In Conversation with Beth Soule Turning Japanese - Tanka Found Poetry - Confessions of a Traitor: Trials and Tribulations of Translating Poetry A ...
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Confessions of a Traitor: Trials and Tribulations of Translating Poetry A Close Reading: 'The Straight Jacket' by Pascale Petit In Conversation with Beth Soule Turning Japanese – Tanka Found Poetry
N otice to Contributors C ontents 13th March 2020 is the deadline for poems Contacts 2 from SPS members for the next issue. This Thoughts from the President 3 will enable them to be circulated to our Words from the Chair 3 referees for their recommendations. If you Notes from the Editor 4 are sending poems please put your name Confessions of a Traitor 5 and contact details (preferably email A Memory of George Crabbe 6 address) on each page. Submissions not A Close Reading 7 conforming to this requirement will not be Found Poetry 8 considered. Turning Japanese 4: Tanka 10 10th April 2020 is the deadline for the next Letter to the Editor 11 issue for all items other than poems: In Conversation with Beth Soule 11 articles, write-ups of events or workshops, Selected Poems 13 reviews, etc. The preferred format is an 6th Festival of Suffolk Poetry Review 16 attachment to an email to A Clutch of Larks 20 editor@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk but you may SPS Events send them by post to: Border Crossing 22 Bridges and Crossings 22 The Editor, 64 Broom Street, Inspired By The Rubáiyát 24 Great Cornard, Tea at The Priory 24 Sudbury, National Poetry Day 24 Suffolk, Other Events CO10 0JT. Bugs and Blossoms Workshop 26 They Toil Not Workshop 26 It is very important that your name and Brandon Pop-Up Poets 26 contact details (preferably email address) Book Reviews (BR) are written on the item you are sending. Nine Days (BR) 27 Images, drawings or photographs are Exposure (BR) 27 welcome. Please send them, in as high a After-Images (BR) 28 resolution as possible, to Dreams of Flight (BR) 29 webmaster@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk. Other Items Remembering Stephen Glason 29 Front cover: Café Poets' Corner – Sudbury Café Poets 30 Photograph by Derek Adams. Future Events – 2020 31 Lavenham Press workshops 31 C Chair ontact details Florence Cox : suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk chair@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Vice Chair Beth Soule vicechair@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Secretary Sue Wallace-Shaddad secretary@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Treasurer Colin Whyles treasurer@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Membership Diane Jackman membership@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Tel: 01379 642372 for new membership enquiries 12 Rivers Editor Fran Reader editor@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Publicity Derek Adams publicity@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Portfolio Secretary Pat Jourdan portfolio@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Crabbe Competition Rosemary Jones crabbe@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Stanza Rep Derek Adams stanza@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Webmaster Colin Whyles webmaster@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Published by Suffolk Poetry Society, c/o Fairweather Law Ltd, Solicitors, Copyright © 2019 Suffolk Poetry Society 16 Wentworth Road, ALDEBURGH, Suffolk, IP15 5BB, UK Registered Charity 1162298 2
T houghts from the President .... or rather it hasn’t yet gone wild but with typical quiet attention some local Quakers are reflecting doubt that whether we are imported or native Suffolkers, the contrast of our deep, quiet The Quaker Graveyard Has on what that might mean for wild landscape with the sharp-edged, Gone Wild life, visitors and, not least, pervasive noise of present-day mourners, if it were to be ‘re- politics is especially poignant. grasses clamber on the deep-cut wilded’. What do you think? Is it either or? simple stones, This beautiful county of ours quite Should we as poets turn away from flashes of colour clearly and in many places the racket of the newsroom and light up the path demonstrates the same dilemma. celebrate our heritage of natural and where there was once ordinary The small woodland path, once beauty? Should we grapple with silence neatly barbered, that I walk on the big questions of our national the deep voiced ministry almost every evening when in life in our poetry? What is a of bees Suffolk is now overgrown. It ‘political’ poem? Is there such an blazes with straggling plants, animal? speaks. many with sharp teeth. We have perhaps got used to a rather more Having accepted the privilege of Now we are scattering the ashes tidy version of husbandry than we being your current president and of that plain, silent, image heard, seen and read your work, I of ourselves see in the hedges that lean and flash their changing leaves over the don’t doubt that you have the skills we like to believe and the heart to do what poets roads - and yet it’s beautiful. Is is who we are must and shine the light of poetry change always a paradox? and a small, bright eyed wherever it needs to fall. hedgehog joins our Meeting All of us are grappling with that Kate Foley and the bees. question at the moment and I don’t W ords from the Chair I passed the test to get on the course but, although I heard there were some unfilled spaces, Now I usually gather the elements of a poem in my head, sometimes letting it stew for as I’ve been thinking about how a I didn’t receive the offer of a long as three weeks. Then I sit at poem gets into its final shape. place. I sat on the steps outside my computer very late in the When I was younger and a poem the college and wept. When a day, literally and metaphorically, was demanding to be written, I man walking past asked what and type it up. I love the ease of would scribble it down on the matter was, I sobbed,‘I want re-drafting on the computer and whatever came to hand: the back to study here!’ Unbeknown to I save each draft as I go along. of a cheque book, an empty cake me, he was the Director of the Sometimes, after a lot of box, the edge of a page of my college. A few days later I was alterations, I return to the raw university lecture notes or even accepted on the course, and early version and make it the on a till receipt in very tiny because of it, I was able to earn a definitive one. For over a writing! Later, I would transfer decent living and swap my quarter of a century I have these drafts, sometimes with dingy room for a Paris flat with shared my poems with a couple modifications, into a succession my very own shower, toilet and of poetry writing groups, where of thick exercise books, hot water. fresh insight can be gained, unearthed from my usual criticism taken on board and new domestic clutter when I had a I worked for a dynamic company ideas exchanged. I store my spare moment. on the western edge of Paris, and poetry in ‘year’ folders, so all the it was here that I typed up my poems for the first time. My poems I have written in one I didn’t learn to type until I was typing was entirely fuelled by particular year are in one place. 