KEN BELL reads a useful analysis of what led to the 2016 vote
Brexitland, Maria Sobelewska and Robert Ford, Cambridge University Press, 2020, 408 pages, £11.99
Porfirio Díaz, the man who dominated Mexican politics for a generation until his downfall in 1910, once remarked that nothing ever happened in his country until it happened. What he meant was that there has always been an enormous time lag between cause and effect in Mexican politics, and in Brexitland, Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford show that the same is true of Britain.
In doing so, they have also managed to demolish the myth that is now an article of faith in Guardian-reading circles that nobody was bothered about the EU until a couple of years before the 2016 referendum. What the authors demonstrate rather well is that many issues that were of importance to the population were suppressed by the main political parties from just after the Second World War. Viewed in that light, Brexit is about more than just leaving the European Union; it is shorthand for a lot of long-standing factors that have led to a new political division in Britain.
Immigration, of course, is the most important factor and for that reason several chapters of Brexitland are devoted to it. Starting in 1948 when the great and the good created a nationality act which allowed Commonwealth citizens to settle freely in the UK, the aim was to tie the fully independent white Commonwealth states to their mother country and to create an Anglosphere long before that word was even coined. What nobody realised was that New Commonwealth people would take advantage of this liberalism, even though since most of their countries were not independent at that time they did not need this legislation. As Sobolewska and Ford point out, both parties supported immigration even when it became obvious that many of their traditional supporters did not.
The opposition to that policy, begun in places like Smethwick in 1964, continuing on via Enoch Powell’s ‘rivers of blood’ speech in 1968 and culminating, possibly, with Margaret Thatcher’s 1978 comment about people being afraid of being ‘swamped’ by new Commonwealth immigrants certainly helped the Tories acquire a reputation in the public mind as the party that was sounder on immigration than Labour. However, as Edward Heath proved when he decided to allow around 30,000 Ugandan Asians to enter the country, that soundness was often more in word than deed. As the country moved into the 21st century, with Labour allowing a major influx of eastern Europeans – many of them settling in areas that had no previous experience of immigration –people woke up to the fact that neither party was prepared to speak for them on that issue, so they began to support Nigel Farage and UKIP.
Other factors were in play, such as the growth of the university sector, which led to many inner city areas becoming home to students and graduates, who often made common cause with ethnic minorities to create a new voting core for Labour. That new core strategy was based on the gamble that the party’s traditional, collectivist, industrial working class voters would stay onside as they had nowhere else to go, but UKIP proved the flaw in that argument. As the authors also make clear, the new core was not as tribally loyal as the old one had been and was quite willing to dump Labour if they disagreed with particular party policies.
Out of all this churning, new identities were created, and a new political division was created. The referendum campaign, with its binary choice, forced people to choose one side or the other – and having made their choice they often found that they had more in common with people on their side of the referendum debate than they had with the parties with which they had once identified. Leading on from that, as the authors do, we can see that the referendum campaign made people aware of this new division, as well as helping to shape it. At the end of it, Britain had “two new tribes aware of who they were, what they stood for and what they opposed”.
A good example of this in action is not included in Brexitland, probably because it happened too late for inclusion. During the European election campaign in 2019, Featherstone Working Men’s Club (near Wakefield) played host to a Brexit Party rally. One of the main speakers was Anne Widdecombe, arguably one of Thatcher’s more ghoulish ministers, who was nicknamed “Doris Karloff” back in the day. The club’s members, men who had stood on the picket lines during the miners’ strike of 1984/85, cheered her to the echo, to the utter disgust of the Guardian.
The 2016 referendum was very much the victory of one identity, which was the geographically rooted, socially conservative, but often economically radical section of the population against the Metropolitan, white-collar graduate element. Although the authors do not quote Theresa May, she may have had a point when she spoke about people from somewhere clashing with people from nowhere. Brexitland is a heavyweight, academic text that should be essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand this new political alignment in Britain and how it came about.
KEN BELL is a Mancunian who fetched up in Mexico, and who now lives in shabby retirement in Edinburgh. He writes as a hobby in his twilight years; a fuller biography can be found at his Amazon author page
Winds of Change: Britain in the Early Sixties, Peter Hennessy, Allen Lane, 2019, 603pp
STEPHEN GARNETT is reminded of a time when Britain faced challenges with hope
It was on 3rd February 1960 that UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan spoke to the South African parliament in Cape Town, famously warning them that “The wind of change is blowing through this continent”. Having led the Conservative Party to election victory in 1957 following the resignation of Anthony Eden over the Suez crisis, Macmillan – 1st Earl of Stockton and a veteran of the Somme – had been victorious again in October 1959, increasing the government’s majority to 100 seats. The party had campaigned under the slogan “Life’s better under the Conservatives”, citing a strong economy, low unemployment and a rising standard of living.
However, even as he made that speech, just a few months after the country had voted for him, the popularity of Macmillan and his government was already on the wane, with an increasing number of people in the country questioning whether a 66-year-old, tweed-suited Edwardian who packed his Cabinet with fellow Old Etonians was the right man to lead Britain into the 1960s. At the same time, developments in the UK, Europe and the USA were setting daunting challenges that would force Macmillan to brace himself against winds of change much closer to home. Many of these would be storm-force, rattling venerable national institutions, uprooting many of the old certainties of post-war Britain, and blowing and tossing the ship of state in directions that he was powerless to control.
Tony Benn inspects ‘the white heat of technology’
In this third part of his trilogy, which follows Never Again: Britain 1945-51 (1992) and Having it so Good: Britain in the Fifties (2006), Peter Hennessy paints a vivid picture of the country, its government and people at a time of great social change. At the centre of it all is Harold Macmillan and his attempts, through what he called his ‘Grand Design’, to reposition the country so it could prosper economically and continue to play an important part in world affairs. In terms of GNP Britain lagged far behind Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands, and Macmillan’s top priority was to take the country into the EEC (then comprising six member states) with all the benefits for trade that joining the increasingly influential bloc offered. He also viewed a strong EEC – with Britain a key player – as an essential bulwark against the expansion of communism, then regarded as a threat both economically and militarily. The author allows us to eavesdrop on the Cabinet meetings, and subsequent Parliamentary debate, in which Macmillan put his case for opening negotiations, with much discussion about the effect membership would have on British agriculture, on our relations with the Commonwealth and on national sovereignty.
Of course, it wasn’t only the Cabinet, Conservative Party, Opposition and, ultimately, 50 million Britons that Macmillan had to convince: the great barrier to UK membership was the resident of the Elysée Palace. French president Charles de Gaulle opposed British membership for a variety of reasons. Our history as a maritime nation with strong trading links to the Commonwealth and our very different agricultural sector made us incompatible and a potentially destabilising and divisive influence. He did not want to risk France losing her dominant position in the bloc. He was suspicious of the effect our close relationship with the United States would have on our commitment to the European ‘project’ – and he felt some personal resentment at what he perceived as France’s exclusion from the Anglo-American nuclear partnership. The accounts of their meetings and the verbal duelling that took place at the Chateau de Rambouillet, the President’s summer residence in the le-de-France, and at Birch Grove, the Macmillan family home in Sussex, are fascinating.
