presume it's in separated cocklips, maybe to symbolize mother and child, maybe to symbolize the sort of cold formality of going to church. I don't know, but those are possibilities. I never liked God, but struggled with him like algebra and trigonometry. So yes, estocati.

I mean, you could say that maths, of course, are immortal in themselves, in that an equilateral triangle as perceived by Pythagoras would be the same as the one that you could now Google. It doesn't really change. It's eternal as I understand it as a non-mathematician. So it's not a bad comparison, God with algebra and trigonometry. It's also sort of unavoidable, both are unavoidable. If your mother's taking you to church you have to have some confrontation with God, I guess some would argue against it. But eventually if you persevere you get through it, you never do algebra and trigonometry again and

you don't need to go to church so relieve to get outside under a pointillist sky if you know the pointillists George Surratt being the most famous one if you like Stephen Sondheim you'll know Sunday in the Park with George which is about that artist. Pointillism is painting with tiny tiny dots, so he's walked out here and it's snowing. This child has been in this cold boring place that he's made to go, slightly intimidated by all noticing things like the altar boys baseball boots because he can't tell what's being said and then he gets outside under a

pointillist sky it's almost like he's art his creativity has been released he's suddenly enjoying the color of the world and let the snowflakes sacrament melt on my outstretched tongue. So we we've all done this as kids, opens his mouth and the snowflakes land on his tongue. In church in Catholic Mass of course one kneels and receives the communion host on your tongue from the priest and Catholics, yes, including me, believe that that is Jesus. So he seems to be this child, now he's broken out, now he's outside under a pointillist sky. He now chooses the Church of Nature, if you like, rather than the Catholic Church, and lets the snowflake sacrament melt on my outstretched tongue. A sort of instinctive, rich and non-formal religion.

But my mother clasped her naked hands like Adam and Eve puffy with weeping and her rosary draped its tactful vine. Oh I love it and I love it and I assume that someone with no Catholic heritage at all would still love it, but who knows. So he's outside celebrating nature, celebrating colour and beauty and being free and feeling the snowflakes on his tongue. But my mother clasped her naked hands like Adam and Eve. Now I don't know if his mother has come out with him. Many Catholics stay in after mass and have a little extra prayer. She's holding her rosary beads, which is absolutely the badge of women of a certain age in Catholic churches to this day for their affinity with Mary

the Blessed Mother. So listen to this though for an image. My mother clasped her naked hands like Adam and Eve puffy with weeping. So her fingers seem to be like Adam and Eve holding each other, embrace with fear and guilt and all that. Adam and Eve puffy with weeping, they've tasted the fruit, they've broken God's rules, they have cried with remorse, now they hog each other for support. And that's what happens with his mother's hands. They hug each other and a rosary draped its tactful vine. The tactful vine, obviously the vine that you see on paintings of Adam and Eve when their naughty bits, as I believe they used to be called in the 70s, are tactfully covered by flora and fauna.

So Adam and Eve and all their guilt and remorse, they wrap around each other and they are covered in the image of it by this tactful vine that hides their private parts. His mother's hands, their naked hands, they embrace each other. And I think there's a suggestion here, the kid just can't wait to get out. He gains nothing from the mass.

He has to go. He wants to be in the snow. But maybe if you're an adult, maybe if you've had more experience, maybe if you've suffered, maybe if you know what guilt and remorse and all that feels like, there's a lot more to be gained from this and his mother is less keen to leave, maybe she too is puffy with weeping in some way. And yeah, how can a kid possibly understand that kind of depth? The child can't feel, if you like, what Adam and Eve felt at that moment, and nor can he feel what his mother felt. Maybe he can now, looking back.

But faith now to him vivid and meaningless seems just like nostalgia a bit like looking back at an old radio show like Listen With Mother I've broken it up a bit that to explain I'd like to just blast it out if you'll give me permission thanks Listen With Mother by Craig Ray. We pecked at the shallow tide marble and sketched across like Italians arguing. Sixpence safe in my glove, a clean handkerchief and the sacred heart, spiky as a cactus on the front of my missile.

