Not many people will know the name Sherif Othman. Maybe a few geeky pub-quizzers but for the most part, even the most hardened sports jock is likely to shrug his (or increasingly her) shoulders at the very mention.
No disgrace in that. I only became aware of him a few months ago and I am paid to know about sport.
I came across Othman because I was invited to help the International Paralympic Committee with its live streaming coverage of the European Powerlifting Championships in November 2015. Othman wasn’t in Eger, Hungary but his spirit was. His name was whispered in awed tones by athletes, coaches and referees alike.
It is the same in Dubai where he was competing in the 7th Fazza IPC Powerlifting World Cup in Dubai, one of the last two qualifying tournaments for the Rio Paralympics. Not that Sherif needs to worry about qualifying. He can take his pick of categories.He won gold in the 56kg category at the Beijing and London Paralympics; he holds world records in the 54, 56 and 59kg categories.
British lifter Ali Jawad has good reason to feel sniffy about Othman – the Egyptian’s presence in the 59kg category has forced Jawad to look for gold by moving up to the 65kg category – but instead there is only admiration.
“I have no doubt that pound for pound, Othman is the best lifter in the world right now,” he says.
“There are various different formulas people use to try to work out who is the best across the categories but I am certain he will be top in all of them. He has such strength and technique, it is quite amazing.”
I saw Othman live for the first time on Tuesday morning. It lives with anything I have witnessed in a professional capacity over the last quarter of a century.
Like all great champions across many many sports you can tell he is a champion before he even gets to grips with the competition. He has the prowl of a wild beast, that ability to turn the hunter into the hunted. Mohammad Ali had it, Diego Maradona had it. And one of my own boyhood heroes, the West Indian cricketer Viv Richards had it.
Every time Viv came out to bat, the bowlers withered as he rolled his shoulders, swung his bat, chewed his gum and surveyed the field. His field; no one else’s. No wonder they called him the King.
Sherif Othman shows off his gold medal in London (www.paralympic.org)
Othman takes charge in the same way. His disability gives him a slightly rolling gait; he walks up the ramp like John Wayne about to slug it out with the town bully.
When he arrives on the stage, Othman doesn’t head directly for the bench. As the two minutes counts down on the clock, he circles the front of the stage, his eye never wavering from the bar. He is the lion lining up his prey. He stops, stands stock still for a moment, his focus angling in deeper and deeper into the bar. Then he swoops towards the bench and readies himself for the lift.
This is all very deliberate as Othman told me later.
“I like to talk to the bar,” he says.
“I speak to it. In my head. I am telling it, today you will not beat me. You will not get the better of me. I will beat you. It doesn’t matter about the weights on the bar, that can change. It is the bar.”
It is never in doubt. The bar hasn’t a chance. Othman, who weighed in at 58.55 kilograms, easily lifts 190 kilograms to open, good enough to get on the board and win the competition; second-placed Mohammed Tarbesh will only manage 171kgs.
For his second lift, Othman swots away 200kgs, leaving open the option for a crack at his own world record of 210kgs.
Two years ago, he broke the world record three times on the way to becoming world champion. Expectation now follows his every lift. He doesn’t disappoint.
With 210.5kgs on the bar – four times his own body weight – he goes through the now familiar routine before settling under the bar. He takes the strain, brings the bar down to his chest, level and steady, then smoothly raises it high above his head until his elbows lock and the lift is complete.
Three white lights flash up on the scoreboard, the PA lifts the roof with the cry of “New world record” and the Egyptians go bananas. The mask of cool control temporarily slips from Othman’s face as he leaps from the bench and then slumps to his knees to kiss the mat and give thanks.
Sherif Othman is a great athlete and a truly great champion. Watch out for him in Rio.
Like many people this morning, my thoughts are with David Bowie who has died in New York from cancer at the tender age of 69.
I heard the news at breakfast, much as I had done when news of John Lennon’s death flashed through the British airwaves 35 years ago. That was in New York as well. Dangerous place, obviously.
And as the news slowly filtered in, my mind drifted back to a late summer’s evening in London in 1986 when our paths crossed for the first and, as it turned out, only time. I doubt it was a moment that writ large in the great man’s memory-banks in the 30 years that followed but I am afraid I still revel in the fact that once upon a time, I met David Bowie.
GROWING UP WITH BOWIE
As with so many people, Bowie’s music has played across the background of my youth and my adult life. At school in the late 1970s, I recall heading over to Rupert Bates’ room to drink coffee and listen to the single of Ashes to Ashes. Again and again and again. It was that kind of a song.
At university in the early 1980s I was in a Players’ production of The Duchess of Malfi, directed by Declan Hughes. He was an exciting director to work and learn with, Tarantino-esque in his musical vision. All his plays had fantastic soundtracks, even the Jacobean tragedy of Malfi.
He opened the play with a tableau of corpses, beautifully lit by John Comisky, and the haunting strains of Bowie’s Warszawa. It was compelling theatre.
I danced, or did my feeble impression, and chatted up girls to songs like Let’s Dance and China Girl. I liked him as an actor too. Not just big shows like Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence. I was particularly taken with him in a BBC production of Bertolt Brecht’s Baal. And many years later when I had kids, I revelled in the way they clicked with Changes when it came up in Shrek, albeit in a non-Bowie version. They instantly recognized the original when I had Hunky Dory on in the car. And later when we introduced them to the television series Life on Mars, they again jumped at the music. Bowie for all generations.
