The poems

Plasma Nights

seductive bright light
                  of the evening narrative

ease of habit
                  the need to relax

heck
                  we all need a break

so it goes
                  day into night

something to talk about
                  social cohesion

                      *

which is entertainment
                   which is value

which is passing time
                   which is bonding

movement on the retina
                   movement in the brain

reinforcement
                  which is

processed information
                   spectator dialogue

plasma brother

                       *

privileged
                  by bombs
                  we occupy

the dominant narrative

for subjects

far away
who may envy us

if seen
on their screen

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Source

From Markings 26 (2008). With permission of the poet.

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Author's note

Big Brother was a Stalinesque figure mouthing "propaganda" on a square screen. Now it's a wide, in-every-home plasma screen, with Mr and Mrs Newscaster standing easily, or sitting side by side chatting to camera, or occasionally between themselves. Chatting with mannered but wide-eyed engagement in "the" rolling 24x7 "news". News that never contradicts government foreign policy—which is to say nowadays, all-party policy: which is to say NATO policy, which is to say American government policy, which is to say European Union policy. There is an agreed narrative: it is "common sense".

It is worth looking at sometimes to find out who this week's "monster" is. Mugabe? Beijing? Karadzik? Putin? They are not part of "our" society, that society which bonds newscaster and watcher. It is not a propagandist stance, of course. It is not hectoring. It is easy-mannered, smart-casual, nothing hot-headed.

And always, out of sight of camera, the unseen narrative of the arms industry, maintaining what is called "the balance of power".

Let's watch the news. One never feels one's day is complete unless one finds out what today's news is. It's like opening the window of a morning, and seeing the world in its usual place.

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Editors' comment

So used have we become to Tom Leonard writing in phonetic Glaswegian it's easy to overlook how at ease he is - as he is here - in standard English. Few writers are more political than he and  Plasma Nights is as political as it gets. On the face of it, television is a benign presence in our lives, a commonplace relaxant that gives us communally "something to talk about". After the first, deliberately soporific stanza, Leonard quickens the pace, as if jolting us into sensibility. By the final stanza the "evening narrative" has become the "dominant" one and every syllable is an ironic landmine. 

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Biography

Tom Leonard was born in Glasgow in 1944. His publications include Intimate Voices which contains his poetry 1965-1983; access to the silence which has the poetry 1984-2004; Places of the Mind, a biography of James Thomson ("B.V.") author of the poem 'The City of Dreadful Night'; and an edited anthology Radical Renfrew, a collection of mainly hitherto out-of-print nineteenth century Scottish poetry.

Tom Leonard's new and selected poems Outside the Narrative is due late 2008.

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Related links

› SPL holdings

› www.tomleonard.co.uk