I tiptoed and genuflected like a little Quasimodo crippled by embarrassment, late again. The snore of Latin, the radiator's vertebrae, an altar boy's baseball boots under his cassock, it all comes back, vivid and meaningless. I never liked God, but struggled with him like algebra and trigonometry. Relieved to get outside under a pointillist sky and let the snowflake sacrament melt on my outstretched tongue. But my mother clasped her naked hands like Adam and Eve, puffy with weeping, and her rosary draped its tactful vine. I think it's a fantastic poem.

And it's got to be be because my urge to read it was more powerful than my fear of Craig Raine calling me up and explaining that I've got the whole damn thing completely wrong. I'm going to do one more poem and then I'll leave you alone and probably enter the witness protection program. Okay, it's called the old botanical gardens. It says in brackets afterwards for Chris and Lucinda. I never like that on poems. Don't take it away from me and give it to your special friends is what I always think. I blame the parentheses. Anyway, here's the first bit of the old botanical gardens.

This delicate sapling still wears a caliper and will never get well or lose its impotiggo now. For the healers have gone, whose hands could cure the tap with bronchitis and make the weather fine. So we know it's called the old botanical gardens. It seems that it is no longer operational from these first two stanzas. This delicate sapling, already we get the sense of something fragile that's been

deserted this delicate sapling still wears a caliper and will never get well or lose its impetigo now the caliper those support things I know a caliper is the thing you'd normally wear on your leg if you had some sort of, well, leg issue. But here those things that you put on the bottom of a delicate young tree to give it support. This delicate sapling still wears a caliper and will never get well or lose its impetigo. Now impetigo is actually a human skin disease that gives you a kind of bark-like growth. And you see that on trees.

This is a sick, weak, young tree and it needs care. But the people who should be caring for it obviously aren't at the old botanical gardens anymore so it is left alone and neglected. He goes on in the next answer, it continues, for the healers have gone whose hands could cure the tap with bronchitis and make the weather fine. So there's no gardeners left it seems, the people who would have mended the delicate sapling, the people who would have fixed the tap with bronchitis. You know when you get a water tap that's got a lot of air coming out of the water and it sort of splotters out. I'm guessing that is the

tap with bronchitis. No one's going to fix that anymore. And make the weather fine. I guess that is to do with keeping the greenhouses at the right temperature. So no one is at the old botanical gardens anymore, just the neglected remains of its former glory. And I'll read those first two stanzas again. This delicate sapling still wears a caliper. I like that PL sound repeating early on as

well. This delicate sapling still wears a caliper and will never get well or lose its impetigo now. For the healers have gone whose hands could cure the tap with bronchitis and make the weather fine. Next to stanzas, brace yourselves for sudden Old Testament reference. Eglon the king of Moab is dead in his hothouse, A leaking bag of peat, his fares on the floor, The city of palm-trees he possessed is gone, his summer parlour cold as a broken iceberg. What on earth is going on?

Well, I had to look it up, and I'm a bit of a Bible-y kind of a guy. If you go to Judges, you'll find a king called Moab. And Moab basically attacks Israel and takes over what is described in Judges 3.13. This is what it says. And Moab went and smote Israel, attacked Israel,

and possessed the city of palm trees. So he took over, he occupied the city of palm trees, which of course is perfect for a hot house description in the old botanical gardens. Eglon the king of Moab is dead in his hothouse so it hasn't gone well. A leaking bag of peat, his fares on the floor. So in the actual hothouse at the old Botanical Gardens, this is the image. A leaking bag of peat, his fares on the floor. Eglon the king of Moab, it was all going good for him, but he did oppress Israel for 18 years. And

then another guy called Ehud, E-H-U-D, of Israel, an Israeli, assassinated him. And he went in to see king of Moab, Eglon, and he stabbed him. And it says in the Old Testament, this is slightly fantastic, although a little bit fat shaming for the modern age. It says, and Eglon was a very fat man. And then Ehud stabs him and it says, and the fat closed upon the blade so that he could not draw the dagger out of his belly and the dirt came out.