But let me tell you about that night in 1986.
METAMORPHOSIS
The Mermaid Theatre in Blackfriars: the first theatre to be built in the City of London since the 17th century
I had left Dublin in the summer and found my first job in London, as stage doorman at the Mermaid Theatre, an oasis in the cultural desert of the City. The theatre had been set up by Bernard Miles for precisely that purpose. The fact that it was so close to one of Shakespeare’s old theatres in Blackfriars gave it a borrowed heritage. Miles would drop in regularly to say hello to the workers. John Junkin too.
Barbara Penney was the theatre manager and she had done a deal to bring in Stephen Berkoff’s Metamorphosis on an eight-week run. Tim Roth, pre-Reservoir Dogs and Hollywood stardom, played Gregor Samsa with Linda Marlowe, Saskia Reeves, Gary Olsen and Berkoff himself miming their way through Kafka’s tale of dung beetles and isolation.
It was outstanding and quickly became the hot ticket in London. It became usual to have big names come to the stage door to meet the actors. Usually they were old theatre friends but sometimes they were big names: Dustin Hoffman came through as did Topol, Roger Daltry, Adam (of Ants fame) and even a rather pop-eyed Jeff Goldblum who was charmingly giggly as he asked to meet with Tim Roth.
“Yeah you know, I don’t know him but I thought it would be kinda neat…you know The Fly meets The Beetle?”
He laughed and I laughed with him. I had been to see him in The Fly just a few weeks before at the Phoenix in East Finchley. It was rather a nice idea. Had I been a hack at that stage I am sure I could have made a few bob with the tabs on that angle.
Then one evening it came to pass.
Another superb performance, we could hear the audience whooping and cheering at the curtain call. Then the cast came off stage, drained and sweating, and wearily headed up the red staircase to their dressing rooms.
At this point there was usually a short lull. The audience couldn’t come through to us direct from the auditorium. They had to exit the theatre, walk around the building into Puddle Dock and come in at the stage door.
As usual there was a huddle of autograph hunters gathering outside and a line of well-wishers queueing up to talk to the stage doorman: me.
Waiting at the back of the line was a tall, slender man in a well-cut suit. He hovered as others came and went. Finally, when there was no one left in the line, he stepped forward gingerly and smiled.
“Hello. I wonder, would it be possible to go up and see Steven Berkoff. He’s a friend of mine.”
There was a pause. Not that I was waiting for him to say any more. I was just star struck. Standing in front of me was David Bowie.
David. Fucking. Bowie.
Standing.
In front of me.
And asking my permission.
To go and see his mate.
I blinked and gathered myself. Tapped out Berkoff’s dressing room number.
Steven Berkoff performing in his 1986 adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis (Photo: Roger Morton)
Of course they were friends. They had just made Absolute Beginners together. Julian Temple had been panned for it but there had been some good moments, notably Bowie and Berkoff. It was another film I had seen recently at the Phoenix on a late night double bill with Stop Making Sense.
I had gone to see it with Omar Shawkat, a would-be actor from Louisville who had somehow landed on the doorstep in East Finchley when I shared a flat with Donald Clarke and Roddy Gibson. Omar had insisted that it was de rigeur in Kentucky during Stop Making Sense to leap out of your seat and run around the auditorium.
Sounded a bit daft but fuelled by a couple of pints of Old Speckled Hen we had given it a go. But what they get up to in Louisville didn’t go down so well in north London and we were in no uncertain terms invited to cease. Absolute beginners. That was us.
“Sure,” I said. “Let me just check in with him. He may be coming down.”
“Of course.”
A pause. Then phone in hand, I looked up at him.
“It is Mr Bowie, isn’t it?” I asked stressing the pronunciation of the name. Bowie as in Bowie Knife as opposed to Bowie pronounced Bow-wow-wow.
“Yes,” he smiled. “Bowie.”
I nodded and smiled back as Berkoff answered the phone.
“Hi Steven, Barney here … There is a gentleman down at the stage door to see you. Mr Bowie… Just wondering if you are on your way down or whether you would like me to direct him to your dressing room…sure…not a problem…I will do that…ok…cheers.”
I put down the phone and stood up. I wanted to be on eye level with the great man.
David Bowie in Julian Temple’s Absolute Beginners which also featured Steven Berkoff
“Steven says you should go on up to his dressing room. Have you been before?”
“No.”
“Ok, well they don’t have numbers here. They have names. Stephen is in Cripplegate. Just go up the stairs and turn to the left. You will see it on the right hand side.”
“Top of the stairs, turn left.”
“That’s it.”
“Thank you, Barney.”
He turned towards the stairs and headed up to Berkoff’s dressing room. I remained standing for what seemed like minutes, hours. Time stopped. Had I heard right? Had David Bowie just thanked my by name?
And that wasn’t quite the end. When he and Berkoff came down the stairs about 20 minutes later to head off for dinner at Joe Allen’s – everyone went to Joe Allen’s – he said it again.
Berkoff handed over his dressing room key and boomed a parting farewell. I liked Berkoff immensely but he did like to boom.
