Birmingham Jazz Incarnation

or, Playing the Changes

Simon Turner, Mark Andrew Webber

• Publisher: The Emma Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781910139868
• eBook ISBN:
  9781910139851
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

A man walks into a Birmingham bookshop, buys a volume of poetry, and steps out into the road, where a jazz musician seems momentarily to bring the whole city together. In the second poem in Playing the Changes, the same thing happens, only half the words are redacted. Then the experience is retold as a Petrarchan sonnet; a children's skipping rhyme; an Acknowledgements page; a pastiche of Tristram Shandy...

Drawing on the traditions of jazz improvisation and Oulipo, a literary movement where writing arises from extreme formal restriction, Playing the Changes sees Simon Turner decomposing and recomposing one of his own poems in a variety of forms and styles. The result is a hymn to the pleasures of music, reading, writing, and city life, humming with a joyous experimental energy. In Turner's linguistic hall of mirrors, the English language is always at serious, delirious play.

Redacted

What a feeling, to step out of the musty

twilight bookshop air with a collection

of poetry under your arm & run smack

into a bleach-blonde brassy bellow of a day:

clear blue sky like a sheet of tarpaulin,

no clouds, & blossom on every visible tree.

This dirty old city’s never looked so spruce.

Even the Sally Army band look jazzed up

in their threads, hugging their silver trombones,

but not as jazzed up as the man in black

(& I really mean black: a black overcoat

running all the way down to his knees,

black boots, black shades, & strangler’s gloves)

striding up the street with a sax to his lips,

blowing his soul out into the air, blossom

cascading off the trees in crazy fistfuls

in a sudden wind which can only have sprung

from the gaping mouth of his instrument.

I mean, it’s like he’s the master & maker

of the city itself: the wheeling gulls, the crowds,

the fountains, the monuments, the bus-stops,

all of it nothing but a figment of his music,

the silence waiting at the end of his song

wide & absolute as a record’s run-off groove.

No Vow’l No. 2, à la G.P.

What a joyful thought, to hop away from this musty

twilight bookshop air with a chapbook

of ballads snug in your armpit & run smack

into a ballsy Scandinavian roar of a day:

a sky fair & cobalt as a tarpaulin folio,

no clouds, & blossom dotting what boughs you can spy.

This dirty old city’s not shown such razzmatazz on any prior day.

Our local Sally Army band looks mighty glitzy, too,

in crisp mandatory uniforms, & hugging shiny horns,

but not as glitzy as that man in black

(& I say black with conviction: a long black coat

running down to a joint just north of his shins,

black boots, black Raybans, & hitman’s mitts)

striding through this outdoor shopping mall with a sax to his lips,

blowing his soul out into our atmos, blossom

cascading off hawthorn limbs in crazy fistfuls

in a rapid wind which (it’s my assumption, this) sprang

from his musical contraption’s gaping maw.

I purport that it’s as if this man’s an artist-divinity

for this city’s spirit: its circling gulls, its crowds,

its fountains & pagodas & monoliths & bus-stops,

all of it nothing but his music’s fabrication,

that hush waiting at his song’s conclusion

broad & totalising as a vinyl album’s run-off rut.

A is A

A is the air one breathes in emporia;

B is for book-induced, short-term euphoria.

C’s for the heaven-sent, sky-wide cerulean;

D is for daylight, as dazzling as bullion.

E is the means by which weather entrances;

F is the fuming of blossom o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Other Titles from the Emma Press
• Title Page
• Contents
• Birmingham Jazz Incarnation
• Redacted
• No Vow'l No. 2, à la G.P.
• A is A
• tl;dr
• Not Enough Hours in the Day
• The Birth of the Novel
• A Saxophonist Reborn in Brum
• Euphonious Morphology
• Anglo-American Blues Concerto (with Q & X omitted)
• Album of the Week
• Flatpack
• Opposite Day
• Petrarchan Lyric Variation
• Notes and acknowledgements
• Index
• About the Poet