2012, a personal recapitulation

Almost a week since the last post. A few things to say, but maybe a very personal summing up of 2012 before it vanishes completely from sight. It has been a mad, sad, bad, but very active year. Please pass on this if you are as uninterested as you have every right to be.

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On 6 January Lukas is born, our second grandchild, after a very long labour for Helen. A lot of university tutorials and some readings including at Bangor and Letchworth, then the Finzi Lecture at Reading in March,  followed immediately by the LSE debate on Hungary, which goes surprisingly well. That is almost immediately followed by the Norwich Showcase events at UEA. By that time I am making progress guest editing Poetry Review. My translation of Satantango appears in the US in March (May in the UK) - huge success. Roughly the same time my translation of Yudit Kiss's The Summer My Father Died appears here in the UK. 

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More readings in April. Lukas has his operation. Some more readings, the tuition stint at Oxford Kellog. The performance in Norwich streets of Singing the City in mid-May. A week at Totleigh Barton to teach an Arvon Course with Marilyn Hacker. More readings. Recording BBC programme on Béla Tarr. Poetry Review wrapped up by end of May. Some teaching at the Royal College of Art. Launch of Poetry Review at the end of June at Poetry Parnassus, along with the Muldoon lecture. Working on Camarades collaboration with Carol Watts, performance at festival outside Brighton, the fields as muddy as required on such occasions. The Wymondham Words Festival is being planned throughout this period and into summer. Still in July the opening of the Titian Metamorphosis show at the National Gallery for which I was one of the poets invited to write a poem. Big event, big banquet at the NG, followed by pieces for Granta. 

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Clarissa contracts psoriasis. Becomes Leopard Woman: her UV treatment begins in the first week of August (and goes on till the end of September, three times a week) scuppering any thoughts of time away. One of her close colleagues develops cancer while on holiday and dies of it all too soon. One or two readings. Early September the judging of the Stephen Spender Poetry Translation Prize. The Wymondham Words Festival begins on 15 September with Poetry Busking and goes on till 23 September, though I am in London at the National Gallery, tutoring a class on Titian with Frances Leviston. Two books appear at this time both published by Salt, In Their Own Words, an anthology of poets writing on their craft, co-edited with Helen Ivory (though she did more work) and In the Land of the Giants, my book of poetry for children, launched in Norwich on 27 September. Launched in Wymondham on 20 October. By this time university is up and running. More readings and travelling. Photographed by Derek Adams, give paper on Hungary to Peripatetics. At the end of the month to Newcastle University for my last stint as examiner on the MA. November: readings at Aldeburgh and Warwick.

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All this time the condition of Clarissa's mother, Winnie, is deteriorating. Having been called to her deathbed in March, she survives, has another crisis in May, and is on her deathbed again in November before dying the following week on 17 November. The funeral service is put together by Clarissa. The toll this has taken on her in the last three years - she having taken on by far the lion's share of Winnie's legal affairs, financial affairs, healthcare matters, house sale, house clearing,  just as she had taken charge of Bill, her late father's legal affairs four years ago - is enormous. No time for art but a lot of marvellous photographs. Illness. Two grandchildren to help with on a regular basis. No wonder her resistance was low.

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As for me, teaching classes and marking and supervising. I write the introduction to Catechism, the Pussy Riot anthology. Off to Newcastle University again to examine a PhD, Catch a bad lingering cold / flu (Clarissa catches it too). Attend and, as it turns out, take part in Krasznahorkai's event at the LRB Bookshop, chair the Milosz discussion at the British Academy the next night, then, the next morning, fly to Romania for the Bucharest Literature Festival. All this plus cold. Return. Upgrade a PhD student, dash off to London for the Poetry Society Lunch, then launch In the Land of the Giants at the Poetry Place. Dash off to Dublin to examine another PhD.  Five days later the sudden death of the exemplary and loved Dennis O'Driscoll. On a bright Boxing Day we go to Winterton beach with Amanda, Nick, Veronica and Michael, and visit the seals. Then some quiet. Here endeth 2012.

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What have I done? Translated a good deal. Written a good deal. Handed in the new book of poems, Bad Machine, to be published here later this month by Bloodaxe and in the USA by Sheep Meadow. It is, by great good fortune and grace, Poetry Book Society Choice, so goes on to the Eliot Short List. The collaboration with Carol Watts - still not quite complete - has been exhilarating, as has the Twitter activity, well over a thousand small exhilarations in verse, or prose, in narrative or non-narrative form. The imagination feels healthy and active. 

One birth, three deaths. Maybe that is the way it has to be once we are over sixty. Now for Clarissa to get her strength back and find more time in the studio. Let's do a book together!