24. I had cycled from Ipswich to rage; I had a new colleague, very But I must admit that I find it Southwest France the year before attractive and smartly dressed, difficult to locate poems with a and was living in a gloomy but her lunch hours lasted all connecting theme. I would love upstairs room equipped with one afternoon and the work that she to hear any ideas on how other cold tap. The toilet was at the was meant to be doing arrived poets store their work so that back of the yard and was shared on my desk instead. I decided retrieval is easy. with fifteen people. I was doing temporary work as a cleaner that when my extra work was I often wake in the night, and when I heard that I could apply done, I would type up my poems sometimes a few lines of new until she deigned to put in an to do a full-time bilingual poetry occur to me which I shape appearance. I soon filled a secretarial course at a college in carefully in my head. But if, in whole folder with my early the town and receive the works. my drowsy state, I make the minimum wage while I studied. 3
mistake of not writing down the were set to music by Colin of exploring the fusion of poetry fledgling poem on the nearest Whyles and, accompanied by with art and photography during piece of paper, in the morning I Colin, sung by Lynne Nesbit; the fascinating talk by the cannot for the life of me Virginie Roidiere’s harp music Suffolk poet Clare Best. remember the lines that had beautifully enhanced the poetry Poetry is not an island. Every seemed so vivid and exciting. of the Rubáiyát and the a capella sort of artistic endeavour can group Triangle provided This brings me to the exciting create associations in our minds entertaining and lively songs for year of shared poetry in Suffolk. to inspire us. Whether your the Members’ reading. I In May, we had another poetry is typed, memorised or performed at the open mic at successful Festival of Suffolk scribbled on the back of an FolkEast for the first time, both Poetry in Stowmarket, followed envelope, it is enriched by saying poems and singing a in June by the Rubáiyát event in experiences, ideas and ballad of mine, whose lyrics Ipswich and our annual impressions which can help to were praised by one member of Members’ reading in Walpole bring your words to their fullest the audience afterwards! At the Old Chapel. Each of these events flowering. SPS Members’ tea party on was enhanced by a musical September 8th, held at the Florence Cox element; at the Festival selected beautiful home of Victoria poems by James Knox Whittet Engleheart, we had the pleasure N otes from the Editor I hope this issue will provide 2. Book Reviews – it is very special readers with pleasure in poetry for Any existing member renewing for to receive books and pamphlets the winter months ahead and will 2020 before 31st December 2019 from SPS members for review in inspire contributions for the will get their membership at 2019 Twelve Rivers – please keep them forthcoming issues in the first year rates. coming. Where possible we will of the new decade. I find myself ensure that all books and wondering what this new decade Potential new members joining in pamphlets are reviewed but, if this will look like – will these Twenties November / December 2019 will is not possible, books and ‘roar’ with new ‘isms’ like they have free membership for pamphlets received but not did one hundred years ago? November and December 2019 and reviewed will be noted as per Vol. start the annual subscription at the 10 Iss. 1 p.27. Now to two important messages 2020 rates from January 2020. for existing and potential members: We aim to ensure that all reviews The 2019 Membership / Renewal can be seen to be independent, so 1. Membership – I have been asked Application Form can be used for please do not make to remind all members that their 2020 membership and renewal recommendations about a annual membership fee is rising applications before 31st December preferred reviewer when for the first time in five years. This 2019. submitting a book or pamphlet. increase was agreed at the AGM in March 2019 and will ensure that The 2019 Membership / Renewal All books or pamphlets to be Suffolk Poetry Society (SPS) has the Application Form is available on considered for review should be funds to continue to run its annual the website suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk – sent to the Editor – as per the events, cope with the rising cost of this form will change to the address on the Notice to postage and publish Twelve Rivers. updated 2020 forms and rates from Contributors on p.2. Each January 1st 2020. reviewer is sent the copy received The membership fee is due in and asked to write a review of January of each year and in 2020 The Privacy Form on the reverse of the Membership / Renewal around 500 words by the agreed will be: deadline for each issue. Each Application Form only has to be • Individual membership: £18.00 completed by new members – not reviewer may keep the copy of the by renewing members. book they’ve reviewed. If you are • Couple membership: £23.00 interested in becoming a reviewer • 18+ and in full-time education: please email the Editor at £5.00 editor@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk • Postal Portfolio Membership Fran Reader (optional extra)1: £20.00 1 Numbers of members of the Postal Portfolio are limited to keep it manageable. 4
C onfessions of a Traitor: The Trials and Tribulations of Translating Poetry about an eminent scientist who had declared, around the time that bicycles were invented, that cycling unfamiliar while still being a writer with something interesting to say to today’s reader. What I thought must be impossible: if you did not might particularly appeal was what I fall off one side, you were bound to saw as his psychological acuity in fall off the other. And yet cycling describing a relationship with a continues to happen. And so does woman he called Cynthia, whether verse translation. or not she really existed (the current academic orthodoxy is that she was a Why? Many poets through the ages literary invention). have doubtless simply felt inspired to render a poem they admired in As I began work, I didn’t have much another language into their own. going for me if my efforts were ever When, in the 1st century BC, Catullus to make their way beyond my translated into Latin a love poem computer hard-drive or, at best, composed by Sappho 500 years some kind of Internet self- previously, he was writing for an publication. I had made my entire audience who knew the original career in 24-hour journalism and was Greek as well as he did; he may have unknown in the world of letters. I wanted to flatter an erudite was not (and still am not) an original girlfriend he had already compared poet in English. But I had an early to the poet of Lesbos. But the main stroke of luck when the head of the justification for literary translation, Manchester-based poetry publishing including of poetry, has always been house Carcanet Press, Michael Patrick Worsnip to share important works with a Schmidt – someone I had known wider public, however imperfectly. slightly at university forty years Born in