As he followed him out of the stage door, Bowie turned towards the stagedoorman.
“Thanks very much, Barney. Have a good evening.”
And he was gone. Only later did I kick myself for not looking closer at his eyes. I had heard about the different coloured eyes but in spite of looking straight into them, I hadn’t registered them. Never mind. I had just met David Bowie.
Ok, so our total mutual interaction on Planet Earth was probably under two minutes but for me it was so much more than that. He gave me the gift of a story that night which I have occasionally unfurled in the interim. And of course there is his music, his art.
Bowie may have gone but we will always have the music. That is an amazing gift for all of us.
Detained by police on suspicion of being a terrorist, Maaike Buurman successfully arrived at Agincourt for the commemorations (Photo: B Spender)
You may not have heard it on the news but French police picked up a terror suspect earlier this month. A woman. Walking by the side of the road on the outskirts of the coastal town of Fécamp, some 40 kilometres north of Harfleur.
Heading along the grass verge with a determined stride, albeit with a slight hobble, caused by one of the soles coming loose from her boots, she seemed innocent enough. But it was her clothes that raised the alarm with a number of passing motorists. A rugged green smock and a headdress that while not exactly covering the face might possibly pass – if you are speeding along the highway, perhaps wrestling a stray cigarette from the carton – as Eastern. Maybe even … Arabic.
The police picked up the walker under the anti-terrorism laws; the memory of Charlie Hebdo remains raw.
They released her about twelve minutes later, however, when it emerged that they had inadvertently stopped a Dutch woman by the name of Maaika Buurman who was doing nothing more threatening than recreating the march of the English king Henry V’s bedraggled army from the coastal town of Harfleur to the village of Azincout, better known in England as Agincourt. In medieval costume admittedly.
“It was slightly disconcerting as they seemed to know every stop I had made and every little road I had taken,” says Maaike who, when she isn’t acting out the part of camp follower in battle reenactments, works as a therapist and an actress, occasionally helping out on the Harlingen-Terschelling ferry.
Ok, hold the phone a moment. A Dutch woman walking the 420-kilometre route of the English king Henry V from Harfleur to Calais in costume? It sounds like madness, a form of Dutch Realm Disease perhaps.
“I got married Robin Hood style in 1995 and i 1996 met the Wolfshead Bowmen from the south of England. Two years later I did my first reenactment with them at Agincourt. This year I decided to walk Henry’s route in medieval costume,” explains Maaike who kept a daily blog of her walking experiences.
“I needed to close a circle. From a personal point of view. Some of it I walked with the Welsh groups that were here and some of it I did on my own. So I was parking my caravan each day at the end point and then trying to take public transport back to the beginning which is not so easy in France.”
And it wasn’t just the police and public transport that caused Maaike problems.
“I lost a sole on my medieval boots which made it difficult to walk. So I changed to my modern boots and one of those fell apart as well. Maybe things haven’t changed so much in six hundred years.”
And then, of course, on the D925 from Goderville to Fécamp, came the long arm of the law.
These boots aren’t made for walkin’ (Photo: Maaike Buurman)
“They stopped me and asked to see my papers. They said they had had a number of calls about a terrorist on the road. I told them I had left my sword and knife at home. Fortunately they laughed and sent me on my way.”
Well, the French gendarmerie may have laughed on this occasion but their 15th century equivalents were less than amused when Henry V, piqued by a box of tennis balls, went seeking the crown of France.
Yes this weekend saw the 600th anniversary of the battle, fought on a boggy field some 80 kilometres south of Calais on October 25, 1415. On St Crispian’s Day itself. That’s right the battle of Agincourt, as the English like to call it, the one made famous by William Shakespeare, albeit with some help from Lawrence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh.
Remember that speech? How could you not? King Harry exhorting his bedraggled, exhausted, hungry, sick soldiers to relish their presence on the battlefield even though the numbers were stacked heavily against them.
“This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”
Henry V, Act IV Scene iii
William Shakespeare
Kenneth Branagh’s Henry fires up his troops
A confession. I had forgotten about the date of the battle and was only reminded when I chanced upon a small article in a French newspaper on Friday. I had been to the battlefield two years ago in 2013 with The Buffers – aka my brothers Henry and Felix – who revelled in walking the terrain, calling on their own military careers to check the slight slope that would have given Henry an important advantage, and feel the thick cloying mud clinging to their boots.
“How do you fancy running 500 metres through this into a barrage of arrows?” asked Felix, a former infantryman
“I wouldn’t,” said Henry. “I was artillery remember. We would have been firing the arrows.”
“Nor me,” I added. “I would be in the baggage train at the rear with my quill.”
Ah yes, this band of brothers.
The poor French, staggering into a hailstorm of arrows – an estimated 72,000 in the first ninety seconds of the battle – their horses bogged down in the mud, slipping, sliding and crushing their own men, all of whom were being forced into a central channel by the English and Welsh long bows, the machine guns of their time. It was largely over within the first half-hour, the threat of a French comeback nipped in the bud by the clinical slaughter of several hundred prisoners.
To prepare for this latest trip I force-fed my children, now 13 and 12, the Branagh version of Henry V.
