Rachel Whiteread, Tate Britain

Seen a little while ago, but I failed to write about it, sorry, this major retrospective is essential if you are in any way a fan of the not so Y now, YBAs.

As they are all about my age, I feel woefully inadequate when faced with a body of work as impressive as Whiteread's. Although her famous House is not extant, having been torn down in what might be judged as the worst planning mistake a council ever made, there is more than enough here to show why she was the first woman to win the Turner Prize in 1993.

She's all about space, the nothing places and things that we don't notice, like the undersides of the hundred chairs cast in coloured resin in the main hall. And the things that will never be, like the books not written by Holocaust victims in her memorial to them in Vienna, which I have also seen. Here there are similar book shelves with books placed spine in.

Of all her castings, doors, mattresses, staircases, my favourites were the tiny and domestic. Her hot water bottles in various media are some of her earlier pieces, and there is a whole case of them to rekindle my interest. But this is also work of scale and wonder. Just how did she do that?

Impressionists in London, Tate Britain

The quietest times of the year to visit a gallery is just before Christmas and between Christmas and New Year, when everyone is elsewhere doing other things. Hurrah for that. December 23rd at Tate Britain was calm, almost empty, and we had the place to ourselves. Perfect conditions for viewing the Impressionists.

I'm not a massive fan of this period really, but there is much to admire here from Monet, Pissaro, Tissot and all the others who fled the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune for the safety of London, preferring to paint our suburbs and sporting events over the brutal realities of home.

Monet's series on the Palace of Westminster capturing the fog are worth your while alone. But sit in that room for several minutes, adjust your eyes to the lighting to get the most out of them, in the same manner as one had to with the Rothkos in their special room in days of yore.

Quite by accident, I drove passed spot where Pissaro lived in West Norwood the week before. Seven days later I find myself studying his painting of the same street in snow. Funny, these life co-incidences.

Pop along if you can afford to pay nearly £18 for the privilege. At this price, and why are exhibitions so very expensive?, it's making my membership look like a total bargain.

Merry whatever

Season's Greetings to everyone who takes the time to read this roll of cultural and other ramblings. It's been a busy year for me, moving jobs, moving country, and finally feeling at home. Here's a new poem for your festive reading.

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Good news from Oslo, batteries included

We're

sorry we haven't

wrapped it, again this

year, but, you know, after

70 we didn't think you'd mind.

It's a bit

big, awkward with

those needles, graduated

branches, and we didn't want

to risk you putting it upside down

in the hidden stand. The guards aren't

keen these

days either. If we

spruced it up, they couldn't

keep an eye, and a 20 metre green

Viking at customs might look like a

missile, too soon chipped, composted, mulched

by the bomb squad. Anyway, we know you prefer it

draped

in words.

Enjoy.

Hidden London - The Mithraeum

A month or so ago Bloomberg opened its new billion pound building in the City. It has been carefully built over the remains of a rare piece of Roman London, a temple to Mithraeus. An experience has been created, but this is not a cheesy affair in the slightest.

Some of the 600 finds are artfully displayed. The rest, including the key find - the bust of Mithras -  are in the Museum of London. Ipads are on hand to describe to the exhibits. These are well worth lingering over, especially the wooden tablets, one with first time Londinium was written, and another being the oldest piece of Roman writing in Britain, and funnily enough an IOU between two freemen.

Downstairs there is an interactive display voiced by Joanna Lumley.

Downstairs again, at timed intervals, hence the need to book a ticket, is the temple itself. You enter in the dark. Its slowly revealed clever lighting and subtle smoke effects, along with the soundtrack of voices and chanting, attempts to create something of the cult experience.

It's mysterious and slightly shivery, and was just the perfect thing to explore on a freezing day.

The location specific irony of the men only Mithraeus cult, based as it seems to have been on rather a lot of feasting, should not be lost on anyone.

To get your glimpse, book a litter to Walbrook. No denari required.

Ty Newydd - You wanted outcomes

My car tyres crunch on the slate chips in the car park. I open the door and breathe in some sweet Welsh air. It’s raining, that fine rain that has you soaked in minutes. No matter, no-one comes here for the weather. Any sun and sitting in the garden this week will be a bonus. I lift my case and book bag from the boot and trundle down the path towards the front door of the large stone built Georgian house. There is only bird song to greet me until I swing open the office door and say hello. I am greeted warmly.