So he has stabbed Eglon, Ehud has, and then he can't actually pull the knife out because the fat's closed on him, but excrement is leaking from Eglon, this oppressive king. And then if you go back to that image, it gets more and more delightful. Eglon, the king of Moab, is dead in his hothouse. So remember he possessed the city of palm trees, and then he was assassinated. So if we walk into the hothouse

at the old botanical gardens, what we see is a leaking bag of peat, his fares on the floor. That's what the image is, not what we literally see. A leaking bag of peat, his fares on the floor. So he describes this stabbed king whose excrement is pouring forth as a leaking bag of peat. Now of course it absolutely makes sense that there will be a leaking bag of peat in the

deserted hothouse at the old botanical gardens and his fez on the floor surely, it's fez because you know it's an image of eastern maleness, the fez, that hat. an image of Eastern maleness, the fez, that hat. But when he walks in and sees a leaking bag of peat, his fez on the floor, there is this enormous fat king, the bag of peat, leaking because his excrement is leaving him, and surely the fez on the floor is a plant pot. So the reality of the deserted gardens comes to the Old Testament imagery. He goes on, the city of palm trees he possessed is gone, his summer parlour cold as a broken iceberg. So the trees, the city, the old botanical gardens, they're gone. It's sommerpala, i.e. the greenhouse, cold as a broken iceberg. No one is handling the heating anymore.

Okay, I just want to look at the next stanza on its own because every now and again I talk about what I describe as the homework line in a poem. And it's a line that really nags at me and I don't understand. And I think about in bed and I think about in the shower and I think about on the toilet for days and not just in the context of this podcast. It's just a thing that happens to me when I read poetry. in the context of this podcast. It's just a thing that happens to me when I read poetry. You'll spot it, I think, in this four-line stanza. The botanical gardens are empty of everything

but grievances, like an atheist's heaven. Okay. The botanical gardens are empty of everything but grievances. Everything that was growing and alive seems to be dying and has gone. The people are gone. The people who cared about these plants and about these hot houses and wouldn't leave a leaking bag of pee on the floor, they've gone. No one is caring for it. So the botanical gardens are empty of everything but grievances, and I guess that kind of makes sense

because it's just regret now. It's just things that should have been mended that aren't mended. But that last simile like an atheist's heaven, I have poured over there, and I'm going to tell you I know what it means. It's very complicated because an atheist's, well it is to me, an atheist's heaven would be empty presumably because no one believes in it. Does that make sense? And also, atheists don't think they should be in a heaven because they're

atheists, and believers don't think atheists should be in a heaven because they're atheists and they don't deserve it. And it seems to me that an atheist heaven would be without joy or praise, it would be empty because there would be no God in it and it would just be a bitter retrospect if you can use retrospect as a noun. I tell you what, I'm sticking with it because I like it. So yeah, an atheist's heaven. I'm going to continue to think about that, but yeah, I think it has to be empty because there'd be no atheists in it. And if there were, there'd be no God in it. You can see I should have probably waited a few months until I come up with a good answer to that simile. But I also, I like giving you a few loose ends and we can all think about it together. But anyway, I think the gist is the botanical gardens are empty of everything but

grievances. All there is there now is loss and regret, I suppose, like an atheist have. And maybe the atheist is thinking, you know what, I wish I'd believed in a bit more and then I wouldn't be in this cold, deserted, empty place. We're nearly about to turn the page. The end is nigh. Here we go. Grave on bare grave and a host of placards demanding the return of flowers from exile. Strangers with Latin names that are shy on the tongue. They force us to falter like a lump in the throat, though the gardens are gone, and all our futile grief,

a scourge of dead ivy on a cold stone wall. I love when you can hear the turn of the page on this podcast. Grave on bare grave and a host of placards demanding the return of flowers from exile. The flowers are gone and so what used to be their beds where the flowers slept and then rose up and bloomed again Now they've turned to graves. Grave on bare grave. Just soil. Just soil and a host of placards It sounds like a it's made to sound by Craig Ryan as like a protest to sound by Craig Ryan as like a protest demanding the return of flowers from exile. People standing with things that say bring back the hyacinth or whatever. I think what it literally means and it works again like Eglon the king of Moab.