“But do we have to go?” came a plaintiff bleat. “Can’t I stay at home and play Minecraft?”
It is not often I play the three-line whip but this was one of them.
A new plaque was unveiled at Agincourt to commemorate the fallen of both sides (Photo: B Spender)
“No. this is not the 599th or the 601st anniversary of the battle. It is the 600th. To the day. A hundred years ago it was soldiers fighting in the First World War who attended the commemoration. This time it will be you. And maybe in a hundred years’ time it will be your grandchildren. And when they are there they may pause for a moment and reflect on the fact that exactly one hundred years earlier you had walked this same muddy earth. That is history.”
There may have been a “deal with it” in there as well. Sadly, I am no Shakespeare when it comes to rousing the troops.
And so it was that we rose early and set off from south of Paris to join the throng and ended up meeting another band of brothers. And, as it turned out, sisters.
The village of Azincourt really is nothing special. Yes, it is a pretty little farming village strung out along the road. There is a café, the Charles VI, and a good little museum dedicated to the battle. But there is no boulangerie or boucherie, let alone a banque. Hamlet might be a better description (although not in the Shakespeare sense, you understand)
But it does have a church. And a battlefield.
The killing fields of Agincourt (Photo: B Spender)
And on Sunday October 25, 2015, the 600th anniversary to the day of the Battle of Azincourt, it was buzzing. A good two to three hundred people gathered in the village and then beside the battlefield, among them the 7th Baron Camoys, whose ancestor, Thomas de Camoys, the first Baron (of the second creation) of that title, commanded the left wing of the English Army.
The British ambassador Sir Peter Ricketts took his place in line with the French dignitaries along with eleven members of the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers (Militia) who are garrisoned at Monmouth Castle where Henry V was born. A section of the Republican Guard offered modern cavalry and a few French horns.
“Ingerland, Ingerland, Ingerland…” (Photo: B Spender)
What was most interesting, though, was the array of visitors. There were a decent number of French present but they were outnumbered on the day by the Welsh and the English, a large number of whom had flags of St George draped around their shoulders.
The intention was good but it did hint a little at the in-yer-face bravado of an England football crowd.
On a day when a new plaque was unveiled to commemorate the French and British fallen on French soil over the last six hundred years, it was s trifle jingoistic.
Sarge, Llewellyn Red, Sir Nicholas and Mistress Ann (Photo: B Spender)
Stealing the show were the reenacters. They didn’t put on a show – there had been an event in the summer – but they turned out in uniform and they did talk to the camera (see below); the long bows of Sarge (Keith Deeley) and Llewellyn Gog (real name, Luis Urtiaga) of the Sons of the Dragon and Sir Nicholas (Kerry) Horton and his wife Mistress Ann who run The Freemen of Gwent bringing a little bit of history back into our imaginations.
It is almost two weeks now since the photographer Mike King collapsed at his mother’s house and died at the appallingly young age of 52. It has been a pretty horrible fortnight for everyone who knew Mike.
Many of us hadn’t seen him for months or years but his regular presence on Facebook, sometimes chirping and chirruping on other people’s posts or sharing one of his own photographs, meant that he was very much a presence in our lives. His sudden death has stunned us all.
The more comments I have read during the week has made it abundantly clear that I was not the only person who valued Mike’s basic core of decency as much as his extraordinary talent with a camera. But perhaps this is the norm when someone dies, we hurry to sing their praises. And then forget them.
Except I don’t think Mike will be forgotten quickly.
Odd man out: Diego Maradona catches the camera before taking on the USSR at Italia ’90. ((Photo: Mike King)
On a professional level he was one of the best sports photographers there has been. If you want to think in sporting terms directly then he was to photography what Usain Bolt is to athletics, what Lionel Messi is to football. One of the best, not just of his own generation but across the ages. His images will outlive all of us.
He started young, just 22 when he went to Los Angeles for his first Olympic Games. And from there he was launched. Olympics, World Cups, Grand Nationals. He did the lot, always delivering a punchy news image which had an X-factor in terms of mood and composition. He wasn’t trigger-happy in the way many photographers now are in the digital age. I recall interviewing him in around 2006 for Athens International Radio and he made the brutally frank observation of the future of photography: “If you fire off a thousand pictures, one of them is bound to be half-decent.”
West Germany striker Juergen Klinsmann takes a tumble during the 1990 World Cup final (Photo: Mike King)
Mike learned his craft in the age of smoke and mirrors when a photographer would shoot some film during the first half of a match and then send it off with a runner to deliver direct to the sports desk. I seem to recall a lot of hairdryers in press boxes as well but that may have been in the 1990s when laptops came into play.
Mike’s work for the Observer and the Sunday Telegraph was outstanding. His image from the 2001 Grand National of a jockey flying through the air, won him many awards including Sports Photo of the Year. It is now an iconic image as indeed are several others including Diego Maradonna in the team line-up and Juergen Klinsmann rolling on his head. There are others. Many others.
Mike’s favourite photo: so many stories going on in this image of the 2001 Grand National (Photo: Mike King)
“When I was embarking on my career in the strange world of sports photography the person who helped me more than anyone else was Mike,” wrote Tom Jenkins, another master of the lens, on Facebook.