Gloucester, Patrick Worsnip Dorothy Sayers’ Penguin Classics earlier – agreed, without read Classics and Modern version of The Divine Comedy, commitment, at least to look at Languages at Merton College, published in the 1950s, may look whatever I could come up with. (It Oxford. He worked for more than dated and even odd nowadays. was to be five years before Carcanet forty years as a foreign Does it match the original Italian? eventually decided to publish the correspondent for Reuters, Of course not. But the fact is that, book as part of their new Classics reporting from over eighty thanks to her, thousands of English- series). And I was inspired by being countries and covering stories speaking people who would not able to translate many of the ranging from the collapse of the otherwise have done so got to read hundred or so extant poems while Soviet Union to the conflicts in the Dante’s masterpiece. spending my summers in a village in Gulf. the Italian region of Umbria just a Some such consideration was on my few miles from Assisi, where Since retiring in 2012 he has mind when, a few years ago, I Propertius was born more than a devoted himself to translation, retired from a four-decade career as millennium before St. Francis. mainly of poetry. His version of the a Reuters correspondent and Poems by Sextus Propertius was decided to try to finally realise a I was guided more by instinct than published by Carcanet Classics in youthful ambition to translate Latin anything else in choosing a style and 2018. He is currently working on poetry. But which author to pick? I form to adopt. For a long time, the the poetry of Umberto Saba and - settled on the love poet Propertius, curse of translation from the Classics for relaxation - Dante's Divine writing in the Augustan era roughly had been archaism. By a process of Comedy. He divides his time between 30 and 15 BC. I was still logic that eluded me, translators had between Cambridge and Umbria, enough of a newsman to judge that thought that, because the original Italy. Propertius was “news” in a way that works were written a long time ago, the heavily translated Catullus and the translations should be in the Most of the memorable things that Ovid, part of the same wave of English of a long time ago. But 17th have been said about translation, poetic talent at that time, were not. I century English is no more similar to especially of poetry, have stressed its knew that many readers of English Latin or ancient Greek than 21st impossibility. From the Italian poetry were vaguely aware that, century English is. Yet usages like proverb “traduttore/ about a century ago, Ezra Pound had “thou” and “thee” and “hasteneth” traditore” (translator/traitor) to published a poem called Homage to and “hearkenest” lingered on in Dante’s comment that “nothing Sextus Propertius – for the record, translation well after they had died harmonised according to the rules of something between a translation and out in original English poetry. Even poetry can be translated from its a loose adaptation of parts of some when they finally disappeared native tongue into another without of Propertius’ poems, jumbled around the mid-20th century, they destroying its original sweetness and together. But how many people had were replaced all too often by an harmony”, to Robert Frost’s actually read it? And of those, only a unexceptional English that was definition of poetry as “what gets fraction would have read the Latin timeless and, in my view, colourless. lost in translation”. I am reminded author either in the original or in a Pound aside, the translations of how, when I was a child, my father more conventional translation. From Propertius that I glanced at didn’t told me a probably apocryphal story my perspective, Propertius had the look like poems written by a real advantage of being relatively person. Somewhere in the back of 5
my head (and no amount of the “creative” translators, who are out of translation and into googling has enabled me to track essentially trying to write a new something else. down who said it) was the phrase work of their own. They could “alive and writing in English include Samuel Johnson with The The book was published in today”. That was the impression I Vanity of Human Wishes (based on September 2018 (https:// wanted Propertius to create. Juvenal) or Edward Fitzgerald with www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer? Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam. product=9781784106515) and was There was a further problem relating fortunate enough to get a to the poetic form to adopt. All of I didn’t adhere to either of these recommendation from the Poetry Propertius’ work is in an unrhymed schools. I didn’t want Propertius to Book Society. Publication is not the Latin metre known as the elegiac look like a museum piece. But end of the matter for the translator, couplet. I won’t go into detail here, neither did I think I could do better though – the most unexpected issues but suffice it to say that you can’t than him. I wanted to foster the can arise. I’d agonised for a long reproduce it in English. To reflect illusion (and I concede it’s an time over whether to translate the variety of the poems, I went illusion) in the reader that when “puella” – a word Propertius instead for a mix of English forms, reading my work, he or she was repeatedly uses for adult women – ranging from free verse to limited reading Propertius, not Patrick literally as “girl”, before eventually use of rhyme and half-rhyme and Worsnip. To try to write in the doing so on the grounds that it was various kinds of metre or rhythm. living language of the present day not my job to turn him into a (while avoiding ephemeral slang) modern “new man”. But, in its All translation is difficult. But if didn’t seem to me a particularly review, the London Review of Books your original author is new, and revolutionary idea. But reactions took me to task for playing down especially if the language is little from readers have suggested that sexual violence in a poem where known – Albanian or Icelandic, let’s maybe it was more revolutionary Propertius threatens to forcibly strip say – it is down to that author to than I thought. These have ranged Cynthia, bruising her arms in the impress the critics or not. The from “He seems very modern” (a process, if she does not voluntarily translator needs to do a decent job, welcome comment) to “Did undress before going to bed with no more. But taking on an Propertius really say that?” (less him. (In another poem, it is Cynthia established Classic, writing in one of welcome). Expressions I used such who beats up Propertius). the great world languages, is a as “put-down”, “flip-flops” (the different matter. The reputation of footwear) or “megacity” have raised Ah well. I’ll be more careful next Sophocles, or Petrarch, or Goethe is eyebrows but seem to me genuinely time. To translate a Classic is an beyond question. The onus is on the the most exact translations now object lesson in humility. The most translator to make the case for available of the Latin. And for those the translator can aspire to is to having had another shot when there who equate any Latin author with interest a