ORLAM – A narrative poem by PJ Harvey – published April 2022

[Romario11]

from Popbitch!

>> Wine not? <<
The thirst of an actor

PJ Harvey was booked to appear at last year's Edinburgh Book Festival to promote her book, Orlam, and her rider caused a couple of headaches. One of her demands was for a very specific brand of fancy organic wine which organisers dutifully managed to track down and supply for her at great effort.

Sadly, she never ended up getting to drink it. One of the other things causing complications was PJ's very particular stage lighting requirements. While she was busy delaying the event, refusing to go on until the lights were just so and taking forever to sign them off – someone backstage snaffled her wine.

The actor Brian Cox, on the hunt backstage for something to slake his growing thirst, came across PJ's fancy wine and got stuck right in.

[TheNightingale]

Haha! Maybe she didn’t mind, though, being a Succession fan

[AineteEkaterini]

Frank Skinner chooses 'Prayer at the Gate' from Orlam on Radio 4's Poetry Please. Discussion between him and Michael Rosen starts at 16.05 and you get Polly reading : )

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001zv8w

[Romario11]

https://www.lostsheep.black/dorset-pavilion

https://www.lostsheep.black/Dorset-Pavi ... alogue.pdf

THE DORSET PAVILION will be exhibiting at the the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia from September 3rd – October 30th 2024, Tuesday–Sunday, 12.00–19:00, Biennale Spaces, Castello 96/95, Venezia 30122.

The Dorset Pavilion exhibits practices unique to the place: art that is made locally but speaks transglobally, art made away from cities at the border of the sea that speaks to deep time, art that is political, literary, historical, land-based and the visceral.

[Orange Monkey]

The "Dorset Pavilion" need a better proof reader I think.
The sheepskin thing isn't Polly's when you look more closely.
And they forgot to replace "Title" for the Orlam picture in the PDF!

[Sebastiano Boina]

THE DORSET PAVILION will be exhibiting at the the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia from September 3rd – October 30th 2024, Tuesday–Sunday, 12.00–19:00, Biennale Spaces, Castello 96/95, Venezia 30122.

mmh, very tempting, maybe i could spend a day visiting Venice in october, why not...

[TheNightingale]

It seems a paperback is coming out in April:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Orlam-PJ-Harve ... p_swatch_0

Also, from the latest newsletter:

This summer brings a new set of Orlam poetry readings at select literary events in Europe - watch this space for more information.

[Orange Monkey]

I decided to read "Mercian Hymns" by Geoffrey Hill because Polly has said several times that it had a strong influence on Orlam. It's quite a short book of poems and I enjoyed it, and also found a number of "echoes" between it and Orlam. They share the same idea of having people from different times sharing the same space: in the case of Mercian Hymns it is the border country between England and Wales (Mercia) and the key people are Offa (the Saxon king who built Offa's dyke) and the author as a child (sound familiar?). It is also quite playful at times, like Orlam. Here's the first poem as an example:

I The Naming of Offa

King of the perennial holly-groves, the riven sandstone: overlord of the M5: architect of the historic rampart and ditch, the citadel at Tamworth, the summer hermitage in Holy Cross: guardian of the Welsh Bridge and the Iron Bridge: contractor to the desirable new estates: saltmaster: moneychanger: commissioner for oaths: martyrologist: the friend of Charlemagne.

‘I liked that,’ said Offa, ‘sing it again.’


And then in the second poem I got the first big "echo" of Orlam. You could put this in Orlam after "Naming: Ira" and it would fit right in:

II The Naming of Offa
A pet-name, a common name. Best-selling brand, curt graffito. A laugh; a cough. A syndicate. A specious gift. Scoffed-at horned phonograph.
The starting cry of a race. A name to conjure with.


Further on we come to this, which wandered round my head for a while until I realised that it has the same sort of structure and feel as "In The Woods"

VI The Childhood of Offa

The princes of Mercia were badger and raven. Thrall to their freedom, I dug and hoarded. Orchards fruited above clefts. I drank from honeycombs of chill sandstone.

‘A boy at odds in the house, lonely among brothers.’ But I, who had none, fostered a strangeness; gave myself to unattainable toys.