As expected, de Gaulle vetoed the UK’s application for membership, in January 1963, but the shift towards Europe and away from the Empire had been set in train and was an historic moment. The speed and scope of the retreat was also astonishing, with 26 countries achieving independence, within the Commonwealth, in just ten years.
London’s Post Office Tower, opened 1964
When it came to domestic policy, Macmillan spelt out what needed to be done: increase productivity, eliminate restrictive practices, take advantage of new technology and bring Britain up to date in almost every sphere of life. Macmillan was a believer in a planned economy, a philosophy which towards the end of his life brought him into conflict with Margaret Thatcher, and in September 1961 he launched the National Economic Development Council (NEDC) to bring together management, trades union and government. This attempt at co-operation was the idea of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Selwyn Lloyd. Unfortunately, so too was the deeply unpopular ‘pay pause’, which restricted wage increases to between 2% and 2.5% and was an important cause of the shock defeat suffered by the Conservatives at the Orpington by-election on 14th March 1962. A swing of 30% saw the Liberal Party take the formerly safe Tory seat by a majority of more than 7,000. Four months later, in what became known as the ‘Night of the Long Knives’, Macmillan sacked a third of his Cabinet, with Reginald Maudling replacing Lloyd at the Treasury.
This undercurrent of discontent was reflected in the satire boom, with writers, actors and comedians using humour to poke fun at those in authority. On television, That Was The Week That Was, presented by David Frost, produced by Ned Sherrin and first broadcast in November 1962, broke new ground by making fun of political figures. It had great appeal for the increasing number of educated, idealistic young people in Britain who had benefited from the opportunities offered by the Education Act of 1944. Four bright Oxbridge graduates (Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett and Dudley Moore) were also creating a stir on stage, first in Edinburgh then in London with their satirical revue Beyond the Fringe. This included Peter Cook’s brilliant parody of Macmillan, considered quite shocking at the time. The ageing Macmillan was often compared unfavourably with JFK, whom he met for the first time in March 1961.
In the opening chapter of the book, Peter Hennessy describes his teenage years in the Cotswold village of Nympsfield. Although in many ways life in the rural community had not changed much from how it was before the war, even people living in a remote settlement such as that (during the winter of 1962-63 the village was cut off for two weeks under eight feet of snow) could not escape the ever-present threat posed by a more permanent chill: the Cold War. The 350 souls who called Nympsfield home would have been astonished to learn that just 25 miles away, near Corsham in Wiltshire, was a top-secret bunker that was to be used by the government and up to 4,000 officials in the event of a Third World War. Codenamed ‘Stockwell’, it was 90 feet underground and in 60 miles of tunnels comprised 800 offices, dormitories, kitchens, signals areas, sick bays etc.
For those who didn’t live through the period it must be difficult to understand how the threat of nuclear war was always there in the background, its likelihood rising and falling and rising again in tune with events. It certainly exercised the minds of those in government, as the preparation of that huge nuclear bunker demonstrates. But if the existence of that 240-acre site would have shocked and alarmed the British people, the way in which the Prime Minister was to be informed of a likely nuclear attack if at that moment he were travelling in his car would probably have provoked derision – or disbelief. The plan was to use the AA radio link to inform the PM’s driver, who would then take Macmillan to a phone box so that he could call Downing Street. This led to some concern about what would happen if the Prime Minister or his driver didn’t have the four pennies needed to make such a call, and whether it would be sensible to take out AA membership as drivers would then be given keys and access to AA boxes across the country.
The ability of the Prime Minister’s driver to locate a phone box was never put to the test, but there were numerous flashpoints between East and West in the early Sixties: the ongoing crisis in Berlin (the wall was erected in August 1961), the unmasking of spies on both sides of the Iron Curtain, the belligerence of Khrushchev in Moscow and the fear of a Soviet pre-emptive strike or sudden military advance into Western Europe. But it was the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, made even more dangerous by the shooting down of a US spy plane flying over the island, that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. As tensions rose, the author, then a schoolboy, set off with some friends for a walk in the Black Mountains, “thinking that if the world was going to end, this was as beautiful a spot as any in which to finish one’s part in it”.
So much happened during 1963 it is unsurprising that the author devotes a whole chapter to those 12 months, and many of the events and people involved continue to colour our view of the early part of the decade. The year began badly, with De Gaulle vetoing the UK’s application for EEC membership, causing Macmillan to write in his diary: “All our policies at home and abroad are in ruins”. A few days later, Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the Labour Party, died suddenly; following a ballot he was replaced by Harold Wilson. In March, the Beeching Report, The Reshaping of British Railways, was published. One of the great delights of this book is the way that the author, as well as given us facts and background information, occasionally inserts personal anecdotes. Steam railway enthusiasts will enjoy his memory of an encounter he had at Tebay station in the Lake District in August 1961.
The biggest story of the year was what became known as the “Profumo affair”, and Peter Hennessy expertly – and often humorously – analyses all the ins and outs, taking us back to that unforgettable summer when, stoked by hostility to the government, the national newspapers made household names of figures such as Stephen Ward, Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies. The public couldn’t get enough of what the author describes as a “heady cocktail of sex, secrecy and scandal” and rumours swirled about other Establishment figures being up to no good. When Lord Denning’s eagerly anticipated report was published in September people queued to purchase copies, and although it wasn’t overly critical of Macmillan, the whole business, as well as his poor health, weakened him, precipitating his resignation a month later. Amidst all the scandal in high places, what was possibly Macmillan’s greatest achievement was overlooked: the vital contribution he made to a Partial Test Ban Treaty which prohibited future atmospheric testing by the nuclear powers.
The author gazes far and wide – the Great Train Robbery, domestic nuclear power, Maudling’s “dash for growth” – and is especially entertaining in dealing with the political intrigue that eventually led to the appointment of Sir Alec Douglas-Home as Macmillan’s successor. It is good to be reminded of some of the key political figures of the time: Lord Hailsham, Rab Butler, Iain Macleod, Enoch Powell and others. It is easy to see why Harold Wilson’ famous “white heat” of technology vision, linking science and socialism, had such wide appeal, resulting in a Labour victory in the General Election of October 1964. To read the account of the lively campaign that preceded the vote is to realise what a powerful speaker Wilson was (“We are living in the jet-age but we are governed by an Edwardian establishment mentality”).
The Beatles, package holidays, Telstar, CND, Doctor Who… it was a lively, colourful, exciting period on so many levels. Those of us who lived through it should be grateful to Peter Hennessy for reminding us how lucky we were.
HELEN C. NEAVE recalls how she swapped scalpels for spades
Ten years ago, I put down my scalpel and took off my scrubs, hat and mask for the last time. After eight years as a consultant surgeon I was turning a corner I hadn’t really seen coming. Now at work, I’m more likely to be dressed in wellies and waterproofs and clutching a spade.
My surgical training was arduous and longer for me than for many colleagues, as I had completed it part time to allow me to look after my three children. I had also studied for a Masters in Postgraduate Education, and it was into the realms of quality management of postgraduate education that my first ‘redirection’ took me. My career took me to a senior leadership role in the NHS, overseeing education and training at a time when all parts of the NHS were undergoing restructure after restructure. After four years, it became impossible for me to do my job to the standard I wished to do it, so I took a deep breath, and left.
