The jnani in the poetry of Shanta Acharya

When I was a child the only thing I really associated India with were elephants, tigers and a 

Ladybird early reader on which gleamed phantasmagorical an image of The Taj Mahal. 

I lived in a small town on the North West of Ireland without an Indian restaurant or any 

other cultural signifier of the presence of the other. We had an International Folk Festival

every August during which visitors from other places would perform in the Town Square. 

 My friends and I were avid attenders.

I remember trying to copy the hand movements of some Indian dancers. We surmised

that this grace was synonymous with all Indians, and were more than envious. After all,  

what other country had as symbol a testament of a husband's love for his wife? India had it all

for the girl that I was : tigers, elephants, dancing, and the certainty of adoration in the hazy 

marital future. All these years later, life has widened my lens. Scant knowledge replaced

by the experiential knowledge of writers as diverse as Kipling, Chandra, Seth, The Bombay 

Review until I arrived at the shores of Shanta Acharya. 

This journeying was the backdrop to my own efforts in the fields of poetry, and resulted in a 

trip to London to read from my first book of poetry " The Language of Coats' in Lauderdale

House. This reading was hosted by Shanta, the series of monthly readings called 'Poetry 

in the House'  that took place between 1996 and 2015. And so began for me a journey that

looked at India through the female lens and also as importantly through the lens of reconciling

the differences between two cultures. Born and educated in Cuttack, Odisha, Acharya won a

scholarship to Oxford, where she was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy for her work on Ralph

Waldo Emerson. Harper Collins India has just published " Imagine", which brings together 

poems from her first five collections and new verse, from which the book takes its title.

                                                                                                     

The poem the collection opens with is from ' Not This, 

Not That' published in 1994, and is titled ' Faith'. 

                 "There are things

                  you need not know

                  my mother once said .."

This is the answer the young poet receives when she
pricks a balloon to discover what is inside. It is the
same answer she receives when she pricks her finger
to discover how she bleeds. This fatalistic worldview
is reiterated in the final verse of this stunning little
poem when they both tell their questing daughter:

                 " There are things

                    you will fail to find..."
The poem's title is in direct opposition to such advice. Although the trope of flying the
nest is well worn, it is the jnana she sets off to find that is the lynch pin of many of the
best poems throughout this book.In many ways, this book is a narrative framework of
a dialogue between Shanta Acharya and her guide and charioteer Poetry, as opposed to
the dialogue between Pandava prince Arjuna and his guide and charioteer Lord Krishna.
As such just like in the Gita, there are thematic repetitions that bring us the reader into
an ever deepening understanding of the illusory nature of reality, the beauty of that
illusion, the search for love and connection and the brilliant colours that the illusory
nature of reality is painted with and the part that jnana/knowledge plays in that journey.
The leper that sits in lotus pose ' under the shamiana of a tree' is likened to the crippled
imagination waiting the 'toss of a coined idea' in the poem titled " In the Jagannath
Temple." Jagannath is a non-sectarian deity and is worshipped in regional traditions
of Hinduism and Buddhism. He is ' Lord of the Universe' and his icon is made from
wood, without arms or legs. It is from the annual procession of this deity that we get
the word juggernaut. The last line of this poem ' as gods emerge out of decrepitude'
create a frisson of excitement in the reader, as we realise that the leper is Jagannath.
Seeing deity experiencing suffering is somewhat different from seeing deity in that
same suffering.
In the first of the sixteen ekphrastic poems in this collection, Acharya uses
Rembrandt's painting of " Belshazzar's Feast" to comment on her own version of
' the writing on the wall'. She is in self-exile, and worries that she will emerge from
god's gift of suffering unbalanced. The painting materials and technique used by
Rembrandt in this painting do not compare with any of his other works.Perhaps
the same may be said of the poet herself. The title " Not This, Not That" comes
from the poem ' The Night of Shiva'. Written in seven sections it begins with the
poet celebrating Shiva's commemoration night in the solitude of her Highgate
maisonette. She eats a ' feast of fruits/from foreign shores' as she chants the ritual
words to transform sins into nirvana. The power of words to transform reality is
one that all brought up with belief can relate to. In this case the words are :
Om Namah Shivayam. The poem moves in recollections then of other Shiva nights.
Nights when her parents were traditionally dressed as opposed to her brothers in
the cultural apparel of globalisation, namely 'jeans/T-shirts, Seiko watches, Nike
shoes'. The temple of Shiva houses the god in the image of a ' munificent phallus
erect on a yoni'.
            " In all the temples of Shiva tonight
               women will kiss the lingam without shame or thought.."
The erotic in the midst of worship is particularly striking for any modern reader.
Aids had not yet entered the vocabulary of that time, not yet the language of identity
politic. Like many poets that recollect the past can seem a place of simplicity and that
could be why she suggests she will thank Shiva for her childhood naivete. The smell
of the incense and camphor and the sounds of the many praying pilgrims permeate
the next section of the poem bringing us the reader into a visceral experience of this
holy night. Shanta has a wry humour as evidenced in the line:
 " bananas gone rusty brown, limp like deflated members-"
We are not surprised to learn in the next section that -
" ..those who can focus their thoughts on Shiva
  can always achieve knowledge and powers divine.."
And the knowledge she seems to have had conferred on her by this special night is
that her notions of humanity may have been stretched by myths and legends, but
that ' Atman' had revealed itself to be ' not this, not that'. All xenophobes take note.
All life is flux. Humour takes over in the next section when she imagines Shiva
visiting London with his dread locked hair and tiger-skin mini-skirt. The poem ends
with the phone ringing and Shiva is on the other end.
This rather surreal ending is an apt lead in to the poems from Acharya's second
collection: " Numbering Our Days' Illusions". There is nothing quite as surreal
as enduring violence by a partner, in that everything you thought and felt about
reality shifts. Everything looks different and everything feels different. There is
a much heavier weight than the concerns of the deities in these poems, although
Acharya lightens the load with some gentle and exquisite lines.
Lines like ' Look stranger/you can hurt no longer./ The dappled moth escaped
/trembling/waltz-winged. in ' The Dark Hours'.
Or in ' Sometimes' with its epigraph from Eliot the wisdom of these haunting
lines:
 .. "  You always preferred silence,
        refraining from words to fill me
       with your infinite loneliness.."
Once again her quest for knowledge appears as over-arching theme in the lines
that end this poem: ' Knowing it not, whatever one desires/one is. Knowing is
all.' The familiar mirror trope makes its appearance in 'No Longer Do I Frame
Myself' and is a rather ironic play on that same trope. She floats across the
mirrors that once ' caught her in multiple images'. The multiplicity of the many
selves that construe an identity is given a beautiful homage in ' Hindu Women'.
They are the heroines that aid the poet's journey through an unsteady and shifting
world. I loved it. Sita's escape gives hope on the page and when hope is written
on the page it can transcend into reality, illusory or not. The title of this collection
comes from a poem of the same name, and although Acharya says 'We grow with
the sun,/ numbering our day's illusions' I think the poems here also say we grow
with the moon too.
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the butterfly calls the beginning.
In the poems from ' Looking In, Looking Out' Acharya flies on larger wings as
she alights on art work after painting after Hindu fantasy and fable after flowers
after origin myth after ars poetica after political commentary until she reaches
the attic where the book's title is gleaned. This is a much happier series of poems.
Much has been sloughed and the lines are leaner and more honed. She is more
sure of herself and of her identity as a poet. The humour is as wry but is married
with a gentle tone. This is a writer who is cognizant of pain, and who does not
wish to confer it in any way.
In ' Of Poems' she announces:
  ".. They seldom arrive at your door, ringing your bell
       like the postman with a registered letter or parcel,
       friends invited for dinner, Friends of the Earth,
       or even the truant monsters from hell."
The transformation Mrs. Kafka has in ' Mrs. Kafka's Dilemma' is apparent in
some of the writing here. The humour of ' Dear Tech Support' is ironic and the
poet appears to be having fun with the tropes of the web. Its answering poem
" Dear Customer' made me laugh and these two poems would go down well
with the demography that have attached digital technology to themselves like
another limb. In 'Looking Out, Looking In' we are not surprised to learn that
the poet's attic is an art gallery. Perception is one of the ways in which we
attain knowledge of ourselves and of the world we inhabit. The narrower the
field of vision the narrower the worldview. When she says ' The jharokhas
of my mind are magical looking glasses' we are also expanded in our own
perceptions of the worlds we inhabit. Incidentally, a Jharokha Darshan was
a daily practise of addressing the public audience at the balcony of the forts
and palaces of medieval kings in India. I love that Acharya has conferred
regal authority onto herself and the perceptions of her mind.
In the poems from ' Shringara' ( 2006) the journey to jnana is one that enters
the valley of death. The poet has lost her grandfather and father and the two
elegies that remember and celebrate them are ' Aja' and ' In Memoriam'.
The title of the latter was made infamous by none other than Tennyson, but
Shanta makes it her own. In many ways this is quite a political poem in that
she elevates the Indian father to a position in the canon of poetry previously
unoccupied. It was here that I began to see that we cannot truly appreciate
the other unless they have a line on the same page. This poem prepares us
for one of my favourite lines in the whole collection. From ' Learning' the
poet states ' Learning to reconcile difference is poetry'.
Many of the poems in ' Shringara' focus on remembrance: ' " Remembrance
Sunday", " 9/11", " London: 7 July 2005", " 11 July 2005 (On the tenth
anniversary of the massacre in Srebenica", " Bori Notesz", 'LIFE? OR
THEATRE?", " The Final Act" ( for Wislawa Szymborska) " Remembering
Gandhi"" Remembering" , " Almost" and my favourite " On First Reading
The Bhagavad Gita", which is dedicated to the memory of the poet's
grandfather. He gave her a copy of the Bhagavad and urged her to' see things
as if for the first time.' Books encouraged her to find life's meaning. This is
a beautiful poem with lines that you the reader will remember at the strangest
of times. I was paying for my groceries earlier in the week and the teller
asked me to give him a line of poetry to stave off the boredom of the day.
The opening lines of this poem sprang to mind.
" From an ancient land we came,
  a continent vast as memory".
Sringara is one of the nine rasa, usually translated as erotic love, romantic
love, or as attraction or beauty.The poem from which the collection takes
its title is also called " Shringara". The poet prepares for illusion by putting
on make-up and it is as if grief has removed the last of illusions. She ends
the poem and the poems from this collection with ' The days become my
shringara".
It is no surprise that Acharya was drawn to Emerson, who said that his
central doctrine was ' the infinitude of the private man'. Acharya seems to
have as her central doctrine ' the infinitude of the private woman'. Emerson
led the transcendentalist movement of the mid nineteenth century. His views,
the basis of Transcendentalism, suggested that God does not have to reveal
the truth, but that the truth could be intuitively experienced directly from
nature.

