Richard
Caddel: Magpie
Words. Selected Poems 1970-2000 (West House Books, Sheffield, 2002. 182pp. £12.95. ISBN 1-904052-03-7)
Richard Caddel/Anthony Flowers: Quiet Music of Words. Conversations with Richard Caddel (West House Books, Sheffield, 2002. 40pp
chapbook, £4.95. ISBN 1-904052-06-1)
Alan Halsey & Martin Corless-Smith: Lives of the Poets: A Preliminary Count (Ispress, Wakefield, 2002, pamphlet.
ISBN 0-9533897-1-5)
Bill Griffiths: Durham
and Other Sequences (West
House Books, Sheffield,2002. 64pp, £7.95p. ISBN 1-904052-04-5).
While the core of this clutch of books is Richard Caddel’s Magpie Words (I wanted to write Sounds)
the person who links all four is the poet/editor Alan Halsey. And what a
midwife he has been to Caddel with a
beautifully printed and presented selection which contains some of the most
substantial of the latter’s poems. The fact that Richard Caddel died in April
of this year (2003) makes that work a timely memorial: the last section is
from Writing in the Dark ñ a
still to be published collection. In Quiet Music of Words Anthony
Flowers, who is responsible for ‘cover
design and origination’ of Magpie Words, has provided something
of an autobiographical companion to the selection as well as to the poet’s life in, as it were, his own words. This
small pamphlet is something of primer for the would be poet which, aside
from the occasional throw away remark about ‘High Street’ poetry, offers
a demanding personal guide to writing and the finding of a voice: from “me
and the act of writing” to finding a poetry ‘reading space’ where work is “voiced
aloud” and where reading requires preparation “to make the performance responsive
to the specific needs of the occasion”. Everyone reading their own work will
benefit from these observations on the disciplines of preparation and Caddel’s
assertion that “poetry comes out of a sound”.
My own sense of why people go to the High Street is that they are drawn there
by the need for resonances when in love, when bereaved and when in need of
some humorous or telling commentary on factors impinging on their lives.
Caddel certainly speaks to the first two. I found myself impelled to read Magpie
Words aloud: from
the kettledrum beat that commences For the Fallen: A Reading of ‘Y Gododdin’ (an
elegy for his son) to the gripping early English rhythms of its later sections
when he could have been translating
the funeral rites of Scyld from the Beowulf epic: “no man warned or gloried
/ or kin well garnered / no man thuds mirthwards / a fresher mime-clue /
chill a bloodier chill...” in which, as in Fantasia in the English Choral
Tradition and Ground, he makes a music out of language and
memory. And if it is love that’s sought, he offers annual Valentines to Anne
his wife: “Your voice in this room / has been with me / / all I want to remember
of / waking / ...”.
As for the prolific Alan Halsey himself and The Lives of the Poets Johnson will be turning his vast bulk
in his grave he has co-produced with Martin Corless-Smith yet another piece
of what would otherwise have been idiosyncratic work. The pieces present
a playful, tongue in cheek erudition which is likely to excite plenty of
passing admiration though I am less certain about insight. Not too many clues
for first degree students although some of those might be inclined to try
and pass a piece or two off as their own in an exam script or college rag.
I was reminded again of the High Street and wondered whether this amusing
set of observational pieces was also a demonstration of just how ephemeral
and impenetrable poets and their poetry eventually become. I enjoyed the
piece on Byron and there are some witty epitaphs here: on Skelton for example
and also Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey which reminded me of the Arundel
Tombs (Larkin remains on the High Street: I went out and
checked) even though Surrey lies in splendid state in the church of a small
but delightful Suffolk town ñ as well as Caddel’s passion for the northern
landscape: “Observatory Hill in Durham, in May, looking down over the field
of Cuckoo Flower towards Durham Cathedral with the cathedral city of Durham”.
The Cathedral and the prison at Durham provide key sequences for Bill Griffiths’s
latest collection which West House Books presents in a purple and black dignity.
Not that you would expect to pick this up in the High Street. It is, like
much of Richard Caddel, a demanding read though containing some revealing
imagery along with its rigorous language. The ambiguity of the cover image
should be taken as preparation for the disorientation Griffiths offers from
his Durham: a visit to Durham Gaol experience: his section headings are something of a silken thread to
assist the exploration of the prison’s labyrinth. I particularly like the
section Glacier: “It
was the Glacier of Eyes. / Wide, transparent sights, packed in the traverse
of ice, / Firm in foot, / Birds above, and cameras / So I stumbled.”. I also
enjoyed the separate A review of vegetables sequence. It makes market
shopping a whole new experience: “The
sweet mood / scent / womanly cauliflower / mist of stalk / ...”; and “they
soul’s shell is PARSNIP / woody / rough-smile / something of the ground /
and piercingly aromatic it is / an oil / a power / pervades the world, longest
/ the wine. / ...”. Plenty more delights available from PEASE, THE SPROUT,
LEEK, BEAN, POTATO etc.
© Gordon
Read 2003