The Poet Geoffrey Hill and the Poet Jeremy Prynne

In a city - let's say Cambridge; in fact, let's pick somewhere more neutral, Coventry for example - the supporters of the poet J.H. Prynne decided to erect a giant statue of their hero, a statue that would dwarf the city's cathedral, a bronze statue with a high forehead and an unfathomably muscular torso. Of course, when the supporters of the poet Geoffrey Hill heard about this they decided to erect a similar statue, also in Coventry, to match the gigantic statue of the poet J.H. Prynne. The tall statues faced each other over this cowering city that had been destroyed and rebuilt comparatively recently. The opposing factions were proud of their statues, but they were also envious of each other. Of course, arguments broke out, then the odd limp-wristed skirmish, and after a while, without knowing how it had happened, the two groups of poetry-lovers discovered that they were officially at war. Nothing happened for a while, but what could have happened was this: a renowned wise man - the type that still existed in the Midlands at the turn of the century - came to the city and called a meeting between the leaders of the two groups. In his wisdom he told them to give up on their bitterness and envy and learn to like, or at least to appreciate, or at the very least to respect, the poetry of the opposition. Of course, the berserk captains of the factions fell upon him and destroyed him as he attempted to leave the cathedral. Their bloodlust was sated; they forgot their poetry and went back to teaching creative writing classes. But that didn't happen. The war is still going on, though no-one has yet died. On the upturned palm of the poet Geoffrey Hill sits a sniper, his rifle trained through a crack in the poet Geoffrey Hill's fingers onto a spot somewhere on the poet J.H. Prynne's groin, where it is believed there is a secret door, behind which the supporters of the poet J.H. Prynne are said to be hatching a plot, although no-one knows what this plot might be.

Ironing is Equal To or Greater Than Jazz

He is in the living room, writing and listening to a critically acclaimed jazz record from the mid-1960s. She is in the kitchen, ironing and watching a popular primetime hospital drama on her laptop. During the short periods of silence between tracks he can hear the programme through the closed door – they have a cheaply rented flat and the doors are thin, little more than plywood. After a while he becomes aware that she has turned the sound up on the hospital drama – he can hear dialogue through the quiet parts of the compositions. A nurse says, ‘Ready?’ and a man groans. Another nurse is chatted up and then threatened by a doctor, and so on. At one point during a searing trumpet solo he hears a screech of tyres and the sound of glass smashing. He is a little annoyed, as she has told him that the reason she is using the kitchen rather than the living room is to give him some peace and quiet while he works. ‘Peace and quiet’ was the exact phrase she used. He thinks he would be well within his rights to go and ask her politely to turn it down, particularly when over the top of a lengthy, trumpet-led ballad he can hear people being dragged from wreckage, the wheels of stretchers on concrete, screams of jobbing actors. But he doesn’t get up. It’s not really distracting him that much. He has nearly finished the first draft of a short story and doesn’t want to interrupt his flow with the mild altercation that would inevitably follow if he were to speak to her. And, he thinks, if he can hear her TV programme, she can probably hear his jazz, and would therefore be equally entitled to ask him to lower the volume. Besides, he is writing and she is ironing. She is ironing his shirts for work because he can’t make enough money from writing to enable him to quit his crappy job, and he is writing a short story in which she appears as a character. These facts instantly give her the moral high ground. He thinks, what kind of person would do that? What kind of person would ask his girlfriend to turn the sound down so that he can listen to a once ground-breaking but now slightly anachronistic jazz recording whilst she is ironing his clothes and he is using her against her will?

Im Visits the North Pole - excerpts

Im throws open
windows
so that any
sunlight trapped

can escape before the year
turns dark and small

*

Of course Im encounters
death every day.

She removes a glove
to stroke a live

damp nose –
a huge husky perhaps

*

Between sheer walls
a joust
of narwhals

whisk through icing

*

Im lurks below
the treeline.

Everything is fur
and bristle and ire
– cries of owls, irks.

In the starkness of
perpendicularity
Im inspires a religion

of trees
whose spires
seek to bend

whose dead
limbs and needles
are her pyres

*

There is another.
Im salutes a furred
human face
over tundra,
young and
unfolded.
A moon
inside a boat.

He traverses the rink
of tundra. Im

writes her name
in the snow, sees
a bare tree
and two mountains.

Im Visits the South Pole - excerpts

Im listens for the babble
of internal organs, hers –

hearts, hot intestines
and suchlike.

Her bones are the ice
sculptures of Erebus

*

The sun a ring
– tambourine and cornet

the salt snow bakes.
A crust

and a cauldron
cone and rotunda

belly of breath
Im skims off –
fat off milk

*

Im plays at witching
forges molten snow
into a cat-shape

a grotto, grove of folded
paper animals, Im speaks
with her fingers

to annihilate them
unfold

*

A fold is an irrevocably
straight line
where white sheep live,
Im thinks

*

Snow like sand. Im
luxuriating, eyes closed,
loses her toes in it

For Malena Mörling, ‘Standing on the Earth among the Cows’

There is a cow in the field. Madly,
just one, and a docile lady at that.
Underneath she is full and bored.
She feels that there is a breathing
on the other side of the fence.
She stops to drink a can of Coke
before plunging her nose – which
is like cold wax – into the night air.
I eat some grass and spit
like a cowboy of dubious morals
in an otherwise black and white
film. There is no shooting star,
no slight twinge in the spine
of the earth. One of us gets
into the car, but does not drive away.

In Bergen Harbour

stalls fill with
a day’s haul, a range
of little clown mouths
all pointing upwards
to catch salty rain – it helps
me to think about you
and I have to laugh
because your love is great,
European, pan-European,
Germanic or Hanseatic
and the mouths are tiny
and small like a harbour
mouth or a choir.

Two Poems from Norway

Finse #1

From the Bergen-Oslo Train

A wooden hut
is a small thing.
There are stones
bigger. Inside a train
is a warmth made
by the train.

A wooden hut
has none of its own
power. You have
to walk, to collect
and cut and burn
to give it power.

There are no trees,
only the yellowing tongue
of Hardangerjøkulen,
and turf for warmth.


Finse #2

A wooden hut is
a mathematical symbol
meaning something like
equal to or less than
but with added pride,
or an outward display
of class-consciousness.
It is the first of many
such symbols that can be found
on the squared hillside.