“He was a massive inspiration not only because of his beautiful creative eye but his technical ability was second to none. He was the undoubted master of follow-focus in those halycon days when cameras didn’t tell us what to do.”
What has come through since Mike’s death is how universally liked he was. In his excellent obituary for the Sports Journalists Association, Steven Downes describes Mike as a “kind and gentle man.” I cannot put it better.
I was the recipient of his kindness on several occasions. Once when I was running the London Marathon for the first time in 2002, he offered to do some shots of me so that I could boost my fund-raising for Lepra. On a crisp February morning, we met on Peckham Rye and he fired off a roll of film. They are all excellent photos although perhaps, if I were to criticise, they showed the rolling contours of the runner’s stomach just a little too clearly.
Haile Gebrselassie giving some good advice to a first-time marathoner (Photo: Mike King)
I was also working on the race as a writer and had managed to secure a ten-minute spot with the great Haile Gebrselassie. We did the intereview in a little broom cupboard of an office; at one point the door nudged open and there was Mike with his beloved Nikon F3 up to his eye and a grin on his lips, snapping the moment. Not sure it meant too much to Haile but it meant a lot when Mike later sent it to me.
Not long after that I roped him in to do some photos for a feature I was writing about Martin Johnson, the England rugby captain. It meant a trip up to Leicester.
“I’ll drive,” said Mike in a manner which brooked no argument.
“Sure that would be great,” I replied. We are going to meet him at the training ground at 11. I would like to be there by half ten. Traffic is never too clever getting out of London. How about we leave at about seven?”
An example of Mike’s vision. A stunning photo of rowers at Hampton in 1991. (Photo: Mike King)
“No I will pick you up at half past eight. Plenty of time.
“But Mike, we have to get around London and then on to the M1. That might be cutting it a bit fine.”
“Ok, call it eight-fifteen.”
The famous black Saab stopped outside my flat in East Dulwich at around eight twenty-seven.
But I needn’t have worried about time. We were in Leicester by ten and eating a traditional trucker’s breakfast at his favourite cafe.
I won’t pretend it was the most relaxed drive I have had – I am not a great passenger and did feel the need to close my eyes on a number of occasions. But Mike was chilled to the core as he drove and chatted all the way.
As we lived close to each other in East Dulwich we would occasionally drive to Twickenham together. I think his record was about seventeen minutes. Had he not ben a photographer he might easily have become Cabbie King in London. He was a true Londoner – he took some wonderful photos of the city – and understood the backstreets as well as anyone – and this in the days before SatNav.
“Snap of my day. Clouds from Greenwich Park on a long exposure.” Mike King, October 19, 2014
Later, when we had moved to Greece we were letting out our flat in Nunhead. He was across the Rye in East Dulwich. Our boiler went on the blink leaving leaving our tenants in the cold. Mike volunteered to take them some heaters and made sure they were ok.
He didn’t need to. We were mates but not bosom pals. It was just Mike. If he could help he would.
Mike will be missed for many reasons. Mainly because he was such a good guy. All of those who knew him will be thinking of Mike’s kids. They are still young, perhaps too young at the moment to understand what a broad impact their father had on the rest of us.
One day, when they are able to take a step back from the grieving, I hope they realise not just what a fine man he was but also what a great artist he was; the King of kings.
The literary world is aflush, it seems, with ruddy-cheeked excitement at the election for the next Oxford Professor of Poetry, a chair that has cushioned many celebrated posteriors since Joseph Trapp first took up the post in 1708. According to that fine literary reference library Wiki, he was a churchman fond of reciting the works of Shakespeare in Latin.
Since then there has been a stream of prominent churchmen (not all of whom could quote Shakespeare in Latin, I suspect), a series of academics and critics and even a couple of genuine A list poets; Cecil Day-Lewis, WH Auden and Robert Graves are all on the list as, indeed, is my old friend Seamus Heaney.
There are five runners this year: Simon Armitage, Wole Soyinka, Sean Haldane, Ian Gregson and AE Stallings. Reading between the lines, any of the five would be excellent but I have to admit that I am biased on this one. Had I passed through the hallowed halls of Oxford rather then the dirty doorways of Dublin, then my vote would be going to Stallings
It is important that I lay the cards on the table. I have never met Armitage or Soyinka although I will admit, in the case of the latter, considerable hair envy. Shades of Don King. With a beard. Nor have I come across Gregson or Haldane.
The demands of being one of America’s top poets: signing at West Chester University of Pennsylvania.
But I have known Stallings for the best part of a decade now, almost throughout the period that we lived in Greece and since. She has mixed me the most divine mint julep; her husband gave me a job; our kids have played together. Absolutely, I am biased.
What was interesting about Alicia is that, unless you were particularly wired into the poetry world, you would never have guessed that she was such a prominent voice. I mean lots of people say “oh yes, well my wife writes poetry” but how many of those actually mean anything more than a six-line ditty in the kids’ birthday cards? She always came across as a very decent, funny, slightly frazzled young mother, more concerned about keeping the lollipop out of her son’s hair than composing an epic poem in iambic pentameter.
The first indication I had that she was a touch above the ordinary was when I went to a reading at the Athens Centre in the lovely suburb of Mets. Her poetry bristled; it flowed effortlessly with rhyme and rhythm. There was a lot of humour and a great deal of dexterity in the way she swapped her forms. She explained how she would set herself exercises, writing in different meters and different forms. Every poem was different. She enthused about the mechanics of poetry as well as the ideas within a poem.