new generation of readers are plenty of translations out there dusty schoolrooms from decades in an author, but you cannot hope to already. There’s no hiding place. ago, let’s remember that Propertius have produced the definitive version Then again, translators have tended seemed very modern to his for all time. Even monumental to fall broadly into one of two contemporaries. On the other hand, achievements like the King James camps. There are the literalists – I’ve eschewed glaring Bible were later considered outdated Vladimir Nabokov, for example, anachronisms. In one poem, and in need of replacement. Sooner with his version of Pushkin’s Propertius laments that he’s lost his or later, your effort is going to be Yevgeny Onegin, or the founders of writing tablet – a wax-covered consigned to history, and others will the magazine Modern Poetry in wooden board. If you update the take their turn to produce a Translation. They believe that tablet and have him losing his iPad, translation more appropriate to their fidelity to the original text is you immediately lose your reader, age. paramount, even if the result looks who knows very well the ancient awkward in English. Then there are Romans didn’t have iPads. You’re A Memory of George Crabbe Rector. In the evening the whole party adjourned to the Rectory, where they found Crabbe playing * Kilvert's Diary, Volume 3 Selections from the Diary of the Rev. Francis Kilvert 14 May 1974 - * From the Reverend Kilvert’s diary whist with three friends in a large 13 March 1879, Chosen, edited and drawing room. Crabbe’s son (who introduced by William Plomer Monday, 5 October, 1874 was acting as his father’s curate) (1960) pp, 91-92 This month there is in the Cornhill was present, a keen-looking (George Crabbe died 3 February Magazine an article on Crabbe’s laughable man…..He came 1832 aged 77. His body is buried in poetry. My Father says he forward to receive the visitors Trowbridge and his heart in remembers staying with the while Crabbe continued his game. Aldeburgh.) Longmires at Wingfield about the My father describes the poet as year 1830. They took him one day being a small plain insignificant- Frank Wood to a book sale at Trowbridge, of looking old man, bald and with a which parish the poet was then whitish yellow complexion. 6
T ' he Strait-Jackets' by Pascale Petit: a close reading breathing easily; nostrils, almost; don’t, know; how, hours; asleep, cheeks; catch, wrap, strait-jackets. surprisingly, For the first time since I've arrived / he's breathing easily, had the father also been dreading this meeting, and confronted by The poem culminates with two past misdemeanours found some Derek Adams internal rhymes in the final line sort of relief? ‘deep’, ‘sleep’, and the W sound of ‘wake’ and ‘once’, which also echo At the end of the poem all the the word ‘work’ in the penultimate hummingbirds are retrieved and line. This relentless rhythm is once more returned to the strait- intensified by the block form of the jackets and, by inference, to the poem, as well as the enjambment case, so perhaps this hospital visit of many lines and the heavy use of has not been as cathartic as it first alliteration: lie, live; feed, from, seemed. While the father sleeps like flask; inserting, into; from, face; a baby, does the poet find herself hover, he, humming; audible, once more, like the hummingbirds, above, attached, almost; work, trapped by her own mental wake; deep, doesn’t. straight-jacket? In contrast to this tension, the poem is full of soft words: gently, cushioned, swaddled, flower, The Strait-Jackets feathers, eyelids and quietly. This by Pascale Petit gives the poem a feeling of tenderness on the part of the poet, In this issue we will take a close she tells us the birds fly close to her father’s face as if he’s a flower… I lay the suitcase on Father's bed look at a poem from Pascale Petit’s second collection The Zoo Father and unzip it slowly, gently. It comes as a bit of a surprise to published by Seren in 2001. ‘The find that this poem is from the first Inside, packed in cloth strait-jackets Strait-jackets’ is the first poem in section of the book that deals with lie forty live hummingbirds the book. In it the poet tells us she the poet’s reunion with a violent tied down in rows, each tiny head has smuggled forty live and abusive father, whom she had hummingbirds into her father’s cushioned on a swaddled body. not seen since childhood, while he hospital room and released them. was dying in hospital and she was I feed them from a flask of sugar water, I chose this poem as I feel it is an undertaking therapy to help her inserting every bill into the pipette, interesting example of Pascale’s come to terms with her past. then unwind their bindings poetry and shows how she invites However, this poem contains clues to the strained relationship of the so Father can see their changing colours you to suspend your belief with her two characters, the hummingbirds as they dart around his room. surreal poetry. After the intriguing title, she lulls you with a very are ‘tied down’, their bodies They hover inches from his face ordinary-sounding first two lines: I ‘swaddled’, which seem to echo the as if he's a flower, their humming lay the suitcase on Father's bed / and way her father is held by the hospital bed, tied down by the just audible above the oxygen recycler. unzip it slowly, gently. oxygen recycler and the cannula/ For the first time since I've arrived The next six lines introduce the attached to his nostrils. The strait- he's breathing easily, the cannula hummingbirds. Here Petit piles on jackets of the title not only hold the attached to his nostrils almost slips out. the detail of how they are secured hummingbirds down but are also in the case and how they are fed; the strait-jackets of family ties I don't know how long we sit there this wealth of intricate detail makes which bind father and daughter but when I next glance at his face everything sound plausible and together, despite years apart, and he's asleep, lights from their feathers this allows you to accept the the trauma suffered by the poet fantastical, or magical realist, that caused the separation. Of still playing on his eyelids and cheeks. elements of the poem. course, the most important thing in It takes me hours to catch them all the poem are the hummingbirds, and wrap them in their strait-jackets. There is a lot of tension built into these little metaphors of memory the sound of this poem by the use I work quietly, he's in such and feelings that the poet has of internal rhymes and echoes, carefully packed away in a suitcase a deep sleep he doesn't wake once. often in the same line, sometimes over the years, tied down so they in adjacent words: lay, suitcase; can’t escape. When she finally sees unzip, it; slowly, gently; packed, the father who abused and From The Zoo Father (Seren 2001) strait-jackets; Inside, lie, live, tied, abandoned her so many years ago, reproduced with kind permission tiny; down, rows, cushioned, on; helpless in his hospital bed, she can of Pascale Petit and Seren. sugar, water; unwind, bindings; at last release what had for so long Father, dart; hover, flower, recycler, been suppressed. Perhaps cannula; arrived, attached; 7