At around the time I saw my last patient, my husband and I had been getting increasingly concerned about the destruction we were witnessing in the natural world. So we decided to take action! We bought 26 acres of rough grazing land in Yorkshire with the intention of giving it back to Nature. Bounded on three sides by the river Nidd, it was prone to flooding, so wasn’t attractive to the arable farming neighbours – but it was perfect for us.
We left our land for a year or so to get to know it a little better – but in honesty, it was not much more than grass. So we planted 20,000 trees, with support from the Woodland Trust- and the trees brought magic! As soon as the trees had their first flowers, fruits and seeds, they attracted insects and birds, and then mammals and birds of prey arrived. We suddenly had a full ecosystem. When the young woodland reached six or seven years old, we were so thrilled that we decided to do it again, but bigger.
We decided to buy some more land, and continue giving space back to nature, but this time make it a business. When we saw Bank Woods, near Summerbridge in the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, we knew we had found the perfect piece of land. It is 110 acres, with ancient woodland, unimproved upland, swift-flowing brooks and hay meadows. Once again, the first job was to get to know the land better, and we discovered that the land had been ‘benignly’ farmed. Seen on Google maps, it was much yellower than the chemically-induced bright green of neighbouring farms. This was ideal for our intentions. The ancient woodlands were wonderful, but with signs of over-browsing by deer, and fragmented into four blocks separated by fields. They contained an amazing abundance of wild flowers, including many ancient woodland indicator species.
We thought carefully, and sought advice about the best way to manage the land for biodiversity. We knew we wanted to plant more trees – but where should they go? We discovered that ‘red-listed’ ground nesting birds, lapwing and curlew were nesting in our upland grassy areas. We knew they would leave if there were too many trees from which predators could swoop on their eggs and chicks. We also appreciated that linking the ancient woodlands back together would provide more cover for the many woodland birds, foxes and hares we had seen. So, we created a much bigger continuous area for woodland wildlife. We had to invest in a deer fence to keep those cute but destructive animals out of our new woodland planting, and the ancient woodlands. The upper parts of the land, about 50 acres, we have left for (relatively small-scale) rewilding. We have a small herd of Belted Galloway cattle, and a recent addition of six Exmoor ponies – who, all together, are our conservation grazing team. Their style of grazing and disturbance of the soil has already allowed the return of many wildflowers not seen on that area while it was heavily grazed by sheep. Earlier this year, much to our delight, Bank Woods was designated as a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation.
We are painfully aware that not only is our planet facing a climate crisis, caused by human action, but we are also living through the sixth mass extinction, with 60% of wildlife lost since 1970. We therefore see it as a moral imperative to do everything in our power to address these two linked and devastating planetary emergencies. We have taken many smaller actions to create habitat and increase biodiversity. We have dug ponds, made leaky dams, put up bird boxes, and restored wildflower hay meadows.
All these actions cost money, and so we have established various income streams, all deeply connected to nature. We have an eco-friendly holiday cottage within our nature reserve, and allow guests exclusive access to our woodlands and meadows. We sell eco-friendly, plastic-free products. We offer tree dedications, and dedications of ponds and wildflower meadows. We also offer carbon offsetting through tree planting for individuals and businesses, including a popular subscription schemes. We have many business partners for whom we plant trees, and this has proved a wonderful way for them to attract new business, by sharing their ‘green’ credentials. Recently, we have formed a partnership with a company which has developed a method to combine the ashes from a cremation with growing compost, in which a tree can be planted. (Cremation ashes can otherwise be toxic.) The memorial tree can then be planted in our new memorial woodland.
In parallel to this rewilding of the land, I have experienced a personal rewilding! As a surgeon, my world was one of precision, urgent timescales, accurate planning, and predictable, managed outcomes. I gave one patient at a time my undivided attention. As a senior NHS clinical manager, I discovered that managing whole departments was much less precise than dealing with one patient at a time; timescales were slower, and outcomes more difficult to define. I now often have wind-swept hair with twigs in it, unlike the theatre cap or neat haircut demanded by my previous two careers. My work attire is wellies and waterproofs, instead of heels and a neat suit.
I have become accustomed to very long timescales. During my career as a surgeon, we sometimes had to rush a patient to theatre within minutes; in complete contrast, the timescales for my work now might be measured in years. If for some reason we don’t manage to visit one of our new woodlands for a few weeks, we know that no harm will come to it; nature will just get on with doing its thing; no theatre list, spread sheets or project plans required. We have had to let go of the feeling of needing to be in control; ultimately, Nature is in charge. The most obvious signs of this come with the weather – storms can easily fell the mature trees within our ancient woodlands, and this is something we embrace! A little bit of chaos and destruction brings about new life – a fallen tree will become a new home for countless invertebrates, and light newly let through to the woodland floor will encourage wildflowers.
I have never lost the urge to help people, and I know our ancient woodlands and meadows can do wonders for wellbeing. I have completed training to become a ‘Natural Mindfulness Guide’, and we will soon be starting a programme of workshops in which people come together in a group facilitated by a mental health counsellor to learn conservation and rural craft activities, for the benefit of their mental health.
The trajectory of my career reveals a steady growth in spheres of influence. As a consultant surgeon, I could obviously operate on only one patient at a time. As a senior NHS manager, my influence was much greater – by improving the training across my region I could improve the quality of care for thousands of patients. And now my work has an even bigger aim – trying to save the planet! I feel hugely fortunate to be able to help nature in this way. It feels like a homecoming – and the most important operation I have ever done.
HELEN C. NEAVE is a former surgeon and senior NHS manager, and co-founder of Make It Wild. www.makeitwild.co.uk Facebook: @makeitwilder Instagram: @makitwilduk Twitter: @makeitwilder
Nicholas J. Higham, Yale University Press, 2018, 380 pages
LIAM GUILAR marvels to see a sledgehammer being wielded against castles-in-the-air
People in Britain have been telling stories about an ‘Arthur’ since at least the 9th century, possibly earlier. In the Middle Ages, those stories include some of the finest literature ever produced in Europe, culminating in Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th century masterpiece.
Scholarly arguments over the existence of an historical King Arthur, a single figure as point of origin for these stories, are more recent. In the mid-20th century, the idea that there was an historical figure gained ground, but the high-water mark of scholarly attempts to argue the case had passed by the 1980s. Leslie Alcock (Arthur’s Britain) and John Morris (The Age of Arthur) were both respected academics, but both their books, especially the latter’s, received the kind of academic reception about which scholars must have nightmares.[i].
Despite repeated attempts by experts in the field of ‘post-Roman’ or ‘Dark Age’ or ‘Early Medieval’ British history to discredit the various candidates, and despite the lack of evidence to support any of them, the arguments rumble on. Nicholas Higham’s new book is an attempt to demolish the idea that there is an identifiable historical figure who is the real King Arthur. It seems doomed to fail. He is not the first scholar to announce that the historical Arthur did not exist. It’s unlikely he’ll be the last.
