This is wonderful Lawrence. A total absence of waffle. Were you mad or
sad or relieved or philosophical you didn't deliver it? It speaks not
only of Jeff Nuttall, whom I did not know but wish I did on the basis of
your sure portrait, but also of Eric Mottram -- and you too: a holy
trinity of an introduction, sweet poetry that it was not spoken aloud
before the audience for whom it was intended. But I hope it will be
spoken before an audience yet.
Please accept my sympathies for the loss of Jeff Nuttall.
Mairead


www.maireadbyrne.blogspot.com
>>> Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]> 01/05/04 17:44 PM
>>>
i should have sd that talk was never given
we started VERY late and just went straight into the reading
i gave jeff a copy later

L
  -----Original Message-----
  From: Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]>
  To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
  Date: 05 January 2004 22:35
  Subject: Jeff Nuttall


  from a few year's back



  Tonight's Eric Mottram Celebration is made by Jeff Nuttall. I don't
know what he is going to do. That is entirely up to him.

  I would like, as usual, to say a few words of introduction. I am going
to quote Eric, but it'll largely be me talking about Jeff. For those of
you who are understandably keen to hear him, I assure you that this is
short. And I apologise to Jeff in advance, but it is about time someone
told him just what they think of him.

  A year ago, when I introduced Bob Cobbing's celebration of the late
Eric Mottram, I quoted Jeff on Cobbing.

  Some of you may have not committed that to memory, so I'll remind you
that the quotation was "A man of total commitment." Typically, it is
colloquial, clear, not understated, and spot on... But here's Jeff
Nuttall on himself, during his own SVP reading on 20th May 1997: "You
know where you are with me; you know what you're going to get. Sex and
landscape, that's all I write about, usually at the same time."

  I agree with Jeff that one knows where one is with him, as a person. I
think so, anyway. Sex and landscape? I'll pass that for a moment.

  That leaves "You know what you are going to get."

  I disagree with that. Beyond superficialities of style, I don't know
what I am going to get from Jeff either as a poet or as a critic, except
that it'll be well worth experiencing.

  I know the mannerisms and manner in which he will speak; I know some
of his concerns, and for sure they do include sex and landscape; and so
on; but as to what he will say at any moment I remain much more ignorant
in his case than of almost anyone else I have ever met.

  In that way he is unpredictable. That's not the unreliable kind of
unpredictability, which is a lack in the person called unpredictable;
what I am talking about is a lack in the persons experiencing the
unpredictable.

  Jeff Nuttall's mind is always on the move and often way ahead of the
rest of us. His take on the world is, in some ways, unlike anyone else's
I know and nearly always still changing. I don't always agree with him.
I don't always follow him though he speaks with clarity. He takes big
leaps. I think that sometimes he says things so that he can hear them
said so that he can decide if he agrees with them himself! But I could
be wrong, and I do say that partly in jest.

  All this could be fatal weakness; but, in Jeff's case, it's anything
but. He's never boring, he's never random. He listens to others. He
learns quickly.

  Preoccupations with sex and landscape might make him seem
unextraordinary; but it is what Jeff does with ideas and sense data, the
connections that he makes between them, which make him so extraordinary.

  He has a fine intellect. He is one of the best extempore speakers I
know. He makes connections between things which are multiple octaves
apart, sometimes on different instruments, not all of those musical. He
builds mental houses of cards you can happily live in and which don't
fall down.

  Eric Mottram said of him, much more than once, that he is a genius.

  It's a misused word, but Eric didn't misuse words. He said what he
meant; and I think I know what that is. If I could tell you easily, you
can be pretty sure that Mottram would have said that. That he chose
repeatedly to use that enigmatic word, indicates that we have with us
tonight someone whose undoubted gifts are hard to classify, perhaps
because rarely encountered, certainly in this combination.

  Eric didn't say that Jeff is a poet of genius, though Jeff is a fine
poet; nor story-teller, though he is a story-teller of the greatest
skill, on the page and in the pub; nor painter, though he is a fine
painter; nor musician, though he is a very good musician; nor actor,
though he is an accomplished actor; nor critic, though he is a
perceptive critic and a critic of criticism itself. Eric just said
genius. In fact, once in my hearing, he went on and said "the only
person of whom I say that without hesitation"

  Here is a restless artist, who, I think, sees the world, in some ways,
more clearly than most of us see it, who sees some of what many of us do
not see at all, whose work renders workaday categories inappropriate if
only because he'll change your understanding of those categories while
you're talking - if you listen. It's always good to listen to Jeff.
Which is why it's such a pity that he has often been dogged by people
shouting "Sing Bomb Culture!" as if he hasn't been producing important
work and commentary ever since that book, important and useful though it
is.

  I am hardly interested, in this context, to evaluate his individual
books and projects. Not because they shouldn't be evaluated, not because
some are inevitably better than others... A lot of artistic activity and
criticism expends its energy on building monuments. Jeff's wonderfully
contrary energy is not of that kind. It doesn't look back. It doesn't
self-regard. It is restless, as I have said. It is the nearest thing to
the Blakean "glad day" that I have come across, but with humorous
mischief.

  His performance of his poetry and his writing itself is various; he
intones it, chants it, growls it. Voices shoot up in it and chase
themselves off through the undergrowth of other voices while the
narrative takes its own zigzag, but never out of earshot.

  It is extraordinary writing, and of itself. It sets its own terms and
rewards those who are attentive to it.

  I've learned an immense amount from him and could have learned much
more had I paid more attention. I find him energising... Ladies and
gentlemen, Jeff Nuttall