F ound Poetry everything. In found poetry, the poet is allowed to operate like the proverbial magpie and ‘steal’ words, other poems or other textual sources, as already mentioned above. Nicola Warwick lines and phrases from other texts (not just other poems) to create The following example shows how something which is frequently it can be done, on a very basic level: referred to as collage. In fact, the Here’s a great way to keep the kids Found Poetry Review describes it as entertained. ‘the literary version of a collage’, using not just traditional sources The neighbourhood cats keep using such as books, magazines or newspapers, but also the less the flowerbed traditional, like packaging or junk around our house as a litter tray. mail. By joining extracts from the We regret we do not have facilities chosen sources, the poet creates for pets. something that is and is not part of the original text. As Annie Dillard I was upset to find the stones says ‘by entering a found text as a in one of my favourite brooches poem, the poem doubles its context. were loose. In July, Roger Bloor was announced The original meaning remains intact but it now swings between two By removing the bottom of a plastic as the winner of the Poetry London Clore Prize 2019, with his poem ‘The poles. The poet adds, or at any rate lemonade bottle Ghost of Molly Leigh Pleads, Yes increases, the element of delight!’2 you find useful compartments Cries for Exemplaire Justice Against Found poetry can also be used to to hold all your bits and bobs. The Arbitrarie, Un-exampled inspire poems if you don’t know We store deposits in a secure Injustice of Her Accuser’, described what to write or if your writing is account. by the judge, Sasha Dugdale as a inspired by a phrase or title of an poem of ‘mesmerising rhythm and already published poem and you Please note anyone who has not accumulative power’1. Leaving just want to free-write from disclosed aside its extremely long title, what whatever first seizes your attention. makes this poem remarkable is that a health problem. I prefer to buy A good example of this is Linda it is an example of what is known as man-sized tissues. I punch holes France’s 2010 collection You are Her, ‘found’ poetry. At the time of the title of which was discovered on in the front of the boxes, writing, the winning poem has yet an information board at Hadrian’s useful all year round as curtain to be published but is described as Wall, not far from the poet’s home. ties. using ‘found text and elements from The missing final ‘e’ from the sign, the legends that surround Molly’s originally ‘You are here’, enabling Groups of ten or more adults may life’, Molly Leigh being a 17th- the visitor to locate their position on qualify century woman who was accused of a map, set the poet off on a journey witchcraft. for a discount, using just a piece of of writing poems both of location and disorientation. The title poem of slate, But what exactly is found poetry, the collection ends ‘…. you are her, some pebbles, correction fluid and how can it generate such apparent intensity and power? Most and her, and her, always guessing/ and a marker pen. poets will experience what is the missing letter, a perfect The poem was created by combining sometimes called ‘writer’s block’ at mistake’3. Found poetry, then, can phrases taken from ‘brainwaves’ or some point in their career. The have a disorientating effect on the ‘your tips’ pages of two weekly reasons for this ‘block’ are various: reader (and the poet) in the way it women’s magazines and some lines lack of confidence, demands and encourages a thought process that is from the terms and conditions of stresses of life outside the poetry both surprising and imaginative. booking a place on a residential world or simply just not reading I first encountered found poetry on course with the Field Studies enough. I find the more poetry I an Open University course and Council. Some phrases seemed to read, the more I want to write; when what appealed to me primarily was knit together quite easily; others I’m not reading poetry, I’m less its experimental nature and the fact needed a little more persuasion. likely to write it. Taking all this into that I could legitimately have fun Nevertheless, the poem has some account, a good technique for when writing a poem. Peter Sansom, very unexpected and surreal lines, creating a poem, while waiting for in Writing Poems describes a found as well as some which are witty and the muse to strike (or if the muse is poem as ‘plagiarism as art’. It can playful. of the distinctly tardy kind) is to also, he says, be like ‘ “sampling” in have a go at found poetry. Of course, there are more ‘creative’ pop music; though it tends to reline prose as poetry (rather than methods of making a found poem. So, what is it? Arguably, all poetry The Found Poetry Review sets out is, to some extent, ‘found’: in the borrowing from other poems)’4. The idea of ‘borrowing’ is crucial here, four techniques for creating found mind of the poet, within the poetry2: experience which inspires the poem, although I would go further and the idea of ‘seeing’ poetry in describe it as recycling or even re- • Erasure - using an existing purposing material, either from 8
source of no more than a The resulting poem has a just to be touched and dirtied couple of pages, erasing the surprisingly logical narrative flow. by something. majority of the text and The final lines were not taken in the creating a poem from the order they appear in the book, The resulting poem retains some of remainder, read in order enabling them to be repurposed into the atmosphere of the original (the something which makes sense and title itself is taken from the first line • Free form excerpting and has a surreal quality to it. This of Vicki Feaver’s poem) yet moves remixing - taking words and method of writing, creating a text away from it by focusing on the phrases from the source text from other texts, is also known as speaker’s feelings of rejection, on the and rearranging them in any intertextuality, which describes how absence of her husband as he order a piece of writing relates to other concentrates on the harvest and texts, whether this is by allusion, ultimately providing for his family, • Cento - using lines from other Although lacking the drama of adaptation, translation, parody, writers’ texts into a new poem, ‘Judith’, this poem retains a sense of pastiche, imitation or other ways of keeping the original lines power and emotion, not lost by transformation6. Intertextuality is intact, but rearranging them also the name used to describe weaving fragments of the original found poetry made where the into new lines. • Cut-up - physically cutting or tearing up a text into words or original text is cut up and worked Using ‘found’ material, then, is a phrases from another writer’s into another. way of making poems which seem work and rearranging to form In the example below, the original random but highly focused. The a poem lines and phrases from Vicki collage style can generate raw and Feaver’s ‘Judith’7 are shown in exciting work and is an exercise in To avoid accusations of plagiarism, shaping words and phrases into a