The voices that will not be drowned

A late posting, after spending the better part of the last two weeks in Suffolk. There is something about that odd bleak coast that gets to you after a while, particularly as autumn shifts to winter, and the trees become ghosts of themselves (some so windbattered they morph into lanky-haired witches turned to wood by some conjurer’s spell). My last post came from that most mysterious and haunted of locations, Orford Ness, and as poems begin to appear in my inbox from the Mendham group, the echoes of that excursion remain.

It was perhaps appropriate then that those echoes were picked up for me at the opening event of the Aldeburgh Poetry festival, which paired the poet Jackie Kay and the artist Maggie Hambling in conversation. Both poet and artist have been influenced extensively by place, Kay by the Glasgow of her childhood, and more recently, by the Nigeria of her birth father. But it’s Hambling’s fascination with the Suffolk coast, which I am just beginning to feel might be my coast too (having traded in the Atlantic coast of my childhood), and what she had to say about her process as an artist that extended the conversation I had with my fellow poets out on the Ness.

Hambling has been working with the wave as an image for some time, and she explained that she begins her working day with a walk by the sea (or by the Thames when she is in London). Although her wave paintings don’t always resonate for me, I think they are part of a larger project, which is about finding continuity. Hambling said that the purpose of art is to make people stop for a moment (she mentioned the poem’s ability to halt us as well). And maybe those wave paintings are her way of trying to halt the sea, to capture it in different moods and seasons, a sequence of waves, all distinct but from the same source. In relation to this, she talked about the limitations of photography: ‘a photograph can only ever be the record of something – a painting is a live thing’. Her waves work best for me in unison, each singing its moment, like a motet.

Hambling talked about the artists she values, who ‘speak in paint’: Rothko, Twombly, Titian, Rembrandt, and why we revisit certain paintings and artists again and again (as we do certain poems), because they are living, because they carry on a dialogue with their viewers, tell us different things at different times. And that’s why we engage with certain places, keep returning. The Suffolk coast has become one of those places for me, familiar enough now, but still new.

Which brings me to the scallop, Hambling’s monument to one of Aldeburgh’s greatest sons, Benjamin Britten. It is a work of public art which has divided opinion vehemently, so its opponents and supporters might be locked in a bitter political election or a religious war. It comes down not so much to Hambling’s sculpture (which is certainly more effective than her ‘sculptural bench’ dedicated to Oscar Wilde outside Charing Cross station) but its position. On the side of the detractors, there is this articulate response (as opposed to some of the other responses) from Humphrey Burton, which was published in the Guardian when the sculpture was first unveiled:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2004/jan/14/guardianletters1

I am on the side of the supporters (and plucked up the courage to say so to the famously-irascible Hambling herself as she was leaving the talk last week). I disagree with Burton about what he describes as ‘casual violation’. The scallop is firstly not ‘casual’, in that it has been very carefully designed to be seen from many angles and distances, to have an impact from afar as well as up-close. It has become well-worn by the countless children who climb on it (and public art that doubles-up as climbing frame can be no bad thing – the fact that it is not cordoned off or prohibited from being touched is the very thing that makes it truly democratic, truly ‘public’). It is neither purely figurative, nor completely abstract, but somewhere in between, which should appeal to many, and also somehow captures Britten himself, whose music occupied the middle of the twentieth century, and brought together the traditional and the experimental. The scallop’s edge is inscribed with a line from the libretto of Britten’s most famous opera, the one which is most situated in Aldeburgh, Peter Grimes: I hear those voices that will not be drowned. In that way, it is also a tribute to that older generation who made their living from the sea, and to Aldeburgh’s other great son, the poet George Crabbe, in whose work The Borough the tragic Grimes first appears.