Yes, there is literally a leaking bag of peat and a plant pot on the floor and it becomes egglon. And here I think there is literally soil and the placards are those little things that you stick in the soil with their names, the names of the flowers and plants on. And it has their name on. It looks like it's people protesting for the missing, for the lost, for the invisible people. Grave on bare grave and a host of placards demanding the return of flowers from exile. And there's something sad because if it's a grave,

maybe the flowers are dead and gone forever. But the placards, the little labels, still herald their names, still long for their partner, if you like, their plantish partner. Strangers with Latin names that are shy on the tongue. And of course they are invariably Latin names on the names of plants on those labels. Shy on the tongue, a bit uncertain on the tongue, a bit you don't really know how to pronounce them.

They force us to falter like a lump in the throat. So it's, they're hard to say and it sounds like we're emotional because we're going sepapendrous, but it's just hard to say. Or is he, are we emotional? Is there a lump in the throat? Both meanings I think apply there. Yes, it does make us sound like that, but there is a desperate sense of loss in this poem. And of course a lump in the throat

is a symptom of grief and upset. But it could just be mispronunciation. They force us to falter like a lump in the throat. Though the gardens are gone and all our futile grief, a scourge of dead ivy on a cold stone wall. So there's no point in getting upset about those flowers. They're not coming back. The gardens are gone and all our futile grief, all our upset about the the the ruination of the old botanical gardens

is pointless. A scourge of dead ivy on a cold stone wall. That that is basically what it's worth. that is basically what it's worth. It's all dead and cold and finished. So it's a sad poem about a botanical garden's closing down. However, if you read My Grandmother's Glass Eye by Craig Raine, there's a very interesting section on subtext and it is about the fact that sometimes you read a poem and you sense there's something else going on other than the surface narrative, the surface meaning. This is what he says in the book. There is a thinness which if we trust the poet is an invitation to press on through to the ordained but occluded destination.

So there's a thinness, there's something missing, there's a feeling that yes something's been said but not enough it's a bit thin there must be something else and it's occluded it's an occluded destination so it's obstructed we can't see it straight away because the surface meaning is is in our way but we have to push past that and sometimes the poem is not working that way, we don't need to do it but he says we can sort of feel it, there's a thinness in the poem. Say it again, which if we trust the poet, so it might just be a rubbish thin poem, but if you trust the poet and think this guy knows what he's doing as I trust Craig Rain, you think now there's a reason for that feeling I'm getting about there's more to this than meets the eye. I need to press on through to the ordained but occluded destination. I need to find the hidden poem within this poem. That is what he says. And he talks about the reader and he's now saying an experience,

someone who reads poetry a lot and reads it properly. And I don't mean that in an elitist way. I mean gives it full respect, reads it several times and spends, let me think, probably eight days so far trying to consider the implications of an atheist's heaven. That kind of reader who's read a lot of poetry and is interested and enthusiastic and keen to learn, they get the feeling that the outer layer of the poem is a sort of enigmatic gesturing. This is me talking now, this is why it sounds a bit less written. A sort of enigmatic gesturing towards a more rewarding subtext. Craig Ryan says, a surface inadequacy and inadequacy is in inverted commas because it's not actually inadequate,

it looks inadequate, it makes the poem look, oh is that it? But that isn't it. So a surface inadequacy that prompts further searching. I have that experience with Craig Rains, the old Botanical Gardens. There's too much religious imagery in this story of what is basically just looking at a sad old closed-down botanical garden place. That first couple of stanzas, this delicate sapling still wears a caliper. A sapling makes you think of youth and early fragility. Wearing a caliper with empertigo is humanising this tree, this baby tree and making us think of a child, of a human child, because it wears a caliper and it's got impetigo. The healers have gone whose hands could cure the tap with bronchitis and make the weather fine.