The poems from Acharya's fifth collection " Dreams that Spell the Light" (2010) are poems that tell of journeys to other places and to other cultures. The one that spoke most directly to my multiple selves was most definitely " The Sunderbans".
The Sunderban is a vast forest in the coastal region of the Bay of Bengal which is one of the natural wonders of the world. Its literal translation is ' beautiful forest'. It is an important habitat for the endangered Bengal tiger. Lines like ' A twelve-year-old tigress, one canine missing/ patrols the village with a gap-toothed grin.' bring the tiger back from the metaphor of
Blake into the here and now.
She says that only the pure of heart enter its labyrinth and that ' all migrations leave scars'.
I loved the similitude between our own human migrations and those of the animal kingdom.
I must also admit to not knowing what an apple snail was until reading this poem. What an
apt naming though. I also did not know that elephants retreat when they hear the approach of
bees from the honey trees. Imagery that is rich in concrete detail and at a slant from the
humdrum marks Acharya from the crowd, but she surpasses herself in this poem. The last
lines :' The Sunderbans may one day disappear/leaving no man fit to take the measure of
another' are also characteristic of the deep wisdom of her philosophy.
Acharya comes full circle in her quest for knowledge. In " Black Swans" she asserts that
' There is no way of knowing what we don't know'. There is nowhere to go then but
to ' The Wishing Tree", where mother and daughter ' cast dreams that spell the light'.
In the final section of the book the reader is treated to new poems from 'Imagine'.
It is no surprise that this title poem focuses on the natural world. All boundaries have
dissolved and all borders too. She asks us to imagine a world after a succession of
images of nature and her creatures bereft of nature's blessing. This poem softens the
blow of the previous poem " Nirbhaya", which means fearless one. This poem was
inspired by the death of Jyoti Singh Pandey who was gang raped on a bus in Delhi on
16 December 2012. In accordance with Indian law, her name was not publicly disclosed
as she was raped.She was dubbed the fearless one by the Indian media. Her father wanted
the world o know her name and so he revealed it.The last lines bring us back to that central
tenet of knowledge but this time we know that the jnana women bear and reveal is
one which requires jnani.
.." As long as I can summon the strength to pick myself
   up when cast in the gutter, and rise like a phoenix-
I'll let the universe know it does not exist without my dreams".
Like the yogini in the forest in " Spring Fever" Acharya is in splendid possession of her
poetic craft and the knowledge she has accrued over the years culminates in a conquest
not of her animal self but of all the multiple selves she and we are. In the poem that
concludes this collection, Acharya returns to a figure from her country's history in a search
of the answer to the question' what makes a good leader?' " Ashoka" is her answer, and in
its 335 lines Shanta Acharya not only narrates an important life from her country's history
but also asserts her right to write it. The confidence in the poems that conclude this collection
show the jnani that is such an integral part of the belief system of Hinduism.
My initial romantic notions of an India that builds palaces for its beloveds, and that is roamed
by elephants and tigers was a beautiful illusion. Without that illusion I would never have
been prompted to journey through finely wrought tales of life across the waters. I would never
have acquired my own jnani of the country that gifted me many happy dreams without having
read the deeply wise poems of the yogini that is Shanta Acharya. And all this without never
having visited the country that gifted us one of their finest poets.

