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markets

Markets, mezze & muses

2015JanBrixtonMarket
Brixton Village & Market Row

Last week was another busy one in London. It involved a visit to Brixton market, where the pickings were far from slim. Brixton Village & Market Row is populated more by smart shops, delis and cafes than traditional fare, although there are still a few butchers, fishmongers and less chi-chi retailers.

We browsed the offerings in both these arms of the covered market, looking for lunch, and settled upon Salon, which has its eye firmly on well produced local foods – cheeses, cured meats, bread and delicious lunch items. We had celeriac & whey soup, a salad of cauliflower & turmeric and a pasty beautifully filled with parsnip, cavolo nero and cheese – and could only gaze enviously on the many other offerings remaining on the table. One must stop somewhere.

2015JanBrixtonMarketSalon2015JanBrixtonMarketSalonCeleriacSoup 2015JanBrixtonMarketSalonCheese 2015JanBrixtonMarketSalonPancetta  2015JanBrixtonMarketButcher2015JanBrixtonMarketFishShop

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, in the poetry realm, I gave a reading last week at the Loose Muse‘s regular monthly series, co-starring with the delightful and entertaining Tania Hershman who read a few very short stories and recited some poetry in the first half. There were plenty of open mic readers – the series clearly attracts a supportive community of regulars, and there was as might be expected a good assortment of topics and styles. A good and responsive audience, but as is so often the case nowadays, not big book buyers. Which is their right of course, but tricky to predict when one is travelling in a transatlantic fashion with printed matter. Poetry tends to lack international distribution, so we poets are the hauliers of enlightenment, and it can be a heavy load.

Heavier still are books of photographs, and I had to resist picking up a copy of Dylan 2015JanTasMezzeThomas and the Bohemians, The Photographs of Nora Summers when I attended the closing reception for the photography show that had been gracing the Poetry Cafe’s walls since early December. Afterwards we wandered off in search of food and settled on Turkish mezze at Tas, which offered an ample selection that ended very happily for me with a small glass of Tokaji Aszu.

2015JanMuldoon1Last night’s reading by Paul Muldoon at Keats House in Hampstead was a treat – hadn’t heard him read before.  His reading manner is quirky, full of pauses and random interactions with the audience. He seemed amused by the readers in the front row who were following along in their copies of his new collection, 1,000 Things Worth Knowing, and paused from time to time to give them a page reference. His poetry is singular, challenging and complex, at times deceptively simple, at others tapping incalculable worlds of knowledge, waving come-hither flags of form and rhyme. Such are the poets to hear in person, hoping they will throw their readers a few clues. And it was delightful and absorbing.

Dashing around London

It’s a busy old place, this London. Crowded, too. Even, at times, in the spacious halls of the British Library where I spend as much time as I can. I noticed a little urban food growing going on in the forecourt, where giant planters are evidently brimming with strawberries.

Wandering round Vauxhall after a dog walk we stopped for a little breakfast at a dog-friendly pub, the Black Dog, which is a great thing to have in one’s neighbourhood. As is this venerable tea house, a building which Virginia tells me is mentioned in one of Thackeray’s novels.

 

 

 

 

 

We stopped in for a peek at the Vauxhall City Farm, which is part petting zoo and part community garden. There are horses large and small as well as rabbits, chickens, goats, sheep and a fair number of waterfowl of various shapes and sizes. In the back there’s a modest allotment which in this unseasonably warm December is still growing, unimpeded by frost.

 

 

 

And on for a look at Borough Market where there’s everything from bread to biltong.

 

Market Envy

We have a lot of excellent markets and farm shops in Victoria, but reading a pair of articles in the Guardian about food markets made me pine and yearn all over again. Borough Market is one I try to visit every time I’m in London, and it seems to get better every time; the variety and quality are staggering, and the ambience incomparable. In the companion article about new vs traditional food markets the excellent point was made that marketeers offer human contact in an age where we’re removed not only from the source of our food itself but also from the people who raise, process and package it. And that small scale trading in food is not a bad way to make a living, for both sides of the barrow. Supermarkets are cheap, fast and impersonal, like so much of our world today; I’d rather give my money straight to the farmer if I can.

It’s not unlike buying discounted books: if you buy a cut-price read from Walmart or Costco or an online discounter, you are also cutting the royalties of the writer, which are slender enough. So too the farmer loses on the profit margin for retailing through supermarkets. So I don’t begrudge paying a supermarket price to a farmer any more than I do paying the retail book price to an author (who’s had to purchase the book from the publisher).

Something struck me in a recent interview with 87-year old Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

“My poetics are totally different to something like the Ginsberg school, which is based on the idea of ‘first thought, best thought’. It is a solid concept to get the most direct transcription of your consciousness, especially if the person doing it has an original mind. Allen Ginsberg had a fascinating and genius mind and so the poetry is fascinating and genius. But when this method is laid on to thousands of students, many of whom don’t have original minds, you get acres of boring poetry.”