I’ve arrived a few hours early, as is my habit to take the early road across half the country, so I am offered my choice of rooms. This week I fancy Lloyd George’s bedroom. I’m not afraid of ghosts and the fact that he died here bothers me not a jot. It’s a huge room and I have it to myself. It affords me a view of the front garden with its herbaceous borders, pebbled path and imposing wrought iron gates beyond which is the wooded drive.

I unpack, wander down to the kitchen to make myself tea, and mug in hand I refresh my memory of the layout of the house, standing and staring at various spots; the library with its weird acoustic, the dining room, and garden, which in the still damp I take a proprietorial tour around to the end gate and its uplifting view over the fields to the sea in one direction, and to Snowdonia in the other. I turn back to look at the white painted rear elevation of the house, picking out the stages of building from the various shiny slate roofs and glass extension. My tea is a drinking temperature now. A true refreshment. I retrieve my notebook and pen, then settled in the back porch wrapped in a throw, I start writing.

I have been attending courses at Ty Newydd for nearly fifteen years. In that time I have had the pleasure of being taught, encouraged, supported and promoted by major poets, Welsh and otherwise – Gillian Clarke, Carol Ann Duffy, Jo Shapcott, Daljit Nagra, and Robert Minhinnick to name just a few. It was only after my very first course there with Gillian and Carol Ann that I had the confidence to apply to do an MPhil in Creative Writing at the University of South Wales. As part of that degree we also attended Ty Newydd for a weeklong workshop where I was taught by Sheenagh Pugh, Tony Curtis, Philip Gross, Des Barry, and others. After graduation, I attended the workshop as a fringe member, using the opportunity as a writing retreat.

I have been a long-standing supporter of Ty Newydd. It is my home in Wales. I am 55 now and very far from retirement. My writing is nothing like a hobby. If poetry could give me a living, I would certainly be doing it full time. In the last decade, since Carol Ann wrote “Brilliant!” on one of my poems at Ty Newydd, I have:

·      published over two hundred poems in various magazines,

·      had six collections of poetry published (the next one is out in 2018), one of which was reviewed in the PBS magazine, and all of which have had good reviews,

·      been widely anthologised,

·      read at countless festivals and poetry evenings in the UK and France,

·      won poetry prizes,

·      founded a literary association in Paris that runs workshops, open mic nights and publishes a magazine, Paris Lit Up, for which I edited the poetry,

·      taught writing workshops for Oxford University and the Poetry School,

·      been elected to the Welsh Academy of Letters, and

·      had my website archived by the National Library of Wales.

Would I have had the chutzpah to do all of this without the confidence in my work and path given to me at Ty Newydd? Most probably and resoundingly not.

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Glasgow Girls

It's always rather annoyed me that Mackintosh and the Boys get so much attention, when there were brilliant women artists working in Glasgow at the same time. Margaret MacDonald is probably the most important of these. Her high Art Nouveau interiors are magnificent as in this example from Kelvingrove.

Her gesso panels can also be found in the Glasgow School of Art, which is currently scaffolded and sheeted and undergoing an enormous and accurate restoration after the fire. Other work is in the Mackintosh house at the Hunterian, no doubt amongst other places. Her sweeping lines, stylised roses and delicate portraits especially please me.

The Glasgow Boys

I haven't been to Glasgow in literally decades, but this summer touring myself around the country to friends far flung, I had the chance to visit the boys again. They are in Kelvingrove in a room of their own and the scattered about the Hunterian, shining in all their glory. These are my favourites:

Henry and Hornel's collaboration - The Druids bringing in the Mistltoe - mysterious, huge, shiny and Klimtish. I just love the invention of mythology.

Guthrie - A funeral service in the Highlands - a monumental canvas for the subject matter where the foreground space is hugely important, snow covered echoing the grey sky. Also, no women as was traditional.

Guthrie - Old Willie, the village worthy - just the most wonderful portrait

Henry - Japanese lady with a fan - All things Japanese were especially in vogue at this point and this is a fabulously understated painting in its sombre palette and select use of colour, and the seemingly modest turned away face erotically exposing her neck.