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Ireland Edition: The Bombay Review Literary Event.

Sometimes when surfing the web for possible homes for poems or fiction your eye is caught by an editorial that impresses. Reading that ezine may confirm your initial instinct. There is then an especial delight in having work accepted by a magazine whose previous contributors you admire and in whose ethos you believe. By the time my poem "Wing " was accepted for publication in "The Bombay Review" in January 2015, Issue 5,
the magazine had achieved a lot since its inaugural issue in August 2014.

Founded by two journalism students, Aravind Jayan and Kaartikeya Bajpai, this magazine not only helps writers find an outlet for their work, but its fanbase of 1,200 readers on their Facebook page gifts writers readers as well. And that is worth its weight in words as at some level the subject of any story or poem is always the reader. The process of one writer leading to and influencing another is one which this magazine has ensured, as it has moved beyond national boundaries and religious divides, beginning with a small literary
event at a neighbourhood cafe to doing cross border collaborations to International Events, of which Letterkenny was honoured to have been a part of on Thursday night in partnership with Cafe Blend and North West Words. Without the hospitality and support of Cafe Blend  and the generous vision of North West Words the event would not have been as easy to facilitate. The Ireland Edition of this five city tour would not have occurred without the participation and contributions of all the participating writers in Saudi,
India, the UK, India and Ireland, specifically Letterkenny.

The common place of origin in all of us, to which Imagination is the only native, is Art. 

It can never be curtailed by borders, politicians playing marbles in the playgrounds of opinions, or by the smog of Hatred's chimneys. Good writing allows us to widen our eyes again, to see each other afresh using new symbols and metaphors, to begin to forge a language free from slogan and spit, a language that is as inclusive as the sky's range and as ever present as the face of the moon.

The stories and poems that were read forged new alphabets of communication between listener and writer.

These meetings that took place between words, readers and listeners remind us of Yannis Ritsos's lines -

Every word is a doorway

to a meeting, one often cancelled,
and that's when a word is true, when it insists on the
meeting.                                                                                   The Meaning of Simplicity.