Candles of gnarled resin, apple-branches, the tacky mistletoe. ‘Look’ they said and again ‘look.’ But I ran slowly; the landscape flowed away, back to its source.

In the schoolyard, in the cloakrooms, the children boasted their scars of dried snot; wrists and knees garnished with impetigo.


And then finally I came across this where Polly has actually borrowed and tweaked a couple of lines:

XXVIII The Death of Offa
...
Tracks of ancient occupation. Frail ironworks rusting in the thorn thicket. Hearthstones; charred lullabies. A solitary axe-blow that is the echo of a lost sound.
...

UNDERWHELEM
...
Ward of ancient occupations;
ploughshares rusting in the brembles,
half-walls, smuggler’s runs and ditches,
blackened heth stones, lured lullabies;
...

I don't know if anyone else finds this sort of thing interesting but I find it intriguing to see how one work has influenced the other, or maybe I just read too much into things

[bruise]

maybe I just read too much into things

Definitely not, the analogies you found are spot on. It looks like the influence is actually quite heavy, from the structures down to the refined sound sequences. I gotta check the rest, this is very interesting

[Orange Monkey]

maybe I just read too much into things

Definitely not, the analogies you found are spot on. It looks like the influence is actually quite heavy, from the structures down to the refined sound sequences. I gotta check the rest, this is very interesting

Have fun! I couldn't find a stand-alone copy of Mercian Hymns so I ended up getting a collection of his works from the library which weighs half a ton.
Also, just to be clear, I'm not implying that Polly has borrowed large swathes of Mercian Hymns, just a few ideas here and there. There are plenty of things in both books that are very different.

[TheNightingale]

Thank you for this! Very interesting indeed.

I don't think this has been mentioned here (even though I'm sure you all saw it on Polly's socials) but she's doing an Orlam reading in Estonia in May, alongside a conversation with a local folk musician Mari Kalkun.

[bruise]

I ended up getting a collection of his works from the library which weighs half a ton.

I rented it on the Internet Archive, in case you need a lighter copy:
https://archive.org/details/mercianhymn ... 5/mode/2up

I just finished reading it, and I agree with you completely. Polly hasn't really copied it, but you can definitely trace back a heavy influence on some parts of Orlam, mainly in terms of style. The hermetic, bare prose of the hymns reminded me a lot of some of her verses, especially those where the action is set in the village or the villagers are described, but also the introductory “Orlam Tells the Whole Story”. In some places you can feel a similar pace, with very short lines and a sense of accumulation of brief pieces. And there are word combinations in Orlam which bare a lot of resemblance to the expression you quoted, “charred lullabies” - but I'm speaking from memory now, I can't really quote any.
Other scattered analogies are the various references to bodily fluids and dirt, the regular mentioning of insects, animals and wild natural elements, and the theme of drinking/drunkenness which pops out sometimes. Again, not implying that she must have borrowed them specifically from that book (they're not so unusual), but you can definitely sense an echo of it in there.

I probably should read it again since English is not my mother tongue, but these are my impressions on a first take. YOU did an excellent job at pointing out those analogies!

[Romario11]

Thank you for this! Very interesting indeed.

I don't think this has been mentioned here (even though I'm sure you all saw it on Polly's socials) but she's doing an Orlam reading in Estonia in May, alongside a conversation with a local folk musician Mari Kalkun.

This has now been cancelled....

https://news.err.ee/1609665476/pj-harve ... oing-ahead

The Prima Vista literary festival in Tartu has announced that the planned PJ Harvey poetry and conversation evening on May 9 has been cancelled for reasons beyond the festival organizers' control.

During the festival, PJ Harvey had been due to read excerpts from her latest book "Orlam" followed by a discussion with Estonian folk musica and songwriter Mari Kalkun.

Prima Vista announced that all those who bought tickets for the event will be automatically refunded.

The 2025 Prima Vista Festival takes place in Tartu from May 5 to May 10. The theme of this year's festival is "Book as a Place, Place as a Book."

[TheNightingale]

According to Picador's website the paperback edition of Orlam seems to have been moved to April 2027 so perhaps the poetry readings as well.