Boating on the River Lea

The Lea (Lee) is a navigable river running from the Chilterns that, as it reaches London, becomes canalised. Largest of the Thames tributaries, it has been written about many times, most notably by Iain Sinclair. It is a liminal river, so if you like your day's boating alternating between flooded gravel pits, woods, meadows, and almost wild camping, and industrial depots, food distribution centres, speed racing tracks and pylons, which indeed have a beauty of their own, this is the one to cruise.

It is packed with canal boats and barges, and towards the River Stort, river boats. The locks, patience required at these, are variously automatic, semi-automatic or manual, but mostly the latter, so expect to develop some serious muscle. Alternatively you can try smiling nicely at watching weight lifters and give them an excuse to show off their hours in the gym to more practical effect.

Urban legend has it that there is a crocodile in the Lea, fond of taking Canada geese and swans, but we saw nothing more exciting than said geese, swans, moorhens and coots. Although, as dusk started to fall, a kingfisher swooped in front of the boat and quickly back into the cover of a willow. That was uplifting.

There are two kinds of boaters - those with permanent moorings that can run to such luxuries as washing machines, barbeque decks, small gardens, club houses and electricity, and those who have to move their boats from the public moorings every two weeks or risk being fined by the Canal and Rivers Trust and its large team of volunteer wardens. Fair enough. Them's the rules, and many young people are living on the water in London in this way. The bearded and tattooed hipster quotient is quite high.

There could not have been a better day than last August bank holiday to chug up the Lea. Twenty eight degrees made the locks hard and thirsty work. Bob Marley on the sound system in celebration of Carnival turned a few appreciative heads as we passed by, or as they passed us by on the cycle path. And we haven't quite got over the sight of a boat with what seemed to be hemp growing in pots on its roof. Ah, London. Ah, summer.

Giacometti at Tate Modern

It's been an age since Giacometti had an exhibition in London, but what a disappointingly small one this was. There were too few rooms. I reached the end before I had really started.

Tiny sculptures that my old eyes can barely make out, especially if they are tucked behind poorly lit glass, large works that in all honesty I have seen many times before, and some of which are not actually that interesting, and the dark palette of his paintings, had me scratching my head, again.

Yes, I get it, working and reworking and paring down to the essence, with a limited number of sitters, but perhaps something more cheerful? Easy for me to say, as I did not live through the horrors of war or the immediate post-war reality of Europe.

Still...

Another good reason to go to Birmingham

Wandering recently, I found myself in the church that became a cathedral in the town that became a city, and huge surprise, the stained glass was designed by Burne-Jones and manufactured by William Morris. Who knew?

There are four huge panels, three behind the altar and one at the rear of the cathedral, all in luminous red and blue. Interestingly, and out of the usual chronology, the ascension is directly behind the altar and the crucifixion to the right.

My favourite was the birth of Jesus, especially the shepherds and the heavenly host appearing above a very gothic wood, not bare grassy slopes.

Worth a detour, even if you have to wait a few minutes for a wedding party to vacate the premises.

The Soul of a Nation - Tate Modern

Generally excellent, expect it to be absolutely packed out, so be patient and you will have the chance to view the work in the gaps between people. This is a must see show of black art from 1963 to the early 1980s, covering the civil rights movement. It introduced me to artists I have never heard of, let alone seen. That is shameful as some of the paintings are wonderful.

There are films and much printed matter to read, so expect to take it slowly. The only part that lost my attention was as the exhibition moved away from its political focus to art in general. OK abstraction is abstraction is abstraction, but this seemed to be going beyond the brief unnecessarily.

My favourites were the gilded paintings and the remade African art, voodoo altars and the like. I am still astonished that such protest and response has taken place in my lifetime. A reminder as I get on that much has changed and for the better, but that much still needs to change. Ten out of ten.

Poetry submissions

Gosh, it's hard work. Akin to having another job. You write the work and then you have the complicated and time consuming task of sending it out to journals and magazines asking their kind, overworked and underpaid editors to consider it for publication.

You have to keep track of what you've sent to whom, avoid multiple submissions, follow the formatting and other submission guidelines to the letter or be summarily rejected. There's no excuses for not doing as you are asked, but when you are having a marathon session it's enough to drive the poor poet crazy.