Do you remember when Jesus changed the weather when they were out on the boat, when he was walking about on the water? Maybe you don't, but he did. He cured a lot of people whose hands could cure the tap with bronchitis, but he's. He cured a lot of people whose hands could cure the tap with bronchitis, but he's not there anymore. So the healing has stopped. This is what I'm getting from this. Then we go to the Old Testament about a sort of non-believer who came in and took over the

took over the city of palm trees. But all that, all that Old Testament poetry and all the vim and vigor of that story of the assassination of the knife that wouldn't come out, of the squirting excrement, all that life and excitement, that all seems to have gone now. It's just a bag of peat and a plant pot. So that sort of magic and mystery of religion isn't here anymore. The botanical gardens are empty of everything but grievances like an atheist's heaven. Maybe Craig Ryan is saying this is the modern world and maybe he's saying that, do you remember those memories he talked about? I'm going to look back to make sure I get it right. Vivid and meaningless. Maybe that's kind of all we've got now is that people don't believe anymore and because they don't believe then Jesus

the healer doesn't seem to be around anymore the magic and the poetry of the Old Testament doesn't seem to be we seem to be in an atheist's heaven empty and godless. Grave on bare grave, all makes sense, the dead just seem to be left now, they're not going to rise again because religion has gone. Strangers with Latin names, maybe thinking back to that church experience of when he was a child, when everything was in Latin. Can I say, by the way, the fact that I refer back to that, I'm breaking a golden rule of Craig Rain. He says one of the things, a key rule of thumb, he says in my grandmother's glass eye and he doesn't suggest things he tells you outright resist all readings that rely on concurrent citation either of poems by the same author or of poems by other authors as if multiplication of

the problem will solve the problem so don't quote from one poem to help to illustrate, help to understand another poem, but I sort of am doing that. I think that the Latin reminds me of the Latin, the snoring Latin that he had to endure as a child. And he moved away, and maybe this is what he feels. It's partly society has become slightly godless from a Christian point of view but maybe, I think he was raised as a Catholic but I don't like to bring too much biography into poetry as you know, but the speaker of these two poems definitely went to a Catholic church against his will as a child and I'm assuming it's the same speakers. It's all very dangerous stuff. Forgive me, Craig.

So they force us to falter like a lump in the throat. So again, we feel something and we can write it off as, oh yeah, that was just a strange, I didn't, I never knew what they were talking about, but we still feel something. Vivid and meaningless were those memories that he talked about in the other poem I shouldn't be referring to, but it does seem very vivid here and maybe the meaninglessness is being mourned. They force us to falter like a lump in the throat that the gardens are gone and all our futile grief, so the now pointless yearning for those gardens, those flowers, may be for religion, may be for faith. It's futile, a scourge of dead ivy on a cold stone wall.

Now again, if you know anything about the crucifixion, you'll know that Jesus was scourged, whipped, and it's a, I mean, it is a real bloody, it's got real dynamic energy, it's religion read in tooth and claw, just like the killing of Eglon the king of Moab. So in this dead and slightly empty botanical gardens there seems to be a yearning for the rich red blood of religion, the sort of thing that would have maybe kept him going to church as a child, rather than drive him away with its tedium. A scourge of dead ivy on a cold stone wall is reminiscent of Jesus being scourged.

But instead of a hot-blooded man in the midst of a sort of terrible crucifixion narrative, it's just a cold stone wall now. And rather than the Roman soldiers dishing it out with this whip, it's just dead ivy. Everything has dried up. Everything is cold and dead. And has dried up, everything is cold and dead and you can't remember the vibrant life of religious belief. If you ever had it, the yearning for it still. That's what I think. Again, I hope Craig Rayne never hears this podcast. I should say that he delighted in quoting, and I'm gonna go in a mini,

T.S. Eliot in My Grandmother's Glass Eye. T.S. Eliot sort of talking about Aristotle, just to make it even more intimidating. And he talks about, Eliot talks about what he thinks about Aristotle. And he talks about the method of poetic interpretation, which I suppose is something I'm constantly talking about on this podcast and doing my best to practice and the quote that Craig Raine delights in is there is no method

except to be very intelligent. Okay, good luck with that. Okay, good luck with that. Thank you for listening to Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast. Don't forget to follow so you never miss an episode. See you next week. Tis the season for shopping, and with Rakuten, it's also the season for stacking up the savings. Use Rakuten to stack cash back at hundreds of stores on top of holiday sales. That's like savings on savings. With Rakuten, you can save money on gifts for everyone on your list.

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