In 1977, David Dumville, one of the leading authorities on the sources for early medieval history in Britain, concluded an article that discussed the Welsh evidence for an historical King Arthur:
The fact of the matter is there is no historical evidence about Arthur; we must reject him from our histories and, above all, from the titles of our books
In 2013 an equally exasperated Guy Halsall, an expert on early medieval history, wrote a book offering “a corrective to the shelves of pseudo-Historical ‘Arthurian’ nonsense available in practically every bookshop in Britain”, concluding,
No sane scholar will now argue that there is definitely a “King Arthur” figure in 5th– or 6th-century history about whom anything solid can be said
In 2018 Nicholas Higham, who specialises in what used to be called ‘The Dark Ages’, produced this encyclopedic refutation of the varied and various arguments for an ‘Historical King Arthur’. He lines up the contenders – the Sarmatian Arthur, the Greek Arthur, the list of nominees with names sounding like Arthur or those whose names sound nothing at all like Arthur – the ‘if this, then this, and then that means we’ve found Arthur’ arguments, and one by one he knocks them over.
Higham’s conclusion is that
[…] we can now agree to discount King Arthur as a ‘real’ figure of the past, leaving him and his deeds to the ‘smoke’ and ‘highland mist’ of make-believe and wishful thinking; it is there that he properly belongs
I distrust that first person plural which Higham is fond of using. Reading the book is like being bludgeoned, very thoroughly and very carefully. It should settle the argument. But it won’t. Even the blurb on the cover hedges its bets. Max Adams, identified as the author of In the Land of the Giants, is quoted: “Riveting…brings the historical Arthur to what may be his last decisive battle”. “May be” because, given the nature of the evidence, there is never going to be a final, irrefutable argument.
Candidates for the historical King Arthur have their partisans. But if the experts have become more wary, the field is still held by enthusiasts who fly on a combination of ill-informed speculation and wishful thinking. They simply cherry pick ‘information’ and don’t bother with the usual rules of evidence, source analysis, linguistics or logic. If anyone is arrogant enough to believe that lacking the skills and knowledge required to move through the tangle of evidence puts them in a position to argue with people who have spent their professional careers studying that evidence, then nothing is going to dent their self-confidence.
The question of Arthur’s existence hinges on a very limited number of sources, and the combination of skill, knowledge and training required to assess the reliability of those sources is very rare. There is a world of difference between ‘looking stuff up’ on the internet, or in the library, or in the museum, and doing research. The failure to understand that difference, which is becoming increasingly widespread, lies at the heart of the ‘Arthur Was Real and Eureka I’ve Found Him’ phenomenon.
A scene from John Boorman’s Excalibur
The scarcity and unreliability of the surviving written sources can be hard to grasp. Imagine if 1,000 years from now, you are tasked with writing the history of the Trump Presidency. Your only piece of evidence is a copy of a copy of something from a newspaper. The copy was made in 2320. There’s a name attached to it, but you know nothing else about the journalist. You don’t know which newspaper the text is from, nor do you know if it is from an editorial, factual report, opinion piece or work of fiction. You have no way of checking anything in it against other sources.
And if you think that reconstructing four years from such a fragment sounds difficult if not impossible, then spare a thought for the historian of the 5th and 6th centuries in Britain, who can put the only surviving piece of contemporary insular ‘narrative history’ on a couple of PowerPoint slides. That oldest surviving narrative, written by Gildas within living memory of the battle of, or at, Badon, does not mention anyone called Arthur[ii].
All the other surviving sources were written much later and they all need to be handled with care. The problem with the sources can be demonstrated with one example,
What may be Arthur’s earliest appearance in an insular text comes in a collection of eulogistic stanzas of early Welsh poetry collectively known as y Gododdin
While often referred to as ‘a poem’, Y Gododdin, as Higham rightly states, is a collection of verses commemorating a Northern British raid on the Saxons at Catreath. The raid was a complete disaster and the verses celebrate the men who died. The problem is that Y Gododdin only survives in a 13th century manuscript. The work is generally credited to Aneirin, who is said to have lived in the 6th century. It’s worth pausing to remember that the distance in time between ourselves and Shakespeare is less than this. How much of the material, if any, in the manuscript dates back to the 6th century is a matter of scholarly controversy. Obviously, the date of the ‘Arthur reference’ makes a huge difference to the value of that reference.
Higham is willing to accept an early date, and he quotes the relevant stanza in English. The last four lines read:
He used to bring black crows down in front of the wall
Of the fortified town – though he was not Arthur –
among men mighty in deeds
in front of the barrier of alder wood-Gorddur
Gorddur is the warrior’s name, and he is being praised for his ferocious deeds in battle, although ‘he was not Arthur’. That’s all there is.
The enthusiast says it’s obvious that here we have a reference to a famous Arthur, and this proves stories of King Arthur must have been circulating (off-stage) when this verse was written.
The sceptic asks for evidence that independent stories circulated about a real character called Arthur at the time this verse was composed. The enthusiast points to the poem. Aneirin must have been able to rely on his audience to know the stories, in order for the allusion to work. The allusion proves the existence of the stories and the stories guarantee the validity of the allusion. Dizzying?
Nor does it tell us anything about Arthur except it was a famous name. It doesn’t help us to identify an Arthur, or tell us when or where or if he lived.
A literate person with the necessary patience can follow Higham’s summary of the complicated problems of dating Y Gododdin in general, and of that line in particular. But there are very few people who can read the manuscript, or its facsimile, and the number of people on the planet who have the expertise to negotiate the dating arguments and evaluate the evidence for themselves probably wouldn’t fill a coach for a day trip to Catreath.
And therein lies the real problem. Early British, post-Roman history, is a highly specialized field, but Higham, as did Guy Halsall before him, bemoans the fact that in many ways the specialists have withdrawn from the debate:
Today most specialists distance themselves from the whole issue of Arthur’s reality, citing insufficient evidence to be able to judge his place in history and declaring themselves agnostic on the matter. But their silence leaves the history-reading public with insufficient guidance to the competing claims and without the specialist knowledge to judge between them effectively, for these are highly complex issues
Higham is critical of ‘agnostic’ scholars who refuse to be drawn into a conclusion on the subject. Ironically, Max Harris, whose comment is quoted on the cover of Higham’s book (see above), wrote, in his introduction to In the Land of the Giants:
And then there is Arthur. Historical references to this legendary Romano-British warlord are very few: a list of 12 battles; a great victory recorded at a place called Badon (perhaps Bath in Somerset) a death notice, a possible mention in a battle poem [iii]
This short reference to King Arthur continues with a classic piece of professional ‘agnosticism’: ‘Arthur may be, as many historians have argued, an irrelevance, a distraction’ (p.14). Adams also includes the ‘dates’ from the Annales Cambriae for the battles of both Badon and Camlann in the timeline of the Dark Ages he appends to the book (Adams, Appendix two, p. 429). That ‘may be’ that leaves the door open – just as the inclusion of the Annales Cambriae dates for Badon and Camlann in a timeline with verifiable dates gives them a spurious authenticity [iv].
For all the evidence Higham can marshal, (his bibliography runs for 23 pages of small print) there’s never a knockout punch. If Y Gododdin demonstrates the problems inherent in the evidence, Higham’s detailed discussion of the Historia Brittonum demonstrates why it’s not possible to close the argument.
