Parts One to Five of my Mini Poetry Interview conducted by Thomas Whyte

 

On the Homeric trail at Nestor's Palace, 'sandy Pylos' (2010)

My complete Poetry Q&A, conducted by Thomas Whyte in five sections, has now been posted on his Poetry Mini Interviews blog. 

You can find the five sections (in reverse order) here.

Alternatively the individual sections can be accessed via the following links:

• Part One - bio and how I first engaged with poetry
  
• Part Two - poets who influenced the way in which I thought about writing
  
• Part Three - poetry books I have been reading recently
  
• Part Four - current writing
  
• Part Five - particular poems, books or poets that I read again when I need a lift  

Do take a look at the other interviews which can be found by clicking here and looking at the livelink list of names on the lefthand side.  

Thank you so much, Thomas, for inviting me to take part.

 

 

'Driftwood by Starlight' ... Posts Relating To My Poetry Collection

 

When Driftwood by Starlight, my first full poetry collection, was published by The Seventh Quarry Press in June 2021, Maria Lloyd (@mariatlloyd), a research student at the University of Reading, set me some questions about a number of the poems, and particularly about those that relate to the Ancient World in one way or another.

You can find my responses in blog posts (1) to (3) below. I hope you will find something of interest if you click on the links.

(1) Questions from Maria Lloyd here. A post on 'Monte Testaccio, Mound of Potsherds', p.35.

(2) Questions from Maria Lloyd here. A post on 'Wildfire', p.31.

(3) Questions from Maria Lloyd here. A post on 'The Ocean's Tears', p.24 and 'Ice-Blue Blood', p.25.  

 • • •

While I was in Cornwall earlier in the summer, I took the opportunity to re-visit some of the settings in the book. Posts (a) to (c) below refer to these. 

(a) Cadgwith on The Lizard peninsula, setting for 'The Serpentine Stile', p.9. See here.

(b) The Penwith Moors and Mên-an-Tol, setting for '(W)hole Thoughts from Mên-an-Tol', p.28. See here.

(c) Zennor, setting for 'Zennor Voices', p.19. See here.

DRIFTWOOD BY STARLIGHT: Questions from Maria Lloyd (3)

Reconstruction (Piet de Jong) of floor motifs, Throne Room, Nestor's Palace, Pylos

 

Driftwood by Starlight, my first full poetry collection, was launched online on Tuesday 3 August. The book was published in June 2021 by Peter Thabit Jones of The Seventh Quarry Press. It can be purchased for £6.99/$10 from the publisher's online shop here.  

Maria Lloyd, who holds a Masters degree on The City of Rome from the University of Reading, read the collection and decided to set me some questions. I am attempting to provide a few answers in this mini-series (without giving too much away ...). Thank you, Maria. 

Post One (click here) concerned my poem 'Monte Testaccio, Mound of Potsherds' on p.35 of Driftwood by Starlight.

Post Two (click here) has as its focus the poem, 'Wildfire', on p.31. 

This is Post Three, and we stay with an archaeological theme as we switch our focus from the Roman World to Ancient Greece.

Let's turn to Maria's question. It relates, of course, to all the poems in the collection; but for the purposes of this post I shall apply it to 'The Ocean's Tears' on p.24 and 'Ice-Blue Blood' on p.25:

'You appear to write on a wide range of topics but what were the triggers that made you want to write about these topics in particular?' 

Many of us have a sense of adventure lurking somewhere inside us, even if in some cases we turn out to be largely armchair travellers. The classical world has fascinated me for decades so it is not surprising that aspects of ancient Greece and Rome surface in my poems from time to time. The Odyssey is a favourite ancient text. 

 

Homer in hand at Nestor's Palace, 'sandy Pylos', Peloponnese, 2010. Photo: © David Gill

The two poems I mention above were the result of my engagement with 'Homer', the blind bard. How much of the Iliad and Odyssey can actually be attributed to him is debatable since the tales of Troy are part of the oral tradition in which songs were passed on from singer to singer.  

 

Bust of Homer, Mount Egcumbe

The bust above, photographed in June 2021 during our Cornish holiday, is similar (though not, in fact, identical) to a sculpture of Homer found near Baiae on the Bay of Naples and purchased by Townley (BM Cat. Sculpture 25).