AE Stallings reading to a packed house at Rhodes House, Oxford, June 3 2015 (Photo: Julian Baird Gewitz)
By that stage I already knew her husband John Psaropoulos in his capacity as editor of Athens News, a weekly English-language newspaper that had been going since the 1950s. I had managed to persuade him that non-Greeks living in Greece really were interested in knowing what was going on in the world of Greek football and hence a column was born. Alas, a change of ownership in 2008 led to John’s departure and the Athens News has subsequently closed down. John is still going strong as the Athens correspondent for Al-Jazeera.
One of the high points of the summer was their garden party to coincide with the Kentucky Derby. As a Georgia girl, it was the one sporting event bred into Alicia from an early age. And with it came the mint julep. And a very late night.
Alicia’s reputation has grown over the last decade. The award in 2011 of a MacArthur Fellowship propelled her into the premier league; it is sometimes known by its other name of Genius Grant. At that point, I did my one and only interview with her for the magazine Insider Athens (which you can read below).
And now Stallings, who was herself a student at Oxford, stands alongside four men for the vote, open only to graduates, for the post of Professor of Poetry.
I hope she wins for many reasons but there are three that stand out.
First, in the 307 years since Joseph Trapp took up office, there has never been a woman in the post. Actually, that is not quite correct. Ruth Padel did win the election in 2009 but stood down nine days later over an argument about the nature of canvassing. And that is a serious omission that urgently need addressing.
Second, as a Classics graduate and translator as well as poet, she may be the first Professor of Poetry to go one better than Trapp and quote Shakespeare in Ancient Greek.
And third, because she is an all-round good egg who will bring vibrancy to the lecture theatre and inspire the new crop of Oxford students to dig deep and discover their own poetry.
If you are a graduate of Oxford University then you are entitled to vote. Registration – which can be done by clicking here – closes at noon British Summer Time (GMT+1) on June 8 while voting ends on June 17. The winner will be announced on June 19.
Poet AE Stallings talks to Barney Spender on her new status as genius, after receiving a grant from the Chicago based MacArthur Foundation, popularly referred to as ‘genius grants’ and on meeting her Muse in modern-day Athens
The American poet AE (Alicia) Stallings hails from Atlanta, Georgia but for the last few years has been living in Athens. Her first collection of poems, Archaic Smile, won the 1999 Richard Wilbur Award and was shortlisted for many other prizes, including the Yale Younger Poets Award. In 2008 she was given the Benjamin H Danks Award by the American Academy of Arts, partly in recognition for her 2007 verse translation of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things). She is also the Poetry Programme Director of the Athens Centre. In 2011, she was one of 22 fellows worldwide to receive the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is one of the largest private foundations in the United States and has awarded more than US$4 billion in grants since its inception in 1978.
Congratulations on winning the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship… what does it mean to you to be named a ‘genius’?
The MacArthur Foundation discourages that nickname (the genius grants) precisely because ‘genius’ comes as so loaded and fraught a word. It’s the sort of thing that could potentially be intimidating for a writer, because of course a writer always has to be willing to start with the blank page and to write something bad, to fail utterly. Still, I have been thinking of it as the “no excuses” grant. I can’t go around and complain that I can’t afford the babysitting to work or a space to work in. Now I can, and I just have to get on with things!
You have two small children; is that a help or a hindrance for your poetry.
There is a famous line from Cyril Connolly: “There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.” In a sense, he is probably right. The most obvious way in which having children has affected my writing is that there is less of it. On the other hand, children also are fascinating for a poet to have. It is like having the world made new before your eyes the way they look at things. And of course, language acquisition – much less bilingualism – is fascinating. Kids are natural poets. A three-year-old can beat a working poet for inspired lines or phrases with one sticky hand tied behind his back any day. I am not above stealing lines from my children.
Was the grant for a particular work – or for a body of work?
As I understand it, it is for future work, which may or may not be a continuation of what you have been doing already. It is a big vote of confidence, basically, that you have more to write and do.
How is it likely to affect your standing as a poet in the US?
It does certainly raise your profile. There was a spike in book sales for a while (never terribly high for a poet anyway), and I think that my forthcoming book, Olives, will get more attention—and be subjected to greater scrutiny, perhaps.
Does being a ‘genius’ now mean that you can beat your husband at Scrabble?
Sometimes the better part of genius is NOT beating your husband at Scrabble. And presumably you can now get him to do the chores around the house Well, I hope it takes some pressure off John as being the sole breadwinner in such uncertain times. He’s always been helpful around the house. (I have a much higher tolerance for chaos—though genius has a nicer ring to it than slob.)
Is there such a thing as ‘a good place to be a poet’?
Anywhere you can write poetry is a good place to be a poet. Some poets need urban decay or dreary provincial towns to be inspired, some need to wander lonely as a cloud among drifts of daffodils. I was worried when I moved to Athens that the Muse wouldn’t have my forwarding address, but she seems to have found me here. Actually, being a Muse, she was probably born here. So how does the noisy, polluted, strike-laden city of Athens suit your process? I probably prefer daffodils – or wild amaryllis – to urban decay, so maybe it is not so much Athens as Greece that suits me. But, again, the poems get written. I can write pretty much anywhere if need be – a side-effect of motherhood – and often write at a local café against a backdrop of throbbing Greek pop music and the clacking of backgammon.
