Saturday 3 December 2011

Christmas Themes: "The Oxen" by Thomas Hardy

I came across Thomas Hardy’s “The Oxen” today, and thought it was fittingly Christmas-themed now that we have entered December. His poem explores the Christmas superstition that oxen kneel, as they supposedly did in the Nativity, on Christmas Eve at midnight. He recounts the credulousness of his childhood: “Nor did it occur to one of us there/ To doubt they were kneeling then” (ll.7-8). This memory of trust is treated gently, reflected in the idealised portrayal of the “meek milk creatures” dwelling “in their strawy pen” (ll.5-6). Hardy’s poem draws on folk tradition, utilising dialect such as “barton” and coomb” (l.13), to create a sense of authenticity and to evoke the Oral tradition as embodied in the figure of the “Elder” (l.3), largely displaced by the Industrial Revolution.
          
          “The Oxen” was written in 1915, long after Hardy had moved away from his Christian faith. The use of the word “flock” (l.3) to describe the children gathered has strong religious connotations, and reflects the beliefs of his own childhood. By 1915, the First World War was occurring, destabilising the metanarrative of religion as explored by the contemporary modernists.

Hardy’s poem examines this loss of faith, and yet by the third stanza, he imagines somebody calling him back to see the oxen of his childhood. The poem expresses a want to believe; Hardy claims that he would “Go with him in the gloom” (l.15) of his disbelief and of society fractured by war “Hoping that it might be so” (l.l.16). However, the uncertainty of “might” reminds the reader of the credulousness of adult life, and of modern society, ending with a childhood superstition which remains just that.  

Here’s “The Oxen”:

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
A Elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in a hearthside ease.


We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.


So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel


In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I might go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

Wednesday 9 November 2011

Todd Swift's Eyewear Blog

I've written a guest review for Todd Swift's Eyewear blog on Anne Szumigalski's A Peeled Wand. You can view it here:  http://toddswift.blogspot.com/2011/11/guest-review-mayhew-on-szumigalski.html

Tuesday 8 November 2011

Hearing Voices: Volume 4

Hearing Voices is a literary magazine, published by Crystal Clear Creators. Although only three issues were funded by “Awards for All,” the magazine has fantastically made it to the fourth issue. I am fortunate to have one of my own poems included, titled “Someone Else’s Photograph,” taken from my forthcoming pamphlet of the same name, and I’d like to mention some of the pieces from the magazine which caught my attention.
         
           The magazine opens with Todd Swift’s poem, “Presentation.” I enjoyed the internal conflict of the poem, particularly between the voiced and unspoken: “Let’s have a minute break/of silence to jaw-jaw/mulling it over...” I thought that the sense of having missed something through the cyclical motions of the poem was well placed at the end, “listen to those songbirds/ that last week we’d like to sing,” as well as providing a striking entry into the other voices in the magazine. 
          
          “Finding Time,” by Charles Lauder Jr presents an intimate glimpse into Albert Einstein’s evening. Einstein’s theories thread gently through the poem like his wife Mileva’s sewing. The lack of punctuation gives the piece a feeling of continuity, and emphasises how “time is felt differently in both rooms.” The scientific is also central in Jonathan Taylor’s “Neutron Star.” In the universe of this poem, the speaker has “compacted the dead star of you,” the claustrophobic equations culminating in the couplet, “its protons, electrons crushed to neutrons/ like anything else which comes too close.” I thought the way that the relationship of the poem is revealed through distance was particularly effective.

I enjoyed the concise images in Chris Hardy’s “We are Here.” The names cut into the “soft red brick” offer a point of permanence, only to be “washed away like a beach of stars/ beneath the Sun’s tide.” I also thought the imagery was strong in Helen Ivory’s “In Bluebeard’s Garden.” I have just re-read Angela Carter’s short story, “The Bloody Chamber,” and I enjoyed Helen Ivory’s alternative retelling of the Bluebeard fairytale. In her poem, Bluebeard “plants” his victims in order, “from a distance/ they are trees holding hands.” I thought this image was both tender and disturbing, the murdered women grouping into groves. This sense of transformation also appears in “A Witch’s Death: 11 March 1618,” by Sue Mackrell. The poem is haunted by the murdered witch’s familiar who shifts form from a cat, to a hare, to an owl. I thought that the changes worked effectively by focusing on the physical, “...as a spasm/pushes out pinion feathers/he becomes/owl.”    

          “All That Remains,” by Hilary Spiers is a framed narrative, providing a glimpse into a woman’s memories of young love. I thought the shift in time, triggered by viewing a painting, worked well. I enjoyed the description of the seaside landscape, especially the “wind and sunburnt lips,” which conjured images of the illicit affair with few words. The unknowing tenderness of the final lines was striking. Memory is also used effectively in “The Summer of Controlled Experiments,” by Maria Taylor. I liked the humour of the experimenter vowing never to wear her “unflattering” dress again. The poem presents a romance, with echoes of Romeo and Juliet, “this is no holy kiss,” but far less idealised, “discussing supper, no candle lights.” 