The 56th ‘chapter’ of a document known as the Historia Brittonum (hereafter HB) is the crucial piece of evidence for enthusiast and scholar alike. HB chapter 56 contains a list of Arthur’s 12 battles. It’s the oldest surviving piece of extended writing about an Arthur. It names him as a victorious war leader against the Saxons.
‘Chapter’ might be misleading. It runs to 23 lines of continuous Latin prose in John Morris’ edition. Though written in Latin, compiled in the early 9th century and ascribed to ‘Nennius’, for most of us, our access to this strange text is through John Morris’ 1980 translation, which is not without its own problems[v].
Higham, like many before him, quotes the ‘chapter’ (p. 185). But I think that misrepresents the HB. The focus on chapter 56 allows people to treat this strange compilation as far more factual than it is. My own interest is in the earlier story of Vortigern (HB 31-49) who takes up much more of the HB than does Arthur. The Venerable Bede, writing at the beginning of the 7th century, following a hint in Gildas, had made Vortigern instrumental in the fall of Roman Britain. In the HB he has become an incestuous, bigamous, drunken fool in a bad folk tale about a beautiful princess. It is not history as understood in the 21st century. Ambrosius Aurelianus, who also appears as an historical character in both Bede and Gildas, has become a vatic child who was born without a father[vi], and St Germanus of Auxerre, who is perhaps the one person in this motley crew who can be established as undeniably historical, has become a spell-working magus who prays Vortigern to a fiery death in his tower[vii]. Reading the whole text does not inspire confidence in its factual accuracy[viii].
Higham, to his credit, takes on the whole of the HB and he’s very good on what it reveals about how different 9th-century attitudes to writing about the past are to our ideas of writing history. His chapter on the HB is worth the price of admission, even if you have no interest in ‘Arthurs’, although he has written about this, at length, before.
However, it’s not possible to dismiss the ‘Battle List’. It’s not enough to point out that no one has identified the battle sites with enough conviction to convince everyone else. (Guy Halsall reported one attempt to do so based on the names of modern pubs (Halsall, 2013, p. 154)); or that if the enemies are Saxons they seem to have been much further north much earlier than any other source suggests; or that the number 12 in a work riddled with biblical echoes seems more than a bit suspect and Arthur’s 12 battles mirror Patrick’s miracles as R.W. Hanning pointed out in 1966 (p. 120): or that some of the battles seem to have been fought by a leader who chose his battlefields because their place names rhymed: or that single handedly killing 960 enemies in a single charge sounds a tad unrealistic. Even with ten hours of daylight, how many deaths is that per minute, every minute, without a break for ten hours[ix]?
There’s more. At least three centuries have passed between the events described and the time of writing. Despite decades of attempts to find one, there is no evidence for an earlier source for the list. A lost poem is the best candidate, but then it would have to be a very strange poem and a list of rhyming battles might still be unconvincing. Anyone who claims that HB 56 is based on accurate oral transmission has to explain how, given that at least 14 generations have passed between writer and event, any oral story could be passed down without alteration. As a rule of thumb, students of oral history accept accuracy is possible in a story passed down for three generations: from your grandparents to you. Not, as Higham points out, a story passed down about your “great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents (give or take a generation either way)”.
Despite all this, the weight of evidence can only say: ‘it is highly unlikely that this is a reliable source’. Higham’s analysis of the way Nennius uses other names in the HB whom we know to be historical, leads him to the perfectly demonstrable conclusion that:
This was a scholarly community prepared to manipulate the distant past, shift individuals around and invent characters to make British history fit for purpose. They amended names to better suit their needs, misquoted from and rode roughshod over earlier testimony, fictionalized historical figures and made up others de novo. The harvesting of names from their original setting to be reused in a different context was commonplace
But he can’t prove this is what happened to Arthur. He can only suggest it is likely. He also claims that to understand the HB,
Our treatment of it must depend on understanding why it was written, where the author obtained his information, how he used what he had gleaned and the ways in which he expected his work to be understood
In his discussion of these features, he’s as guilty of speculation as anyone. Granted his speculation is much more well-informed, he’s still straying out of the world of facts. He is attempting to construct not only the context of a text that does not fit any modern genre, but its contemporary purpose and reception when there is no external evidence for these. Without knowing anything about the Real Author of this text, he’s going to draw conclusions about his intentions.
When Higham lists what can be inferred about the author from the text he’s constructing an Implied Author. It’s the reader’s idea of the author. We have no way of knowing who ‘Nennius’ was, let alone why he wrote what he did, if in fact he did write it. The ‘context’ of a written text is always a construct[x]. In the absence of corroborating evidence independent of the text, such a construct is never going to be the final word on the subject.
I’d back Higham’s informed speculation against most people’s, but there’s no escaping the fact it’s still speculation. He slides from qualified statements, ‘the prologue if accepted as original……in that case he is likely…’ (my italics) to declarative ones:
These were Latin texts written by churchmen tasked with repositioning the Britons within a tradition of European history that centered on Rome
It’s that ‘tasked’ that rings the alarm bells. His reading of the evidence supports his hypothesis, but there’s no way he can prove it.
Sir Bedivere casts Excalibur back into the lake
Higham does need to be applauded for his willingness to accept that medieval authors made stuff up. There’s a peculiar strand in medieval studies, both amongst professionals and enthusiastic amateurs, that works on the assumption that everything that interests us has a prior source. Put like that, it sounds ridiculous. But the unstated assumption is that fiction is a post-medieval invention. So, when Higham surveys the evidence and writes
Wace’s introduction of the Round Table to Arthurian literature was a practical solution to an imagined problem, which there is every likelihood he came up with himself
it’s one of the best moments in the book.
The Tudor invention of Arthur – the “Round Table” in Winchester Cathedral
Given that none of the evidence for an historical Arthur seems convincing, why the persistent arguments? I think people want to believe, and don’t understand or care that the existence of an historical figure, like Alfred the Great or Lady Godiva, is not a question of belief but of provable fact. The arguments over Arthur repeatedly illustrate one peculiarity of early British medieval history. Given the lack of sources for the 5th and 6th centuries in Britain, it’s almost impossible to prove someone didn’t exist. Therefore, says the ‘agnostic’, we have to accept the possibility he did.
Higham is strongly, justifiably against this. He quotes Bertrand Russell:
’Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than the business of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake.’ He illustrated the point by supposing the existence of a teapot in orbit around the sun that is too small to be visible through even the most powerful telescope. That this assertion cannot be disproved does not mean that it should be allowed to influence our thinking about the solar system. That way only chaos lies, for such speculations are infinite
Beyond a desire to believe, what reason is there to even entertain the idea of an historical Arthur? The answer to that probably lies in a bad metaphor which should have been dismissed the first time it was used. A long time ago someone advanced the argument that since ‘there is no smoke without fire’ there must be a factual, historical basis for the medieval stories about King Arthur. Higham returns to this metaphor in his final chapter and tries to replace it with another, but it’s time someone got rid of the habit of arguing based on inappropriate metaphors.