Thank goodness, for the most part, for submittable, which certainly cuts down on all that paper, postage and packaging. I don't know why more journals don't switch to it now. On environmental grounds alone, it is surely the way to go, no?

I think the only reason for not using electronic means for submissions and reviewing work must be to maintain a barrier - only the very determined will apply by printing and posting. But equally only the well off will apply - postage is a factor and it's not cheap, and have you seen the price of printer ink these days?

I'm still umming and ahhing as to whether it is worth sending my work to places demanding such an investment on my part when the chances of me knowing quite what was in the editors mind when she started to put the edition together are slim, and bearing in mind that very few publications actually pay their contributors.

It's a thought in progess. I shall think on.

Gillian Ayres at the Museum of Wales

It takes a certain degree of chutzpah to be this bold and huge with your work, but if you like your abstracts eye-wateringly bright and best viewed from as far away as the gallery space will afford, then this is the show for you.

Cardiff plays host to Gillian Ayres this summer. I'm not entirely sure why, but the National Museum decided to hang the show in reverse chronological order. Something of a pointless gesture if you ask me. I resisted being directed in this way and saw them in the order of making, preferring the earlier to the later, as well as her works on paper.

It was a welcome refuge from the more or less constant rain of the last two weeks, but I did feel sorry for all that day's graduands and graduates taking shelter in the museum as a good back drop for their photographs.

Grayson Perry at the Serpentine Gallery

 The tongue in cheek Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever! is indeed proving so, given that I made the school girl error of trying to get in on the first Saturday afternoon after it opened. But the 40 minute queue was worth it.

I love Grayson Perry, and so it seems does everyone else. Who would have thunk it that a transvestite potter, as he describes himself, would become a living national treasure, yet he and his alter-ego, Claire, have.

Yes, he makes some obvious points, but they are ones worth making and his affectionate portrait of the nation is one we need to look at in these troubled times.

Thinking about the great inequalities in our country, whilst celebrating all its eccentricities is the order of the day in everything from the pair of Brexit pots, one of which is ever so slightly bigger than the other, to the wall sized tapestries, such as the stereotype map of Britain and the even larger one portraying our urban landscape complete with a traffic jam, burning car in a scrubby field, and grafittied skate park, to the personalised motorbike and cycle, to his sketch books.

The Serpentine has packed its three rooms with much to consider and the irony of buying a The Liberal Elite fridge magnet was not lost on me.

David Hockney and Queer Art at Tate Britain

So, OK, David Hockney is the fastest selling show, the longest opening, etc. and he seems the most popular living British artist. And yes, I do enjoy his work from the earliest through the swimming pools, to the Californian and East Yorkshire landscapes to the latest ipad work, the colours, the confidence with shape, all well exemplified in this major retrospective.

But at this point I am thinking it is all a bit over-hyped. Go in your thousands if you must, but I think I have seen rather too much of his work. I am jaded and cynical.

Queer Art was something else. It is a melange of homoerotic art, hidden messages and work by queer artists to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary this year of the decriminalization of homosexual acts. All very laudable and some of my favourite paintings were there, especially Vita Sackville-West in her red hat.

But, it was too much of a mishmash for me: a wide swathe of chronological time, a disparate collection of images and objects. I spent far too much time reading things in order to be told their significance. That is not the mark of a successful art exhibition. I am meant to be swept up in the work, not having a lengthy history lesson in order to appreciate it. Still, worth a peek if you are passing.

Hidden Paris - Fontainebleu

Hidden in the sense that it is not in Paris at all, the Chateau taking up the central part of the genteel town of Fontainebleu is a 40 minute train ride from Gare de Lyon, but it was a fabulously sunny day and definitely time to get into the green after winter's grey.

Smaller and older than Versailles, this palace of the French monarchs is undergoing some building restoration work at present so the Pope's rooms, so called, were closed, but the rest was open; room after room of gorgeousness, a veritable feast and a study in royal interior design over the centuries, including throne rooms, a ball room, library, reception rooms, Marie Antionette's bed chamber (another one), and many of Napoleon's personal effects, dinner services, campaign tent, jewels.

The gardens are extensive for strolling, picnicking, boating, and the like. A great day out when you want to escape the traffic fumes and Tom Cruise filming helicopter chases for Mission Impossible 6 in the skies of Paris.