The two poems I consider in this post exhibit similarities and differences. They are not 'a pair', though it was a deliberate choice to place them opposite one another in the collection. Both concern the tale of Troy to some degree. They each have (in my mind at least) a 20th century UK beach setting.

'The Oceans Tears' is a Tercet Ghazal, a form developed by Robert Bly from the traditional (Arabic) Ghazal of Persian origin. I first encountered Ghazals with a three-lined stanza or 'sher' on The Ghazal Page, a web resource run by Gene Doty, which, sadly, is no longer available. 

'Ice-Blue Blood' is also written in three-line stanzas, but (to give words from this poem a new context) there the similarity ends, at least as far as form is concerned.

'The Ocean's Tears' includes a number of items that point to the Homeric world (gold, bronze, arrows and horse). Troy was never far from my thoughts during the drafting of this poem. 

 

Entrance to the 'Troy: Myth and Reality' exhibition, British Museum, 2019-2000

 

Those who have visited King Agamemnon's citadel at Mycenae will be familiar with the cyclopean walls to which I allude in the third verse.

Mycenae, linked to King Agamemnon. Photo: © David Gill

The Lion Gate entrance to the citadel at Mycenae. Photo: © David Gill

Mycenaean walls, with jeep for scale. Photo: © David Gill

'Ice-Blue Blood', on the other hand, begins with an epigraph from William Cowper's translation of Homer about a many-legged creature. I have long been intrigued by artistic renderings of octopus and squid in the Ancient World (see assorted examples on Greek pottery below), and have wondered whether these representations have any symbolic meaning beyond the visual. I believe I read that in one part of the ancient Greek world, the octopus motif could have been applied as a kind of early trademark, but I would need to explore this further.

 

Octopus fragment found at Phylakopi, Melos (Fitzwilliam Museum)

Octopus (9), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (early 20th century reproduction of stirrup jar, Crete)

Octopus in the 'Troy' exhibition, British Museum

Amphora from Tholos tomb II at Routsi, Archaeological Museum of Chora, near Pylos

The octopus was a popular part of the so-called 'Marine Style' of pottery, which originated on Crete in the late Bronze Age and was embraced by potters on the mainland. Monsters, some more cephalopod-like than others, abound in Greek mythology. They are not all creatures of the sea. The Hydra, which appears in a number of myths and sources such as Hesiod, had several heads. Cerberus, or Kerberos, the hound referred to but not actually mentioned by name in the Iliad, had two, three, or even 'many' heads. 

 

The first open lecture I attended as an undergraduate at Newcastle University in 1979 was given by Dr John Pinsent of Liverpool University on the unusual theme of ancient art and cephalopods. He had authored a paper called The Iconography of Octopuses: a First Typology (BICS 25, 1978) about the development of octopus representations in late Mycenaean vase painting. 

 

More recently I came under the influence of a large blue graffiti octopus known locally as 'Digby'. Digby, designed by John D. Edwards, is part of the Never Ending Mural community arts project in Ipswich and a popular local icon (see here). There may well be a nod to the spirit of Digby in my poem. And, as I hinted earlier, the impact of squid and octopus representations on ancient artifacts should not be overlooked. There is something very fluid, fascinating and changeable about these marine animals. It is worth remembering that while the wine-dark purple colour from the Murex shell (see also here) was prized as a costly dye in Ancient Greece, humans have been writing and drawing with cuttlefish ink, known to us as 'sepia', since times of antiquity. 

 

Speaking of early writing, I began with a photograph relating to Nestor's Palace at Pylos in the western Peloponnese. It seems worthy of note that large quantities of Linear B tablets were found here. Ironically, these clay tablets were baked, and therefore preserved for posterity, in a devastating fire.

Linear B tablet (a cast, I think), Archaeological Museum of Chora

In his poem, 'Upon a Foreign Verse', George Seferis reminds his readers that Odysseus is a human hero, and as such a very different 'being' from the otherworldly monsters he encounters. Scylla in Odyssey Book XII has twelve feet and six particularly long necks, each ending in a head and three rows of teeth. She makes the Loch Ness monster seem extremely benign. Were Homer's sea monsters inspired by atmospheric shadows whipped up by storms at sea or by sightings of giant octopuses? I guess we shall never know.  

