1. Boat
In the
morning she found a boat marooned on her pillow
she
couldn’t hear the survivors
she
couldn’t hear the sea.
The boat
on the back of her hand, the size of a shell, and light.
She
glimpsed it again through a window at work
holding
up the traffic on the by-pass.
She
could barely hear the typewriters
for the
noise of the storm in her head…
more land than sea
birds
and more birds, a crow on the topmost roof, the door onto the balcony…
She
rocked and she rocked asleep and awake
to the crashing of waves.
2. Foot
In the boat near her foot, a young man
in pyjamas with a voicelike Edgar Allen Poe.
A man who looked like an overcoat
with a pale face and a wide hat,
her foot
with the toe and the scars
orange and white like a Penguin.
Less blemishes than art, less art...
like preparing a meal –breaded mushrooms and garlic.
You can't do anything about this
she decided but did nothing anyway
and waited for the inevitable:
the storm
over Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard,climbing the rigging...
See – she knew all the words
they were in her blood, swimming around.
3. West
He stirs, shakes his head
it rattles
like a bucket of snails
found in the lettuce after a night of rain.
found in the lettuce after a night of rain.
A bucket like the bucket on deck
slopping now
sailing
for Rapallo
where Pound fed meat to the mythical cat
sailing
for Europe
a raven in the cage swinging from the masthead.
'Boat' was part of
an online collaboration with Eleni Sikelianos, commissioned by the editors of
Likestarlings. This revised version apears in my pamphlet Bike, Rain (Knives, Forks and Spoons, 2013) and Selected Poems (ebook; Smith/Doorstop,
2014).
I embarked on a PhD in
Poetry and Poetics at Edge Hill in 2001. Two years previously, I had
published my first full-length collection, Henry's
Clock (Smith/Doorstop) and the handbook commissioned by the Poetry Society,
Jumpstart Poetry in the Secondary School.
I was a member of the Poetry and Poetics Reseach Group at Edge Hill, which was stimulating
me to clarify my poetics, and the PhD seemed the logical next step. Completed
in 2006, my PhD thesis consists of a collection of poems which subsequently formed
the basis of Frank Freeman's Dancing School (Salt, 2009), a
critical study entitled ‘The Poem of Process: Frank O’Hara and Tom Raworth’;
and 'Flying: A Poetics'. A revised, trimmed-down version of 'Flying' was
subsequently published in Troubles
Swapped for Something Fresh: Manifestos and Unmanifestos, edited
by Rupert Loydell (Salt, 2009). Here is an
extract from the opening:
Flying:
A Poetics
It is
useful to distinguish between two approaches to writing. The first is to write about a particular subject, to record,
explore, analyse or express it. The second is to write in such a way that the
poem itself is the experience, or the subject. It is the second approach that I
am concerned with here.
‘In writing, it is not a matter of a certain
material which is there, as a fixed thing, upon which the writing feeds
and works. The act of writing also serves to nourish the material. When we
speak of something, we affect it. It isn’t quite the same. As we cannot
altogether ‘will’ what we would say’ (Turnbull, 1962: 27).
The process is improvisatory: to write without
a set idea of where the poem is heading. As if the poem has a life, or energy,
of its own.
‘I just get hung on the energy. Like the way
the energy goes through it’ (Raworth, 1972: 12).
The poem attracts material to itself. Or, to
put it another way, during writing, material finds its way in. The poem is the
important thing at this stage and the language of the poem, whatever is going
on in the environment, whatever thoughts occur during the writing (including
memories) can dictate the direction.
Any experience prior to the writing of the poem
is ultimately irrelevant to the poem, though the poem can ‘contain’ or allude
to dozens of experiences.
A poem does not have to depend on the idea or
experience which may have given rise to it; the idea or experience can ‘merely’
be the starting point.
‘The poem is more than the poet’s intention.
The poet does not write what he knows but what he does not know…. Words are
ambiguous…. The poem is not a handing out of the same packet to everyone, as it
is not a thrown-down heap of words for us to choose the bonniest. The poem is
the replying chord to the reader. It is the reader’s involuntary reply’
(Graham, 1946: 380-381).
A poem
does not have to ‘say’ anything.
‘I //
have nothing to say and I am saying it / and that is poetry’ (Cage, 1961: 183).
Links
My website/blog: www.cliffyates.co.uk
Guardian interview on teaching: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/oct/07/poetry.english.teaching
Collaboration with Eleni Sikelianos:
Other poems online:
Cliff Yates is a
freelance poet, writer and teacher. His latest collection is Selected Poems (ebook; Smith/Doorstop). He
is a tutor for the Arvon Foundation and is currently Royal Literary Fund Fellow
at Aston University. www.cliffyates.co.uk
He was previously introduced to Pages readers here: http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/introducing-cliff-yates.html
(He has a review of my The Poetry of Saying here: https://cliffyates.wordpress.com/other-writing/the-poetry-of-saying/)
Expressions of interest in poetry and poetics PhDs may be made to Robert Sheppard at shepparr@edgehill.ac.uk