There may well be no smoke without a fire, but stories aren’t smoke. They are stories. The metaphor implies that all stories have some kind of factual basis. That’s demonstrably not true. If we throw out the inappropriate metaphor, there’s nothing left but wishful thinking.
Anachronistically-armoured knights feast with Arthur, who is in the Round Table
For all the detail, the knockout blow never arrives. Each chapter has its conclusion which sums up the case against the particular contender/argument, and then everything is summed up again in a concluding chapter. This makes the book laboured and repetitive. While the marshalling of scholarly argument is impressive, as the book progresses and Higham goes after some of the ‘fringe’ dwellers, it starts to sound brittle.
I admit to bemused admiration for Graham Phillips. He has made a career out of finding things Arthurian. He found the Grail. He found Camelot. He identified the ‘Real King Arthur’ as Owain Ddantgwyn using a chain of reasoning that was so circular it makes a spin cycle look linear. He has not let scholarly opposition or derision stop him. Give the man his dues: he’s held his line. Recently he claims to have found Arthur’s grave[xi]. The idea that Arthur’s 5th century grave can be found by reading Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th century text has so little to recommend it that it shouldn’t require pages of detailed refutation. It is a fine example of Russell’s orbiting teapot.
And despite what Higham has written about not being obliged to disprove the existence of orbiting teapots, he’s put himself in the position where he has to do so. If the purpose of the book is to educate the history-reading public, then he has to engage with Phillips’ argument. Reading his three-page explanation of the flaws in a portion of Phillips’ argument (pp. 264-267) is like watching someone trying to swat an annoying but mobile ant with a very large, very heavy hammer. It’s hard not to think that all this erudition could be put to a better use.
Despite all the knowledge, despite the careful explanations, despite the clear statement of intent, it is hard to assess how successful this book is. Who is its target audience? Higham claims,
The purpose of this book, is therefore, to set out the main arguments which are on offer, test each one against the sources on which it relies, and determine which, if any deserve support
But it’s difficult to avoid the feeling that the conclusions were written before the tests had been done.
Anyone interested in Arthurian studies, historical or literary, will benefit from reading the book. It’s an encyclopedic survey of the subject, written by an expert. It gathers together disparate information, and the Sarmatian, Nart and Greek chapters are a welcome summary of those diverse cases. But I wonder if Higham really thinks that someone inspired by the Clive Owens’ 2004 film King Arthur which was advertised as “The untold true story that inspired the legend”, is going to read his detailed, painstaking deconstruction of the argument that Lucius Artorius Castus was the original Arthur (pp 14-39)?
I suspect the people who need to read it probably won’t. And if they do, it probably won’t change their minds[xii]. The growing cult of the self-appointed expert means there is an increasing number of people who think access to the internet puts them in a position to discover what the experts have missed, and to challenge the experts’ arguments. We’ve seen this in the 2020 pandemic; it’s not confined to Arthurian studies.
For experts in the field, they’ve heard most of it before. They’ve read some of it in Higham’s earlier work, especially King Arthur: Myth making and History (Routledge, 2002). I suspect there will be those with recognized expertise in some of the more unusual fields that he has picked his way through who might object to the finer points in some of his arguments, but most of us won’t be in a position to follow the ensuing discussion, let alone play referee.
Those who don’t have the patience to read the book will stay happily deluded. Anyone who honestly thinks Arthur was an Ancient Greek Constellation before he had a career as a medieval king is not going to let the problems of transmission get in the way. Worse, as a contributing factor, there’s someone out there willing to publish your theory, or turn it into a documentary, because people like to watch the little amateur sticking it to the experts, even when the audience has no idea what’s at stake. It’s hard not to love a story that declares the Holy Grail has been discovered in an attic in Coventry, or Excalibur has been found[xiii]. Throw in the idea that there’s an academic conspiracy to hide the truth and there’s a small industry aimed at exploiting those who want to believe. Detailed arguments about manuscript dating, linguistic borrowings, or the problems of editing and dating early Welsh poetry simply do not make great television even if they are being presented by Michael Wood.
While the arguments over the historical Arthur are fascinating for all kinds of reasons, for many who are interested in the stories that accumulated around the name, it has always seemed an interesting irrelevance. Even if it were possible to identify a single person as the point of origin for all these disparate stories, and even if the proof were so convincing Higham publicly retracted everything he’s written here, ‘Arthur’ would be a brutal thug whose claim to fame was his ability to organize the slaughter of other violent thugs. He would have nothing in common with Malory’s Arthur except, perhaps, a shared name.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to those who read early versions of this essay, and in particular to Peter Hart whose painstaking proofreading saved me from serious embarrassment. All the remaining errors are mine
Works Cited
Adams, M (2015) In the Land of the Giants. Head of Zeus Ltd
Alcock, L (1971) Arthur’s Britain. Harmondsworth, Penguin Books
Dumville, D (1977) ‘Sub-Roman Britain-History and legend’. History 62:173-92
Halsall, G (2013) Worlds of Arthur: Facts and Fictions of the Dark Ages. Oxford University Press
Hanning, R W (1966) The Vision of History in Early Britain. Columbia University Press
Morris, J (1973) The Age of Arthur. Weidenfield and Nicholson
Morris, J (ed.) (1980) Nennius – British History and The Welsh Annals. Philimore & Co
Author’s Notes
Despite the comprehensive mauling it received from the experts, Morris’ The Age of Arthur is still on sale, and if the comments on Goodreads are any indication, still encouraging the unwary to believe
2. Gildas The Ruin of Britain. (De Excidio et conquestu Britanniae)
3. Ironically, Higham’s book denies the ‘Historical’ status of everything Adams refers to here
4. The entry before the one for Badon reads: ‘Bishop Edur rests in Christ [i.e dies] he was 350 years old.’ It tends not to be quoted by those who want to believe in the reference to Badon. Higham’s discussion of the Annales is on pp. 222-225. They are included in Morris’ edition of Nennius
5. See Higham p. 178-9 for a discussion of the problems of ‘establishing the text’ in general and with Morris’ edition in particular
6. It’s typical of the HB that in chapter 41 the boy has no known father and in chapter 42 he does
7. The HB faithfully records that there are three stories circulating about Vortigern’s death, one of which involves the ground opening up to swallow him.
8. My own interest is in the way these stories developed, rather than any desire to sort fact from fiction. You can read about the development of Vortigern’s story across time, as well as those of Hengist’s daughter and St Germanus at: http://www.liamguilar.com/the-legendary-history
9. I once pointed this out and was told that Arthur would have been using Excalibur and ‘we all know’ Excalibur was an alien artefact
10. I thought this phrase was Peter Barry’s, from Literature in Context (Manchester University Press, 2012) but I can’t find it
12. The repeated use of ‘probably’ here is nothing more than a conventional stylistic avoidance of declarative statements in an attempt to appear undogmatic. If I were a betting man, I’d bet they won’t.