You have a background in Classics – has that helped you relate to Greece?
Maybe. Maybe it hurts. I am not sure. I think in a way it was easier to write about Greek mythology when I wasn’t smack in the midst of it all the time.
What was the first poem you ever wrote?
I couldn’t say. I was probably making up poems from six or seven years old. I had my first poem accepted for publication at 16.
Did it win any prizes?
No, but I got paid! I got a cheque for fifteen dollars. And the poem only took about an hour to write so I thought, “Well, this is an easy way to make a living”. And, er, here I am.
So, did you always set out on a career path to be a poet?
I think I always knew I wanted to be a writer, but probably didn’t know I wanted to be more exclusively a poet until high school. And the enthusiasm of editors for my poetry – as opposed to a novel manuscript languishing somewhere in a drawer – may have nudged me in that direction too.
I like the fact that use humour in your poetry; it is something that many people feel is incongruous in “serious” poetry…
I love humor in poetry. And rhyme is certainly a good vehicle for humour. Humour and seriousness, of course, are hardly exclusive of one another. A humorous poem can say deep and serious things, and a ‘serious’ poem can be shallow as the paper it is written on, not to mention dull. Plenty of serious poets such as Housman and Eliot, have written splendidly funny poems.
You mention those two – who else is on your poetry reading list?
I love Seamus Heaney, William Blake and I am also a big fan of Philip Larkin, Thomas Hardy, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop. Among contemporary poets, I always look forward to new books by Don Paterson, Kay Ryan, Richard Wilbur. I like poets that nourish my own writing. I am attracted to wellcrafted, musical poems that take some emotional risks.
Any Greeks?
Cavafy is my favourite modern Greek poet, which is hardly surprising. Lately, I have been very much enjoying reading and translating Sikelianos, who writes in a wonderful assortment of forms – sonnets, quatrains and so on. And I am currently at work on an English verse translation of the Cretan epic-romance Erotokritos.
I did hear a rumour that your cure for writer’s block is a strong mint julep. Any truth in that?
It was a busy weekend of sport; the end of the Premier League season, England winning a Test match against New Zealand, Lewis Hamilton blowing the Monaco Grand Prix (with teammates like his, who needs enemies?) and the start of the French Open tennis at Roland Garros. You are forgiven, therefore, if you missed mention of a little running race in the middle of England.
I say “little” warily. Little only in the sense that few people have written about it and fewer still have run it. Not many have done both.
James Adams, though, is among that number. Last weekend he lined up and duly completed what is actually a pretty big race; 145 miles (233k) from the centre of Birmingham to the centre of London along the Grand Union Canal. The winner Dan Lawson set a new record time of 22 hours and 16 minutes while Adams finished a little over 13 hours behind him. Not fast enough to win, perhaps, but fleet enough and solid enough to complete the course, like a reliable member of the peloton.
Indeed, his book Running and Stuff is a view from the saddle which offers, though Adams’ personal experience, a guide to some of the great ultra races around the world, along with an attempt to answer the question that people always seem to ask ultra-runners: why the hell do you do it?
Adams is still relatively new to the ultra world. Having run his first London Marathon in 2000, he made the step up to ultras in 2007, looking for a test that is physically and mentally incredibly demanding but also more stimulating than the city marathons.
“I got bored of road running for a number of reasons, one of which is the repetitive nature of it. Whether it’s a 26-mile road through Paris, Berlin, Deptford or Luton it’s still the same. You can compare races all around the world directly with each other. Here (GUCR) you can’t even compare the same route I ran only one year apart with itself.”
Running and Stuff logs his progress – some may want to call it an obsession – over the four years between 2007 when he ran his first ultra, Tring 2 Town, and 2011 when he cashed in his well-timed redundancy to run across the USA, Los Angeles to New York in 72 days. That is roughly 50 miles a day for two and a half months. Maybe obsession is right.
James Adams kissing the feet of Leonidas at the end of the 2012 Spartathlon (Photo: runningandstuff.com)
In between there are tests aplenty from the GUCR to Badwater, his first adventure in the US, and from the Marathon des Sables in Africa to the legendary Spartathlon in Greece*.
A book of this nature might get repetitive (a verbal road run, if you will) were it not for the colour and honesty which runs through each race.
There is pain and vomit and diarrhoea as well as pleasure in the natural beauty of the surroundings and the simple motion of putting one foot in front of the other. There is humour, too, thank goodness. Plenty of it. Adams does a nice line in humour.
The Marathon des Sables comes out of this as possibly the biggest dud of all –“the focus seemed to be on making a great DVD rather than putting on a great race” – while the Spartathlon, an epic 153 mile (246k) trek from Athens to Sparta, comes through as a mean but glorious bastard, a bit like Leonidas himself.