Happy National Poetry Day!

I learned this morning that this is also World Octopus or Cephalopod Day, so here is an octopus from a reconstruction of Nestor's Palace in Homer's 'sandy Pylos' in the western Peloponnese. We visited this remarkable site five years ago. Over 1000 Linear B tablets came to light on this place alone.

And now for a little poetry. Alexander Pope may not be in vogue these days, but his rhymed version of The Odyssey gives a flavour of the storyline in the old epic (and it is a version that is out of copyright). What follows (in blue) are three excerpts from Pope, concerning the arrival of Odysseus' son, Telemachus, at Nestor's Palace. Telemachus is anxious for news of his father, who left his island home of Ithaka to fight in the Trojan War. Nestor is making animal sacrifices on the beach when his visitor arrives. 

Reconstruction of Nestor's Palace floor in the Chora Museum - octopus motif

Now on the coast of Pyle the vessel falls,

Before old Neleus’ venerable walls.

There, suppliant to the Monarch of the Flood,

At nine green theatres the Pylians stood.

Each held five hundred (a deputed train),

At each, nine oxen on the sand lay slain ...

Reconstruction of the Megaron floor in Nestor's Palace, Museum at Chora

Full for the port the Ithacensians stand,

And furl their sails, and issue on the land.

Telemachus already press’d the shore . . .

The Throne Room, with a huge central hearth

The youth of Pylos, some on pointed wood,

Transfix’d the fragments, some prepared the food:

In friendly throngs they gather to embrace
      
Their unknown guests, and at the banquet place.

Pisistratus was first to grasp their hands,

And spread soft hides upon the yellow sands;

Along the shore th’ illustrious pair he led,

Where Nestor sate with youthful Thrasymed.


from Alexander Pope's version of The Odyssey Book III. You can read the whole chapter here. 

Reconstruction of Nestor's Palace

Nestor's Palace - as it is now

• If I was suggesting a good modern translation of The Odyssey, it would be the one by Richard Lattimore. 
• You might be interested in Adam Nicolson's book, The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters, which I have just started to read.
• And, of course, the poem, 'Ithaka' by Cavafy is one of my all time favourites. 
• More octopuses! John Pinsent (1922-1995), a Classical scholar and Reader in Greek at Liverpool University, wrote a study called 'The Iconography of Octopuses: a First Typology' (BICS 25, 1978) about the development of octopus representations in late Mycenaean vase painting. I remember him giving a fascinating lecture on the subject in Newcastle when we were undergraduates. 

keeppoemsalive: a selection of poems about 'Time'

...

My Tercet Ghazal, 'The Ocean's Tears', features in the relatively new keeppoemsalive site this week. The site is described as 'a space for poems you like to read again and again.'

Other poets with work featured this week are Kevin Cadwallender, Neil Leadbeater, Alexander Hutchison and Vivien Jones.

All the poems on the site were published for the first time at least three years ago. Do click the link above and take a look.

• The Tercet Ghazal on The Ghazal Page

A Poetry Evening at The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace

MUCH have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen ...

'On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer'
John Keats (1795–1821)

The Poetry Society laid on a glittering event, In the Realms of Gold, in The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace last week. We were given the opportunity of hearing Forward Prize-winner and Next Generation Poet, Kei Miller, and his supporting cast of Poetry Society poets whose work on the theme of 'gold' had been selected by Kei.

We enjoyed a private view of the Gallery's current exhibitions, Gold and Cairo to Constantinople. I had spent a birthday book token on Kei's latest collection, The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion (Carcanet 2014), so was familiar with the poems 'on the page', but it is always fascinating to hear the same poems 'from the stage'. You can read Carrie Etter's Guardian review of the book here. 

Drama: a Dramatisation of The Iliad in Cambridge

Projected words by Keats

We had a fascinating time last week in Cambridge last week at the annual Greek play. This year's production was called 'Achilles: the end of his wrath' and constituted a dramatisation from Homer's Iliad (Books XVI-XXIV).