13. Amateur Sleuth traces ‘Holy Grail’. The Courier Mail, August 14, 1995 p.12
SUSAN WATSON’swork has appeared in The Rialto, The Frogmore Papers, Brittle Star, The North and Long Poem Magazine. She has also contributed to anthologies, including A Room to Live In: A Kettle’s Yard Anthology (Salt Publishing), Herrings (Blue Door Press) and The Best New British and Irish Poets 2018 (Eyewear)
Reading The Rainbow
Fourteen, and my mother’s old Penguin edition
plucked from the crammed shelf like an apple,
not Sons and Lovers because I needed a heroine,
then the narrative surge drew me onwards and in,
and the hunger of needing to know.
what they lived through and what they lived by
aspiring grappling beyond unslaked
through the cramping repeating design of lace
and the shouting drilling the rigid lines of desks
yearning after the substance of churches and cathedrals
and emotional weather
It was not a dirty book.
Those wonderful stretches of time in the barn
while the cattle browsed hay and the crying stilled;
the harvest field in the moonlight,
binding the sheaves,
the lovers racing to meet one another.
Later on, it was different.
Floating more slowly through paragraphs of declamation,
struggling with their tensions.
It was like dipping a knotted thread
into a hot drench of copper sulphate
causing irritations and disruptions in the blue liquid
so that structures formed.
These Are the Things that Should Remain Unsaid
I saw her pale, cold form glide silent by me, dead to shame as to pity.
William Hazlitt : Liber Amoris
I read his Life, and too much light spills over and echoes off buildings
and here she comes gliding like a snake across High Holborn
past all the lawyers and accountants and hard edges.
The ghost of Hazlitt’s Sarah. She doesn’t know he watched her,
his lost thing. She never saw him. Male anger gorges.
They say she wasn’t beautiful.
And Nina Simone’s voice seeps in from the next room.
It’s late at night. She sings out from a place that’s high above a city,
notes like old rags and kitchen scourers soaked in bourbon.
Deep winter and dead cigarettes infuse the air.
The words are wide and shivering.
Far too much light.
I put the book down. But still the ghost is gliding like a snake
through that contemporary crowd, past all the black and tailored sharpness,
a vague pale object with blurred edges. The only possible road
is this one that he’s heavily retracing. I’ve read the ongoing bruise,
the way life carries on, past the end of the story. She died young.
This hurt will last for over two hundred years.
It will never wear down.
Note
‘Ce Que Dit la Bouche d’Ombre’ an extract from a much longer poem, Les Contemplations by Victor Hugo. It is recited by one of the characters in the Eric Rohmer film Conte D’Hiver. The English translation is my own. The following poem, ‘By Heart’, is in the voice of another character, the film’s main protagonist, as she listens.
From: Ce Que Dit la Bouche d’Ombre
Donc, une bête va, vient, rugit, hurle, mord;
Un arbre est là, dressant ses branches hérissées,
Une dalle s’effondre au milieu des chaussées
Que la charrette écrase et que l’hiver détruit,
Et, sous ces épaisseurs de matière et de nuit,
Arbre, bête, pavé, poids que rien ne soulève,
Dans cette profondeur terrible, une âme rêve!
Que fait-elle? Elle songe à Dieu!
*
In the Mouth of the Shadow
So, a beast prowls, pads, howls, bawls, bites;
A tree is there, tensing its bristling branches,
A slab of stone subsides into the pathway
That the cart breaks down and that the winter erodes,
And, beneath the thicknesses of matter and of night
Tree, beast, stone, dead weight that nothing uplifts,
In that terrible deep darkness, a soul dreams!
What is it doing? It dreams of God!
By Heart
In memory of Eric Rohmer (1920-2010)
Your room is full of books I haven’t read,
and here are unexpected guests who won’t stop talking,
talking, of superstitions, reincarnation, the Catholic faith
and miracles. I want a miracle.
If I say I love you,
you’ll curve over your shelves, leafing and leafing
through Shakespeare, Pascal, some marble figure,
to see if it’s written there. I blurt out something,
say I’m ignorant, the words uncultured and uncouth
crouch, coiled, inside that other one.
I want a miracle.
I know my tongue is raw.
Wanting is not enough. I need another word,
not need. The word I’m scrambling after
enfolds a dream within it, but overflows those banks,
SUSAN WATSON’s work has appeared in The Rialto, The Frogmore Papers, Brittle Star, The North and Long Poem Magazine. She has also contributed to anthologies, including A Room to Live In: A Kettle’s Yard Anthology (Salt Publishing), Herrings (Blue Door Press) and The Best New British and Irish Poets 2018 (Eyewear)
Luis Quintais was born in 1968 in Angola and studied in Lisbon. He moved to Coimbra in 1995, and is professor of anthropology at the University of Coimbra. He has an abiding interest in borders, the spaces that persist between cultures, and he writes about war, trauma and memory. Quintais’ first book of poems, A Imprecisa Melancolia, was published in 1995 and his poetry has since been translated into several other European languages (including Castilian, French, Italian, English, German, Croatian and Hungarian). Quintais has won several major poetry awards, including the 2004 Portuguese PEN Club Prize for Poetry and the Grande Prémio de Poesia 2017. All the translations here are of poems appearing in his book A Noite Imóvel, published in 2017 (Assyrian & Alvim).
In attempting to translate Quintais’ deeply engaged and starkly beautiful work, LESLEY SAUNDERS is drawing on her own experience as a writer of poetry: her sixth and most recent collection is Nominy-Dominy (Two Rivers Press 2018). Her English translations – including the poem that won the 2016 Stephen Spender award – of another renowned Portuguese poet, Maria Teresa Horta, were published in 2019 by Two Rivers Press, under the title Point of Honour.
Amphitheatre
All forms of violence are unforgivable,
he said, and the shadows fell across the table.
Also unforgivable is the silence that battens down faces.
A sound emerged, pre-empting meaning. History hallucinates,
he said, and something gave way among the fallen shadows.
I made a note, and the stare, my stare, skidded on the glass
of the amphitheatre, sought transparency. But it was winter,
winter there as well, winter forever, and the plane trees
Luis Quintais was born in 1968 in Angola and studied in Lisbon. He moved to Coimbra in 1995, and is professor of anthropology at the University of Coimbra. He has an abiding interest in borders, the spaces that persist between cultures, and he writes about war, trauma and memory. Quintais’ first book of poems, A Imprecisa Melancolia, was published in 1995 and his poetry has since been translated into several other European languages (including Castilian, French, Italian, English, German, Croatian and Hungarian). Quintais has won several major poetry awards, including the 2004 Portuguese PEN Club Prize for Poetry and the Grande Prémio de Poesia 2017. All the translations here are of poems appearing in his book A Noite Imóvel, published in 2017 (Assyrian & Alvim).
In attempting to translate Quintais’ deeply engaged and starkly beautiful work, I am drawing on my own experience as a writer of poetry: my sixth and most recent collection is Nominy-Dominy (Two Rivers Press 2018). My English translations – including the poem that won the 2016 Stephen Spender award – of another renowned Portuguese poet, Maria Teresa Horta, were published in 2019 by Two Rivers Press, under the title Point of Honour
CLAUDIA GARY’s latest chapbook is Genetic Revisionism. She is also author of Humor Me (David Robert Books, 2006) and chapbooks including Bikini Buyer’s Remorse, Let’s Get Out of Here, and Epicurigrams, all available from the author. A writing instructor, health journalist, and composer of art songs and chamber music, she lives near Washington D.C. Her workshops at The Writer’s Center (writer.org) on Villanelle, Sonnet, Natural Meter, Poetry vs. Trauma, and other topics are currently accessible worldwide via Zoom. See pw.org/content/claudia_gary; follow @claudiagary
The Mad Scientist’s Subjects
Here in the lab-coat pocket where we ride, our galaxy between odd scraps of lint and roughly scribbled theorems, we’re beside ourselves with astronomic wonderment. Is this a place where time is relative, an episodic groove that opens toward and then away from starlight? Do we live within a field where each day is a chord, one moment in an old celestial song? Our universe diffuses while we listen and thrive on melody. Drifting along within our microcosmic trance, we glisten and spark in recognition of our host, who floats, euphoric, still undiagnosed.