when using words or phrases from italics: poetic form, taking them away from another writer’s work, the poet A good woman the original context, yet keeping a should provide attribution, unless it foot in the source text. Above all is impractical or inappropriate to do there is risk involved, a sense of not Watching his sleeping, wine- so. knowing how successful the flushed face These four techniques can be more resulting work will be, as if some my body flooded by a rush of kind of magic is in operation, as fluid, for example, the following poem was created by taking the last tenderness, a longing poet Sean Kiely says, as part of the lines of some of the poems from to lie sheltered and safe in his Poetry Book Society’s #POETIPS, Vicki Feaver’s 1994 collection The arms, ‘It’s alchemy......An attempt to turn Handless Maiden5, with only a small lead into gold’8. a vessel in safe harbour. amount of manipulation. First light, and he’s gone; lured After Vicki Feaver References and Further Reading to the glare The smell of arousal of the barley field; the dust and All poems quoted in full are the heat of harvest, writer’s own previously makes him wear slippers. unpublished work. It’s a butterfly to his bubbling the men breaking their backs to gather it all in 1. Poetry London Clore Prize 2019 - chest, judges report see: https:// like boiling mare’s milk before a break in the weather. poetrylondon.co.uk/competition/ with two fried eggs. And the heat – the merciless 2. For more on this, see: http:// www.foundpoetryreview.com/about-found- Blind drunk from politeness, heat poetry/ he unzipped his furry pelt. slipping from warm to balmy 3. Linda France - ‘You are her’ in You are It was like the hiss of a tide to unbearable before water Her (Arc Publications, 2010) withdrawing, could be 4. Peter Sansom - Writing Poems - pressed to his lips. Bloodaxe Poetry Handbooks: 2 dancing out on the edge (Bloodaxe Books, 1994) of another century. My husband pushing away the 5. Vicki Feaver - The Handless Maiden sponge (Cape Poetry, 1994) His wife gave birth I pressed to his burning head, 6. Chris Baldick - The Oxford Dictionary to their only child, batting away the balm I held of Literary Terms 4th edition (Oxford her curled fists University Press, 2015) to his blistered skin. swirling past an orange moon 7. Vicki Feaver - ‘Judith’ from The The harvest becoming his new Handless Maiden (Cape Poetry, 1994 like souls in limbo. wife, 8. Poetry Book Society - Sean Kiely’s He wanted to fit her into the sky the farm a family he must #POETIPS: https://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/ of untouched clouds blogs/news/poetips-2019-sean-kiely provide for - to prove that space exists, the mornings when I rolled in the to see if she’d sink or swim. ash of the fire 9
T urning Japanese 4: Tanka Dr Tim Gardiner those killed without ceremony we gather without ceremony and place in the bonfire There are deviations from the classic structure above, but it’s useful to write proficiently in this style before Equally moving is Masuda Misako’s experimenting. Many poets who tanka: struggle with the sparseness and brevity of haiku find that the extra each time I see a boy’s body I bring my two lines and greater scope for face close to see if he’s my boy as I travel emotional reflection are more suited in search to their style. A number of The atomic bomb literature includes publications accept tanka, including many more examples of tanka, the British Haiku Society’s Blithe which I have displayed in one line Spirit magazine and the Tanka due to the absence of obvious line Society of America’s flagship, breaks in the source poem. Many Ribbons. tanka were also written about Nagasaki, further underlining the Tanka can be combined with prose sparse form’s value for emotional to form tanka prose, a newly- poetry. emerging form which is similar to Tanka is a classical form of Japanese haibun. More on this in a future poetry which has existed for around Tanka traditionally consist of five article. I’ll leave you with a few 1400 years and came to be known as units (often treated as separate lines) waka for many centuries. In ancient hints to remember when writing usually with the following pattern times, it was a custom between two of on (often treated as the number of tanka. writers to exchange waka instead of syllables per line): Tim’s tanka tips: letters in prose, and the form became part of aristocratic culture. 5-7-5-7-7 1. No rhyme, although it can be Tanka were also commonly used subtly The 5-7-5 is called the kami-no- exchanged between lovers. The ku (upper phrase), and the 7-7 is 2. No title writing of poetry was a desired called the shimo-no-ku (lower pursuit of emperors, to display their phrase). 3. Mostly reflective, but can be learned nature. about any subject Tanka can be broken down into an Emperor Meiji (reigned 1868-1912) image/experience in lines one and 4. Humour must be light-touch was a noted writer of tanka two, followed by a pivot line for the 5. Usually written from first person (allegedly, he wrote 100,000 poems third which changes the tone. The perspective in his lifetime, roughly 4-5 a day), fourth and fifth lines provide the some of extremely high quality, such emotional, reflective response to the 6. Syllables are less important than as this famous one about clocks: upper phrase (lines 1-3). content and feeling in endless numbers pale blue confetti experience/image O all our clocks have been wound up ur Web Presence and then together smothering yellow experience/image they tick in perfect order primroses and this brings us much pleasure swept away by the pivot line Our website: wind suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk He was renowned for his wide the joy of a spring reflective response breadth of subject matter, even Our shop: wedding writing about the process of writing shop.suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk in this classic tanka: so quickly forgotten reflective response Facebook: being all alone facebook.com/SuffolkPoetrySociety and consoling our own heart From Tanka Journal Issue 1. for this one day Instagram: Emperor Hirohito, towards the end the time was spent quietly @suffolkpoetrysociety of his reign, speculated with some in the writing of poems melancholy about World War II: Twitter: Emperor Meiji’s tanka are significant @SuffolkPoetrySo in the history of the form because receiving celebration experience/image twitter.com/SuffolkPoetrySo they were written at a time when Japan was opening up to the world. from the people experience/image YouTube: Even more effective are tanka I’m happy but pivot line youtube.com/c/SuffolkpoetrysocietyOr- written from the survivors of the looking back reflective response gUk2015 Hiroshima atomic bombing in 1945. I’m ashamed reflective response Donations: Here is an extremely sparse, yet totalgiving.co.uk/donate/ powerful, poem from Sasaki Suffolk-Poetry-Society Yutaka: 10