The performance was in Classical Greek and was produced and directed by Emeritus Professor Patrick Boyde, who has now directed ten of these plays.

The performance took place in the Cambridge University Divinity School Theatre, pictured above. There were not only projected subtitles (for those of us whose Greek is a bit rusty), but also carefully selected images from archaeological artefacts such as figurative pottery, enabling the audience to follow the action a little more easily. The acting was complemented by exquisite music from two accomplished violinists. 

Unlike the levels of gratuitous noise in movies like Troy, you could have heard a pin drop. We were all caught up in the plot and were drawn in not only to the stark horrors of the war, but also to the very real issues facing the gods, the heroes and the humans. And what an experience it was!   

I read a child's version of the Odyssey as a youngster, and have been fascinated by Odysseus and the nature of the Homeric epic ever since. The images below are reconstructions from Nestor's Palace near 'sandy Pylos', which features in the Odyssey. We visited the site a couple of years ago. The image immediately below shows a reconstruction of the palace floor (complete with octopus motif) from the museum, and the lower image shows a reconstruction of the palace itself.    

Prizes and Commendations (2): The T.S. Eliot prize

My thanks to Matt Merritt at Polyolbion for alerting me to the coverage of the prize ceremony on Jane Holland's blog, here. Derek Walcott won the prize with his Faber collection, White Egrets.

In case you have not caught up with the news reports, you can read The Guardian's feature here. 

Little Egret, Penclawdd, Gower, Wales, UK

 I recall a happy evening at Hay some years ago, when Derek Walcott answered questions and delivered his poetry to a packed auditorium. I was particularly pleased to have bought a copy of his 'Omeros' in the Poetry Bookshop that afternoon.

Above and below: Little Egret, Divari Lagoon, Pylos, Greece

N.B. My photos are not linked to locations or symbolic representations in the book, but it seemed a good opportunity to appreciate these fine birds! The Egretta alba, the Great White Egret, has black feet and a yellow bill, unlike the Little Egret on one leg in the Divari Lagoon photo. 

Ars Poetica (2): Ekphrasis

Leicestershire: Grace Dieu (above)
and nearby Coleorton (St Mary's Church below)

Wordsworth was influenced artistically
by his patron, Sir George Beaumont,
who played a key role in the founding of the National Gallery in London
and lived at Coleorton Hall

I have had cause on two recent occasions to consider the nature of ekphrastic work, so I thought it might be a useful moment to formulate some (personal) thoughts and air a couple of queries on the subject.

From my undergraduate studies of Classical Greek, I know that ek corresponds to out, and phrasis to speak. We find ek or ec in English words like ectoplasm. We also find it transmuted to ex in words like external. We know phrasis, of course, from words like phrase and phraseology. Ekphrasis, a rhetorical technique, is therefore a combination of these word-parts, which when combined give a meaning of speaking out or proclamation - or to put it another way, of calling 'an inanimate object by name' [Wikipedia - see also a number of definitions garnered by Ryan Welsh at the University of Chicago].

The majority of ekphrastic poems (I believe) shed light on a picture without the two art forms being physically conjoined. They do, however, build an imaginary bridge between the 'verbal' and the 'visual'. Take, for instance, the iconic example of Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn. What is important here is that the poet brings a 'notional' or 'allusive' - rather than an 'actual' - image before our inner eye and makes us question what we visualise. There is no need for us to see the urn (which may or may not be a single artefact) portrayed in a given medium alongside the poem. The words alone do the work, conjuring up the object in our imagination.

We occasionally encounter ekphrasis in poetry as an actual and symbiotic pairing of word and image. That is to say, for example, that a poem text and piece of corresponding 'visual art' work in tandem to form a fusion or new creation. The one art form elucidates and illuminates the other in some manner - and this is a two-way process. We can all recall our childhood story and poetry books in which the bold and colourful illustrations added so much to each tale or poem. I consider this powerful marriage to be ekphrasis at its most basic (and on occasions at its most potent) level.