“My limited (and I would not have used the word limited before Sparta) experience of ultras was that they can have a way of breaking you into pieces and putting you back together again in a better way than before. It is normal to feel in pieces during a long race at some stage, feeling like you are not going to finish or you can’t finish. My experience had taught me to remember these moments but not to succumb to them. Races are so much more satisfying when you can look back on the moments you felt terrible and in despair and say that you got over them and finished the race.”
And perhaps that is the reason why people like Adams and Lawson like to test themselves in Sparta or Badwater or even the Grand Union Canal.
Running and Stuff is self-published by James Adams. It is available for kindle here. Signed softback print copies are available through the author’s website.
Done. Dusted. Another half-marathon in the warmth of a May morning in north-east London. No records, no glory. Just a job done. And dusted.
The Hackney Half came and went. It started at nine in the morning and at some point a couple of hours later it finished. In between there was music, cheering, bright blue skies, a light breeze and sweat – lots of sweat.
Water. Pavement. Road. Uphill. Downhill. An unknown voice from the crowd crying “Come on Barney”. More sweat. More water. More road.
And a blister. Just the one, about the size of Beijing. A massive boil on the instep of my right foot which made its presence felt from mile one and ballooned over the next twelve miles.
My Right Foot…
Not that we should care too much about blisters. As Rob Pinnington says at one point in The Road to Sparta: “You don’t want to worry about blisters; they help you stay awake.”
Mind you, Rob at another point cackles like one of Macbeth’s demented witches: “We laugh in the face of shin splints.”
Hackney hurt. But the job was completed. Got the medal, got the tee-shirt.
I might even have had a personal best if I hadn’t stopped a hundred metres from the finish to take it all in. It took me the best part of two minutes to walk that last stretch along the carpet, trying to soak up the moment, take in the enthusiasm of the people lining the straight as they clapped and hollered, looking out for their own friends and family but encouraging every runner who passed in front of them.
As I shuffled over the finish line, the paramedics came hurtling the other way, a runner strapped onto a stretcher being wheeled off to the ambulance. Not enough water perhaps, straining too hard on a warm day to close out his personal best.
Barney Spender and Glenn Johnston await the start (Photo: Roddy Gibson)
I was glad it wasn’t Glenn, even at fifty a wiry ball of compact energy.
This was Glenn my old roommate from university days in Dublin, Glenn the man who back in the day twisted his knee while falling drunk down three flights of stairs but never spilt a drop of his pint; this was Glenn who famously climbed a flagpole singing Irish rebel songs at a point-to-point race meeting in the rustic depths of sleepy Somerset. This was Glenn who had flown over from New York just to run the Hackney Half with his old mate.
It was great to see his ugly smiling mug although, truth be told, I saw little of it during the race. For the first mile we were running together, he just a pace or two in front of me, bouncing along, champing at the bit like a bloodhound on the scent, desperate to be allowed off the leash.
“Go for it Glenn,” I said.
“Do you mind? I feel in pretty good shape,” he replied guiltily.
“Go! See you at the finish.”
And that was the last I saw of him, a pair of tightly knotted carves springing daintily through a copse of runners and off in pursuit of the faster men and women. He finished some 25 minutes ahead of me which meant he was two minutes per mile faster. Not bad for a bloke who had been in urgent need of paramedics himself just two months earlier when he stepped out in front of a speeding German motorist. Had I mentioned that? No? Well, Glenn needs his own book.
To finish is a good feeling (Photo: Roddy Gibson)
A half-marathon doesn’t bear comparison to an ultra-marathon in terms of the physical and mental stamina but when I am running these days I bear in mind some of the pithy lines that I have now heard a thousand times while editing The Road to Sparta.
I mentioned a couple of Rob’s lines. Another little mantra came from Angela Terzi when she summed up the qualities that a runner needs to go the distance: “Patience and persistence,” she says.
Around the ten mile mark, I thought about quitting. What is the point of carrying on? It hurts, it is hot, I am not enjoying this; why not just pull up at the side and call it quits? Why wait for the beer when you can easily dip into the pub now and have a long, crisp, cold pint?
The best reward (Photo: Roddy Gibson)
At which point I hear the mantra: patience and persistence. Keep on going. One step at a time. Enough steps and you will get there. Time isn’t important; reaching the finish is the thing.
I reached the carpet on 2:09 with a PB reaching out for me. Why did I stop and walk and deliberately scupper it? Well partly, as I said before, just to enjoy the moment. Seldom in my life have crowds cheered me on; make the most of it. And part because I really wanted to break away from the issue of timing. A personal best is unimportant.
What mattered was getting to the start line and making damn sure to reach the end. There were good moments and there were some bad moments but completing the journey was what mattered.
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Not many people will know the name Sherif Othman. Maybe a few geeky pub-quizzers but for the most part, even the most hardened sports jock is likely to shrug his (or increasingly her) shoulders at the very mention.
It is the same in Dubai where he was competing in the 7th Fazza IPC Powerlifting World Cup in Dubai, one of the last two qualifying tournaments for the Rio Paralympics. Not that Sherif needs to worry about qualifying. He can take his pick of categories.He won gold in the 56kg category at the Beijing and London Paralympics; he holds world records in the 54, 56 and 59kg categories.
“I speak to it. In my head. I am telling it, today you will not beat me. You will not get the better of me. I will beat you. It doesn’t matter about the weights on the bar, that can change. It is the bar.”