I loved the rhythm of Deborah Tyler-Bennett’s “Mr F’s Lament,” beginning with the tumbling, “I know this place where dark’s a spreading space/ between fingers,” opening a space for the poem’s glimpses of prostitution. It has inspired me to read Harris’ Lists on which the poem is based. There are many other brilliant poems I haven’t mentioned in Hearing Voices, and I definitely recommend purchasing a copy. It only costs £3, or £2.50 for members. Purchasing details are on the Crystal Clear Creator’s website:  http://www.crystalclearcreators.org.uk/ 
           

Sunday 30 October 2011

Cannibal Compositions


On Tuesday, I watched students from the University of Northampton perform a film score which they had composed at the Royal and Derngate Theatre. They worked with songwriter Chris T-T, producing pieces for a medley of film clips by the French Director Claire Denis. I thought the students’ interpretation of the scene from Denis’ 2001 film “Trouble Every Day,” was particularly effective. Their frantic, lurching composition reflected the growing horror of the scene; the boy breaking through the boarded-up bedroom doorway, and falling prey to the object of his lust’s libidinous cannibalism. See the video of their performance here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HNSytwZ8mQ

Monday 24 October 2011

The Wrecking Light - Robin Robertson


In “The Wood of Lost Things,” the narrator of Robin Robertson’s poem remarks, “I have found the place I wasn’t meant to find.” I have just re-read The Wrecking Light, and I am struck by how this realisation haunts the collection: the exploration of the hinges between the natural world and the human world, memory and clarity, flux and static. Often, these places are permeated with threat and grief. Beginning with a mythical remembrance of childhood walks, listening out “for gypsies, timber wolves,” “The Wood of Lost Things,” transforms into a place of fertility and death, “the shallow creek, churning/ its red and silver secrets:/ failed salmon, bearded with barbs.” Here, sibilance creates an image of rushing water without being overpowering. The sound echoing through “creek” and “secret” maintain the forward momentum of the poem, driving the narrator towards “a life’s worth of women in the forest corridor,” and nostalgia over childhood debris, “my school cap/ and satchel.” Approaching the realisation of mortality and the brevity of existence, he watches at the heart of the wood as “the dead unbury themselves.” The uneasy juxtaposition between the living and the dead which runs throughout the collection is fully recognised in this poem, at the point at which the narrator meets his own death.
           
          This seeking of what has been lost is a central concern of the collection; in “Landfall,” the poet examines fractured fishboxes, mourning that they now only “hold distance, nothing but the names/ of the places I came from, years ago.” Robertson's Scottish origins are a strong influence on his dialect and landscapes. Despite the sharp observation of the natural world, these poems are not only nature poems. Rather they examine the bitter-sweet grief of memory which haunts all human observation. This is evident in the opening poem “Album,” in which the narrator acknowledges his absence in photographs, until he points out that “a ghost is there; the ghost gets up to go.”
          
          A sense of loneliness resonates throughout The Wrecking Light. The solitary figure is often reminded of their own transience; “Tinsel,” instructs you to “tune to the frequency of the wood,” until in the silence, “you can hear the sound of your body, breaking down.” Similarly, human frailty is contrasted against the endurance of the natural world in “During Dinner.” Here, superstitions about Hawthorn resonate through nicknames of the plant: “but Ladies’ Meat is another name/ because it smells of sex and it smells of death.”
            
          Robertson’s 2006 collection was entitled Swithering, a Scots word of indecision and change. Similar themes bleed into The Wrecking Light. Death too is presented as transformation.  “At Roane Head” reveals the story of a woman and her “beglamoured” sons, born blind and web footed. Her new husband decries their witchery and kills them. The sense of metamorphosis embodied in her sons mirrors the change and flux of the ocean which surrounds them. The ebb and flow of the sea is echoed through the syntax of the poem and the changing men. When the son’s father returns, he recounts how she “gave me/ her husband’s head in a wooden box. Then she gave me the sealskin, and I put it on.” This transformation into the mythical Selkie bridges the division between the human and natural world, transcending the fate of the sons. 
          
          The Wrecking Light revels in the boundaries of existence, juxtaposing the domestic and strange. Memory ghosts the landscapes of the poems, and powerful moments of clarity fade in and out of the dreamlike text. The transient atmosphere is continued into the concluding lines: “Look at the snow/ I said, to whoever might be near, I’m cold/ would you hold me. Hold me. Let me go.”  

Robertson, Robin. The Wrecking Light. London: Picador, 2010.