L etter to the Editor I have had over 1,200 traditional form haiku published in a wide variety of publications, some Charmion Watson on the inside back cover of the Spring / Summer 2019 Twelve Rivers which contained both Can I respond to comments about definitely in the 'top' layer. I have humour and an unexpected final haiku expressed in all three of the won national haiku prizes and my line? Another haiku writer whose 'Turning Japanese’ articles? The illustrated seasonal series of 112 work I admire, Denise Margaret author states that 'these free-verse haiku - known as haikai - sold out Hargrave, has also experimented haiku allow a certain amount of and had excellent reviews in several with enjambment in her haikai freedom for the writer' which national poetry magazines. In series. suggests to me that traditional 'five- writing these haiku I have used seven-five syllables, three lines and a extended metaphor, assonance, None of the above possibilities seasonal word' haiku suffer from alliteration, personification, asked compromises the traditional haiku that lack of freedom. He also adds questions, deliberately repeated the form and all are published that it can be difficult to get such same words and incorporated examples. How, then, can this long- haiku 'published in many of the top references to art, music, other poets established haiku form deny the journals and magazines'. and religion. If this is starting to poet 'a certain amount of freedom'? read like an ego-trip CV then can I Richard Stewart That has not been my experience. add the traditional form haiku from R esponse to Letter suggests that there is an openness of structure in the country of origin. One US publication (Haiku Journal) writer should concentrate on the contrast in imagery and intended meaning. Without hinting at subtle I note that Richard Stewart asserts will only accept 5-7-5 poems. I think emotions haiku are no more than a that ‘traditional’ haiku written in 5- there is room for both approaches picture of nature. Richard Stewart 7-5 syllable format offer the writer and I have written many traditional writes excellent haiku with layers of plenty of freedom for expression. In haiku, too, one of which was meaning. One of my favourites of my workshops, I pose the question published in the East Anglian Daily his that has been widely published of haiku structure in a discussion Times in 2017: is: and encourage participants to choose their preferred form, either a day’s last sunlight Two peacocks fly up free-verse or 5-7-5. Given that many falls on Iken church tower – Spiralling in a bright sky Japanese publications accept haiku lone seawall shadow Covered by larksong. in free-verse or traditional form Whichever form is chosen, the Tim Gardiner I n Conversation with Beth Soule ‘The Ballad of Dan McGrew’, and he later introduced me to ‘The Rubáiyát’. At elocution lessons I a workshop, the research notes are kept too. I have always kept diaries varying from detailed accounts and had to learn poems by heart and, in reflections to a bare record of order to recite them meaningfully, appointments and events with my teacher emphasised that we had related ephemera stuck in, too – to understand them, and this was a tickets, flyers, grandchildrens’ wonderful training for my own later drawings. I have boxes full and I go writing. My suffragette back through these every now and grandmother encouraged us to then for ideas, or memory jogging. I think we could do anything but that did have a go at script-writing once we should always aim to support but the results were dismal! ourselves. So being practical, rather PJ Which poets have been than follow a dream to act and to Pam Job interviews Beth Soule as particularly important to you, Beth, write, I taught English and Drama, she retires from being Secretary to both as a reader and a writer, and the next best thing. the Crabbe Competition. could you say why they appeal? PJ I know how all-consuming BS From my teens I loved Philip PJ I’m interested in your early teaching can be so I wonder if you Larkin’s and Thomas Hardy’s poetry experiences, Beth. Where did did manage to keep writing while poetry. I liked that both manage a all this start for you? you were working? really tight control of rhyme and BS My mother claimed my first BS Poetry pushes itself through form while achieving an almost poem was ‘written’ when I was when events or situations prompt it, conversational tone. Ted Hughes about three – I scrawled on a surface so I always had, and have, a was (is) another favourite along newly painted by my father. When notebook on the go for poems, parts with Seamus Heaney but my earliest she remonstrated with me, I said of poems, ideas, and the occasional loves were probably Gerard Manley ‘You say nuffink/ an’ I say nuffink/ reflection or even a short story now Hopkins, Wilfred Owen, Dylan an’ he won’t know nuffink about it’, and then. Interesting facts, Thomas and T.S. Eliot. My parents but it was my father who recited information, anecdotes get recorded bought me an LP recording of Under poems to me at bedtime. for later, and now, when I get Milk Wood, and that would certainly I remember ‘The Highwayman’, started on a theme or I’m preparing accompany me to a desert island! 11
I used to sit in my bedroom under BS I love what the Society does and the eaves and listen to that amazing it felt right to help with the voice on my little Dansette record organisation of events – our player when I was supposed to be contributions to Poetry in writing essays on Goethe or Keats. I Aldeburgh and National Poetry Day think because of my Speech and for instance. I enjoy running Drama training, poems that perform workshops and have done so for well really attract me. Now the Waveney and Blyth Arts and for the poets who stir me are people like Suffolk Walking Festival. I was Alice Oswald, Emily Dickinson invited to read at Sudbury Poetry (why was she never on the school Café and Poetry Aloud this year, syllabus!), Mimi Khalvati, Finuala which I found exhilarating. Dowling, Sharon Olds, Blake PJ What about publication? Morrison, Liz Berry. My recent discoveries include Mary McCrae, BS I have had poems published Camille Ralph (an Emma Press under the name Elizabeth Soule in poet), and Yvonne Reddick. Twelve Rivers, in Write to be Counted (an anthology in support of PEN) PJ Well, that’s quite a gallop and I have a couple of poems through the poetry canon, and it’s scheduled for publication in The certainly a very recognisable path Dawntreader. I’ve also had work PJ You really seem to have grasped through the forest. I shall check out published online by Second Light, how technology can be harnessed to the last three poets you mention, Virtual Verse, Poetry24 and Norwich poetry in imaginative new ways. new to me. Interesting that the later Café Poets. Good luck with that, Beth, you’ve poets are mostly women, and you PJ What’s the next step, Beth, now left me breathless by the scope of are right – where were they in our you have stepped down from your ambitions now you have the school reading – not even Christina administering the Crabbe time, hopefully, to really let rip! Rosetti or Elizabeth Barrett Competition, which I imagine has Good luck in all your ventures! Browning to give us the idea that women wrote poetry too. I’m sure entailed an enormous amount of Dickinson is a fixture now, unseen work! thankfully. BS I have been trying to get a You have returned to your early pamphlet published for the last passion for poetry