As to violation, well, this is more of an issue. As one of my fellow poets asked as we approached it, following our trip to the Ness, ‘it comes down to this: who owns the beach?’ A number of long-time residents, including Burton, somehow felt the beach had been ‘spoiled’ by the scallop. Burton suggests the sculpture could be moved inland, which would somehow make both its subject and the inscription invalid. It was designed to face the thing that obsessed Crabbe, and Britten, and Hambling equally: the sea. It could be nowhere else. I can understand that it upsets those true Suffolkers who like their flat surfaces flat and their big skies uninterrupted. Perhaps I am not a good judge, coming from an urban location, where views are changed all the time by what’s erected, what’s torn down. But this is not just a piece of public art, happily freed from the four walls of the gallery, it is a celebration of the sea, those who thought and wrote and sang and captured it in various ways. And so it needs to face its subject, to make us stop for a moment, and really observe the way the sea moves and changes.

I’m very late to this debate, started as it was in 2004. But in my short time in Suffolk, the scallop has become one of my favourite landmarks. That’s what it is, a landmark. Here’s the full quote from Montague Slater’s libretto:

But dreaming builds what dreaming can disown.
Dead fingers stretch themselves to tear it down.
I hear those voices that will not be drowned
Calling, there is no stone
In earth’s thickness to make a home
That you can build with and remain alone.

A Society of Poets

 

The current troubles at the Poetry Society in London have been the subject of articles this week in both the Telegraph http://tgr.ph/kTQmN6 and the Guardian http://bit.ly/kryKmp . I won’t go into the history of the problems, which have been well-documented on various blogs including Baroque in Hackney http://bit.ly/mKhGqY and Surroundings http://robmack.blogspot.com/ . In the midst of speculation as to what has actually happened (the full facts have not been publicly released), there have been heated discussions among Society members as to the best course of action, and as of today, a GM has been called for 22^nd July.

Until yesterday, I was not a member of the Society; I have just renewed my membership for the first time in twenty years. My reason for doing so is to attend the GM. But why have I not been a member for all these years? It is fair to say that poetry is the most important thing in my life; it is through poetry that I have made my living for these last 12 years, both as a writer and a teacher. Not a day goes by when I am not reading poetry or commenting on it. So why should I not be a member of a society that has the function of promoting it? There are a number of reasons why I have allowed my membership to lapse for so long, both personal and professional. But, personal reasons aside, and in light of recent dramas and the equally dramatic response of fellow poets, I wonder whether it is time for all of us to analyse why such a society should exist and exactly what it should be doing to promote the art form it is dedicated to promoting?

I will freely admit that I have my own ideas about how poetry should be promoted, and some of those ideas are based on my own prejudices and preferences. I’m not keen on ‘gimmicks’; i.e. giant poetry billboards, subscriptions to daily poem texts, etc., designed to attract people who might not normally read poetry. I risk sounding like some kind of dinosaur if I wonder if it isn’t more productive (especially in these times of scant funding) to still attempt to guide such people to books and readings instead? I know the ‘hit rate’ might be less, but the quality of the experience might be greater. And here is the basic fact: some people – quite a few people actually – will never care about poetry. No matter what you do, how you dress it up, poetry will never appeal to them. So why not really concentrate on the people who are genuinely interested and treat them with intelligence? Don’t get me wrong – I’m not against any sort of promotion outside the normal literary boundaries. I think Poems on the Underground is brilliant, not least because the poems they select are truly diverse – during a long tube journey you have the opportunity to read a poem more than once, to really think about it, instead of gazing at whatever free newspaper has been chucked onto the seat next to yours.

Yes, I know – not just a dinosaur, but a snob. I can’t help it. Poetry is important to me, and important to a lot of people around me, and perhaps it’s just a case of wanting to see it (and its practitioners, of course) treated with respect. So if I were to create my own poetry society (forgetting the small problems of funding and resources), what would be its features and functions? Firstly, it seems to me that such a society should be a gathering place where poets could share ideas and resources. A lot of that happens through social networking these days – which is not a bad thing. But there should be a place where poets feel they might gather (other than the pub), and where there might be books and magazines, coffee (perhaps something harder!). Poets House in New York http://poetshouse.org/about.htm has a library, an extensive performance and education programme, a showcase for new poets, etc. It seems to me that it offers a ‘one-stop shop’, and here in London, poets have to go to several places, like the Poetry Library, the Poetry School, the Poetry Cafe, because not one place can provide all that we need. There have been various plans over the years to bring a number of literature organisations together, and this has happened to some extent at the Free Word Centre http://www.freewordonline.com/ . Of course all of the places I have mentioned provide different functions, and diversity is always a good thing, because that keeps discussions and debates open. Perhaps we are too diverse, too fractured in our activities to come together in that way. And of course the current funding situation makes it impossible in the short term. But it would be interesting to have the debate nonetheless …