The Littlest Angel
After we made our sequin-covered halos from crepe paper, pipe cleaners, wire hangers, to wear for the First Grade Play, I pulled dried glue film from every square inch of my palms and fingers.
Our star was perfect for his role, with dark thick lashes, gleaming eyes, angelic aura. Years afterward I learned he’d never reached his forties. Was it suicide? AIDS? War?
He paid a heavy price for coexisting with brutes and yet avoiding malice, for peeling off the newest layer of skin whenever it became a callus.
Tornado
In tonight’s dream I am a funnel cloud that dips one spinning toe into the earth
scattering deep-set trees, adjusting brick walls. You hurry to the middle of your cottage
and hear my hollow voice as a freight train that looms, approaches, runs through, trails away.
The sky no longer green, I turn to vapor oblivious to wreckage and to a steel-
girded concrete last-resort saferoom that has protected you. You are my heart.
CLAUDIA GARY’s latest chapbook is Genetic Revisionism. She is also author of Humor Me (David Robert Books, 2006) and chapbooks including Bikini Buyer’s Remorse, Let’s Get Out of Here, and Epicurigrams, all available from the author. A writing instructor, health journalist, and composer of art songs and chamber music, she lives near Washington D.C. Her workshops at The Writer’s Center (writer.org) on Villanelle, Sonnet, Natural Meter, Poetry vs. Trauma, and other topics are currently accessible worldwide via Zoom. See pw.org/content/claudia_gary; follow @claudiagary
Bethesda Constellations, Peter Hughes, Oystercatcher Press, 2020 28 pages
The Celestial Set-Up, Zoë Skoulding, Oystercatcher Press, 2020, 24 pages
LIAM GUILAR combs through two new poetry pamphlets
Oystercatcher Press is one of the many small presses keeping poetry alive and well and providing readers with the opportunity to sample a writer’s work for a relatively small cost. Both these pamphlets are by poets with substantial back catalogues.
Peter Hughes’ Bethesda Constellations contains three short sequences of that name, samples from two works in progress, and some individual poems.
The three Bethesda Constellations provide mini-galaxies of images:
the rain in all these
seaside Brexit towns
goes into the night
a single taxi
never moving
from the station.
The stand-alone images collaborate to evoke place, but also a range of moods from the serious to the whimsical.
The other poems range from these sparkling details to pieces that tetter on the edge of what C.S. Lewis called ‘Privatism’; the feeling you get as a reader that you’re overhearing one side of a conversation about a party you weren’t invited to and know nothing about. Often this can occur in individual poems. ‘re;lode26’ starts in specific kitchen details, not just garlic but “& four fat cloves/ of this year’s garlic” to:
I saw you stick
a mini octopus
on the front
of your SG
which served
as temporary amp
& living strumbuddy
It’s difficult so know what that means, or what the context is that would give it meaning. The three ‘Re:lode’ poems are part of an ongoing collaboration, and therefore taken out of their own contexts, though Re:lode30 with its seamless integration of song, local history and imperialism is one of the most enjoyable pieces in the pamphlet.
Such moments as the one quoted above are fortunately rare. On rereading, the movement away or towards the particular within a poem creates a feeling of exhilarating movement, as though you’re a passenger in a vehicle taking a blind bend at speed. This is particular true of the shorter pieces, like ‘Ant’ or ‘Choir’, which begins:
an amateur choir
is filling the hall
with love songs
on the last day of September
and proceeds to
rumours & a heart of gold
shuffle back onto the street
& on beyond the street light.
Zoë Skoulding’s The Celestial Set-Up seems to invite a different reading practice. ‘Why are you telling me this?’ seems the valid question.
The elusive Rosa Luxemburg
‘A Rose for Rosa’ opens the pamphlet. It begins,
This is not the grave of rosa luxemburg she is not here you will not find her neither will you find her at the memorial to rosa Luxemburg at the lichenstein bridge…
and so on for 29 lines of unpunctuated prose, in which variations on ‘she isn’t there’ and ‘you won’t find her’ link any number of statues, monuments, streets, buildings or institutes named after Rosa Luxemburg.
Many of the poems like this one feel like writing exercises. ‘The Bed’ begins:
Our bed was never made from a still-rooted olive
Our bed was never planed with a brazen adze
with its nod to ‘The Odyssey’ but then continues for another 26 lines each beginning ‘Our bed was…’
As a writing exercise encouraging students to consider metaphors and how they work, this might be fairly common, but the end result is a list that is rarely interesting for a stranger who doesn’t know who the first-person plural refers to and can’t make the plethora of images cohere and say something of interest about ‘us’ or ‘the bed’.
For much of this collection I was left wondering if my presence as a reader was essential or even if it had been considered as part of the process.
‘Displacement Fixing by Steerage’ sounds like a parody of officialise, but since I haven’t read the document in question, I’m left wondering what I’m supposed to do with lines like this:
No matter from what point of ebb’s northern hindrance you look at it, it’s always within one delivery of true note
The same is true of ‘A Divinatory Calendar’, a sequence of 13 five-line poems. They are verbally inventive, but phrases like “Get to the point just when it dissolves like salt in drizzle bristling the skin” or “The habits of highly productive people include lying down at the crossroads covered in ash” had an initial attraction that didn’t survive too much consideration.
‘A Strait Story’ is neither a story about the Menai Strait or a straight story about a boat trip. Something happened in the Strait, but the facts and the writer’s response to them are presented in a baffling way that suggests both are an opportunity for a bit of writing rather than a desire to engage the reader with the experience.
The piece is divided into prose paragraphs and short passages set out as poems. This could be a nod to earlier Celtic genres where the prose conveyed the narrative and the lyric was used for speeches or moments of intensity. But there’s little narrative, and of the four ‘lyrics’ two are simply lists that have gained little by being written out in verse.
Despite the invention of the internet and the explosion of opportunities for publishing and reading poems, pamphlets still play an essential role in the circulation of poetry. For many poets, their first collection still takes the form of pamphlet or chapbook. For the more established, pamphlets offer a wide variety of possibilities: the chance to try out new work and see what kind of reaction it receives, or to use as a calling card.
For the curious reader, pamphlets offer a cheap way of reading a lot of different poetry and sifting the cacophony of unfamiliar names and vaguely familiar claims. For a relatively small cost – these two cost five pounds each – you can dip into a poet’s work, spend some time with it, and decide if you think the poet’s publication list is worth pursuing. You, reader, should buy some pamphlets.