In these multi-media days of collaborative enterprises and opportunities, we are familiar with countless instances of art forms impacting on other media. Ekphrastic poetry could be 'illuminated' or 'enhanced' (I hesitate to say 'illustrated') by 'actual' painted work, pen-and-ink drawings or photographs. It may be of interest to note that a union of photography and poetry has appeared in the Poetry Book Society bulletin as Photoetry, but I see this as a form of ekphrasis rather than as something different again.

The questions lingering in my mind are ones of definition and distinction:

• Are all 'visual' poems ekphrastic?
• Are all 'illustrated' stories (like those in the children's picture books mentioned above) ekphrastic?
  

And in each case, if not, then why not?

* * *

Previous Coastcard posts touching on Ekphrasis can be found here and here. My Photoetry entry (with a couple of book recommendations) is here.

You may also like the following:

• Ten of the best: examples of ekphrasis by John Mullan, The Guardian, Sat. 14 November 2009
  
• Tim Liardet on Ekphrasis and Ekphrasis, New Welsh Review, Number 72, Summer 2006 (in which the author makes reference to the classic example of the Shield of Achilles in Homer's Iliad). This is a compelling, lively and contemporary survey - and comes highly recommended!
• Wikipedia article, with extensive bibliography
• Ekphrasis - a Poetry Journal
• Digital Ekphrasis - Cecilia Lindhé
• Wordsworth, ekphrasis - and the (artistic) patronage of Sir George Beaumont (see here for Grace Dieu and Coleorton)
  

Poetic People (3): Derek Walcott

Nobel poet from St Lucia, Derek Walcott, is now on the list of those being considered for the Poetry Professorship at Oxford University.

Poetry Matters (2): Poetry or Prose?

I am not renowned for my astute political insights (the understatement of 2009), but a column in today's Guardian set me thinking. It hangs on a statement from the former Governor of New York, Mario Cuoma, in relation to the recent inauguration of President Barack Obama. Do we all agree that poetry is the perfect vehicle for a campaign; but that once the campaign has been won, a ruler should revert to prose?

In the make-believe (or sometimes quasi-reality) world of literature, can we think of cultures that adopted poetry as their language of state or power? Homer comes to mind, but do the ring-cycle formularies of the bard have any 'linguistic' bearing on the Mediterranean world he was 'writing' about? Items like the tablets of Linear B are functional and hardly 'poetic' in the sense I have in mind.

Abraham Lincoln scholar, Ronald C. White Jr, believes that there is a connection between US Presidents and poetry: 'Our best speakers have an ear for poetry. Lincoln loved to read Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Shakespeare.' (UCLA Today).

The President reads Walcott

'... sinuous swans ...'
Derek Walcott, Omeros XXXVIII, III

I had the privilege of hearing St Lucian and Nobel poet Derek Walcott at the Guardian Hay Festival the summer before last; and was captivated by his outlook on the world, and particularly by his book, Omeros which I bought in The [excellent!] Poetry Bookshop in Hay.

Here in the UK rumours currently abound in the press regarding the identity of the Poet Laureate Designate. Poetry, it seems, is equally alive and well on the opposite side of the Atlantic. I am grateful to the Poets who Blog site for pointing me in the direction of an article on CityFile about US President Obama reading Walcott's Collected Poems - thereby presumably encouraging others in the support of poetry.

I have already mentioned my early love of the tales and travels of the Greek hero, Odysseus. Omeros as the name implies, is another epic poem about the web of human existence exemplified in sea travel and culture: indeed it is - in my humble opinion - a singularly fascinating 'take' on Homer's Odyssey. It is more than that: it is a new and unique work in its own right (though I use the word 'new' advisedly as the book was first published in 1990!). The poem makes use of the engaging Terza Rima form of chiming verse, a form used effectively by Dante.

Postscript
My copy from Hay came for good measure with a news cutting inside the cover: 'Hustling Homer' by Oliver Taplin, who was reviewing a production of 'The Odyssey' (Walcott style) at The Other Place in Stratford. The production was, apparently and appropriately, 'a cyclopean feat of poetry'!

Further information

• Omeros Study Guide (enotes.com)
• Derek Walcott’s Omeros, and the Significance of the River of Ancestry