in retirement. couple of years but I’m not Textile Terrorists How did that come about? consistent enough in submitting to periodicals to get my name Overnight BS I joined Suffolk Poetry Society recognised. I’ll probably self- and was fortunate to have two the High Street has become publish next year if my current poems published in the Norwich efforts don’t bear fruit. I have a a shrine to grannies. Writers’ Circle 40th Anniversary sequence of poems about Boudicca Street furniture carefully Anthology. I then had the that has been performed twice, as lovingly confidence to join Bungay Poetry has ‘Wicked Women’, and both are swaddled Circle, a wonderfully encouraging about pamphlet length. In all in lurid squares of double knit. group. honesty, I like reading/performing Lamp-posts and bollards, PJ Do you belong to any poetry more than the hassle of trying to get published, and I like the process of telegraph poles and post boxes groups at the moment? researching and writing better still. purled and plain-ed, BS Yes, I belong to four poetry Because I have been running poetry cabled and fair-isled groups – Bungay Library Poets; workshops, a lot of my creative love-bombed what used to be the Bungay Poetry energy has gone in that direction, into a snugly smothering gesture Circle and is now Ivy Poets, another something to cut back on if I am small group that meets fortnightly, of elderly defiance. serious about submissions. I am and a group that grew out of courses We are not grey. working on my own website – my run by Helen Ivory in Norfolk. I husband is good at producing short We are not even silver. didn’t attend those courses myself videos so it may include a couple of We are a Joseph’s Dreamcoat but was invited to join the group ‘performances’. I do love that the of crimson and gentian, later. Over recent months I have internet is democratising poetry and jade, turquoise, cerise and olive, been so busy I’m not sure I would music; I’d like to have a go at have written very consistently if I cerulean blue Instagram. I’m fascinated by the hadn’t had these groups to spur me and vivid, vivid literal translation of ‘a poem’ as ’a on. thing made’. I love to make poetry flame. PJ You are now on the SPS artefacts and photograph them. Beth Soule committee so you are really delivering on your commitment to poetry in a very practical way, too. 12
S elected Poems The Editor thanks Antony Johae and James Knox Whittet for acting as referees for the selected poems. Note: All poems are submitted to the referees anonymously. Melting Snow Jackdaw Over time One morning in the station car-park you grow a narrative, She was approached by a jackdaw which irrigate and hoe Folding its granite wings a kind of order from the chaos, Spoke to her in the voice of an old man yielding harvests of familiar sentences, Calling her by name. weaving a screen round the wasteland, After that no one could ever word-wall against the wilderness. Persuade her she was mistaken. One day in early Spring I glimpse That things of this sort do not happen. a small bird foraging Now each day, when the cranked-up sun beneath the hedge, green shoots Tips sliding photons on the rooftops, revealed by melting snow, She is there at the casement window, properly dressed, and suddenly recall Asking the city, hunting clues. the awful day we cleared his flat, So far we know: the poem neatly copied out (I have it still) It was intended as a message: about the thing with feathers Something declarative at last. that perches in the soul The bright eye and the alien beak, - though not in his, The head racked left and stumbling, I reach out for the wall, Like with a wiring fault of some kind. clutch at sentences to break my fall. Jackdaws are of course well known Sheila Lockhart To imitate human speech. Alternatively: there was a message But it was not delivered. Only her name Before something took fright, A squabble of wings, and he was gone up. Urban Fox If only the clouds had not parted thus And swallowed him. Is a Quaker among us Lately, without meaning to, without intent, Passing soft-footed through our absences She has been scribbling over parts of the map, Testing the crumbling green corridors Deleting junctions and sidings Only betrayed by sudden snow. Smoothing the ambiguity of points and crossings. Richard Stewart She sheds her past like beech leaves And becomes A winter tree, comfortable by moonlight. It is autumn after all that really hurts. Neil Fleming 13
Under the Ancient Mulberry at Gainsborough’s House A Broader View of Shelling Beans What greetings to offer? I am a trespasser. Shelling broad beans is tedious Wait till I am spoken to. previous experience informs me. Time is set aside to bide in the unzipping – She has claimed the space, reached that gripping moment of discovery. an understanding with the house. How many in the pod? She is accommodated The odds are on four. and has pride of place. It’s rarely more if they’re fat. She leans on old elbows. Her branches But then the shock finger purple silences. to see the inner shell. A stately dowager of ancient lineage You couldn’t tell before you thought whose silk is privilege. you’d unzipped the lot. Her thistles set their bayonets, her nettle guards And what have you got? say keep out. Woodlice The inner layer. in hard hats Tricked by something trickier. clean out her spongy crevices. Pick it off with care She lets in the windrock since the innermost fruit is there in whorls and whispers. Her dark-staining fruits are soft, beautiful, vulnerable. an acquired taste. I’ve learned a great deal in the peeling. She is not interested in pleasing me. Been to the heart of things. Broadened my own understanding After all, she can remember that while shelling. Shakespeare Maybe got closer to God with each pod. planted her sister. Her roots weave through history. Lynne Nesbit I bow down before her to touch her split limbs, kiss her ring of carbuncles. By the River Alde Christina Buckton The sails of a distant wherry Butterfly Lodge swim through the reeds in which you walk That's my name for it. The sign says You are the foreground The Tavern House though it closed to drinkers in an autumn painting: long before the insects died. Only once a dark shadow approaches have I seen the door open: peeled paper, drag marks in the dust, a bumping sound The river is calm, uncaring that stopped as I reached the step. but persistent, nibbling at the path downtide to Iken No-one came, no-one comes. The dried corpses dangle on the nets, their colours evaporated A boardwalk bridges the marsh: over long summers. Yet the wing patterns skeleton trees are still perfect in black and white black against the sun as though drawn carefully in ink, the butterflies In the distance an island church in different attitudes as though pinned. tempts us to risk the water: On the day the door was open, an admiral offers us baptism almost stirred. Did it stretch a wing, or isolation: flutter an antenna? I tapped a key on the pane, behind us maltings rear up, like chinking glasses, rapped with a knuckle hide the mooring places. to evoke the drayman's horse, unable to conjure a butterfly sound. Tim Lenton Clive Eastwood 14
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