As for a permanent home for poetry and poetry organisations in London? What about one of the Olympic site buildings post-2012? I can think of no better legacy …

Poetry and the age

There has been much debate recently (mostly between other poets) as to whether poetry is going through a renaissance or a slow death. In a recent article in The Guardian, Jackie Kay affirms that this is a wonderful time for poetry: ‘In this bleak midwinter, with the recession and bad weather, poetry may be helping us to keep body and soul together. At a time when everything is being cut, closed down, diminished and discontinued, the forecast for poetry is surprisingly fair.’

In one respect, she is right. Poetry is more visible in the broadsheets and on radio and television cultural review programmes (although still the poor relation to fiction), and poets are the recipients of high-profile prizes. But why should that be surprising?! Why do we still need to make excuses for poetry’s existence, and make poetry more palatable to people by telling them how good it will make them feel?

For those of us on the inside, we have been aware of small surges of media interest when there is something ‘interesting’ to report in the poetry world (and what is interesting to the broadsheets is hardly ever the poetry itself). It is still not clear to me, as a poet, how many people out there read poetry (especially those who are not poets themselves) and for what purpose? Is poetry’s purpose ‘to keep body and soul together’? Or is its purpose to challenge the reader in some way, to unsettle, to alter his / her thinking? Can it do both?

Some poets engaged in this current debate feel that poetry (more specifically, poetry in the UK) is going through a conservative period. Although I don’t disagree, I wonder if there has always been a chasm between practitioners’ interests and public reception. Although the Turner Prize is a well-established and reputable award in the art world, every year we go through the predictable tabloid jibes and knee-jerk outrage. Is it really art? Should it get public funding? Instead of trying to understand something which appears to be difficult or challenging, it’s easier (and more fun) to ridicule it.

Not to say that poetry gets that sort of public attention (possibly for financial reasons). Even in this so-called renaissance, I suspect it is still a fairly small percentage of the population who read contemporary poetry, compared to the number of people who attend contemporary art exhibitions. But why should this be? I went back to Randall Jarrell’s excellent essay ‘The Obscurity of the Poet’ and was unsurprised to find that his piece, written in 1950, sadly has not dated, and some of what he says could be said to be true today.

Jarrell’s main argument is that not just modern poetry, but all poetry, could be considered obscure through sheer neglect. He laments the fact that even educated readers no longer make the effort to read poetry, and because they are out of the habit of reading poetry, and because they view poetry as “obscure”, they assume it is therefore “difficult”.

The truth of the matter is that some poetry is difficult. Some poetry, like some art, is meant to be difficult and unsettling and provoking; it’s not meant to make us feel warm and fuzzy inside. But something that challenges and upsets us can also be affirming, in that suddenly we see the world differently, sometimes more clearly.

So instead of saying how wonderful it is that people are bothering to notice poetry at all, shouldn’t the media (and poets who act as spokespeople for other poets in the media) focus on why poetry is important, and not just as a salve for the soul?

I’ll leave the last word to Randall Jarrell:

“Art matters not merely because it is the most magnificent ornament and the most nearly unfailing occupation of our lives, but because it is life itself. From Christ to Freud we have believed that, if we know the truth, the truth will set us free: art is indispensible because so much of this truth can be learned through works of art and through works of art alone — for which of us could have learned for himself what Proust and Chekhov, Hardy and Yeats and Rilke, Shakespeare and Homer learned for us?”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/jan/29/poets-poetry-stage-roar-renaissance

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Randall_Jarrell#Poetry_and_the_Age_.281953.29_.5Bessays.5D