The first half of the evening treated the audience to poems written as part of a Poetic
Challenge. The group of three named themselves "Poetically Challenged" , and are
made up of Ineke Abbas, Donal Kavanagh and Kieran Devlin. I particularly enjoyed
their response to the prompt 'Muesli', as did the audience, especially when they took
out their ukeleles. Their particular strength lies in the tongue-in-cheek delivery and
response to what have become entrenched as authentic poetic themes. Each poet
in the group handles line differently, however, which prevents them from sinking into
uniformity. Patricia Morris is a singer, songwriter and poet. Her voice is as haunting
as the selkies so prevalent in the folklore of her native Scotland. And as sonorous.
Many of her poems contained maritime imagery and I look forward to reading them
in book form.
After a brief interval, the second half of the evening belonged to the writers, who
performed their poems and pieces of short fiction to the appreciative audience.I
had asked each performer to give me a hard copy of their work at the start of
the evening. Two pieces were to be chosen by me for publication in "The Bombay
Review." All in all there were fifteen poems and two pieces of fiction.
Pat O'Doherty's piece, entitled "Humble Man" and written in the third person was
a beautifully heartfelt piece of memoir. It reminded me of those early pieces in
Dermot Healy's Force 10. Written as spoken, it had the quality of verisimilitude
that Healy so admired. Caroline Mohan's piece, entitled "One for Sorrow" had
a quality reminiscent of a Kelly Link story. Chekhov's argument that if a pistol is
introduced at the beginning of a story, it must be fired by the end of the story is
skillfully played with here. Nothing is quite as it seems, nor should it be seen to be
in Mohan's skilful hands, and this was the piece I chose.
Sorrel Mae Florence's poem "Celtic Cross Falling" offered a different take on the
symbol of the Celtic Cross, tying it to soul memory, rejecting the norms of social
acceptance and giving Biddy Early a mention. While there were beautiful lines,
my favourites being "I will feel the pulse of music/and the magpie's lonely call"
the poem's length, 52 lines in all, made it harder for the metaphor of the cross to
be consistently functional rather than decorative.In complete contrast, Andrew
Galvin's  'My Father is a sweetheart anarchist" offered a surrealist take on the
poetic trope of  the father. I liked the wordplay with 'in the Father, the son and
the holey vest' but the interconnections the surrealists so loved by placing distant
realities together only apparent to the creator was shunned in favour of a narrative
that although moving would have worked better if the poem had finished a little
earlier and didn't try to encompass as much. One to watch. A gentle lyric that
recorded a moment of despair at her powerlessness over the outcome of her
husband's accident impressed. Poems that recall an event are difficult to carry
off, but Taryn Gleeson managed it in "Untitled." Nick Griffiths has an anarchic
humour that never fails to engage an audience, and his poem "Mixed Marriage"
didn't fail to amuse. In a poem that uses free verse the effect of surprise is one
that allows the writer to play with tension, and if we guess at the intent earlier
than the poet intends, the poem can lose some of its strength. I would have
preferred a different title. A title can establish a context, or it can create a
tension. The poet James Wright's titles set the tone, locate the poem and
create suspense. Here is one to ponder-"As I Step Over a Puddle at the End
of Winter, I Think of an Ancient Chinese Governor".Brian Smeaton's title
really impressed. I loved it. "No One Better No One Worse" sets up many
expectations in the listener, and Smeaton chose to centre on a baptism, but
we need to know this from the poem, and not from an introduction. Still, who
wouldn't embrace the concept in "We're all the one /and all different".
Claire mc Donnell read a poem "Maytime Woodland" from her book.Her
descriptive abilities are excellent, and there were lines that brought the poet
Alison Brackenbury to mind. Mc Donnell has the most gentle of voices, and
could lull a hornet's nest to calm. Lovely. The poem Patricia Morris read had
a title that evoked a painter's palette: "Where Blue meets Blue".A poem has
emotion, idea, physical setting, language, image, rhythm and tension. At least
one of these must be made important to the reader/listener as soon as possible
and Morris chose the physical setting of Five Finger Strand as her focus in the
opening lines "The backbone of the Bay has broken/ along the fault line". The
metaphor of a broken coast and its imagery is a difficult one to maintain in a
poem as long as this, and again I thought the use too rhetorical, although this
is a poet with a keen eye and a deep understanding of pain. In a lyric poem
pacing is integral. Whatever it was that drove the poet to write the poem is
what moves it forward and clarity is vital. Donal Kavanagh's poem entitled
"Chimney Sweep" plays with stereotype and subject matter. He says poetry
is "about mothers, potatoes, turf smoke/you know/authentic shite like that"
and although these tropes are almost cliched they rejected Yeats idealising
of the peasant and fought against privilege of birth. It is his tone that saves the
poem, and I think there will be more parodies to come, maybe with a sly
jab at some of the more dangerous tropes. Great fun. Jean Murray's poem
"Garden Shenanigans" adhered to a mostly regular rhyme scheme of every
second line rhyming in five quatrains. There is a misconception that modern
poetry spurns rhyme. It doesn't, but it must be there for a reason, if nothing
else than to further the poet's vision. I liked the fey feeling in this poem, but
balancing of content resulted in us finding out too early who "She" was. In
Alfie Bradley's "I have climbed the mountain, Dr. Zee", inspired by none
other than Dr. Seuss' "Oh, the Places You'll Go", the poet makes great
strides in six six lined stanzas leading to his meeting the Owner at its apex.
As there is a great playfulness in the language that Seuss is infamous for
the poet has made it difficult for himself with this referent, and I would
have liked a quirkier take on the lambs and ewes he met along the way.
Brid Brady's "Statistic" understands the power of less. In short lines that
cleverly play with our need for repeating patterns she addresses the way
many react to news of illness. There were two epiphanies in this poem,
and this was perhaps one too many.Kieran Devlin's "Door Opener" used
one of my own favourite images as metaphor. I wanted more historic take
and less truism. Who owns the keys? There's the rub. Great opening line
"A lot of things can open a door". Ineke Abbas' poem "I lied to you today"
explores the honesty of dishonesty, but could have been shorter. There
is a great energy and zest to her lines, which is refreshing.
The poem that I reacted to viscerally was Guy Stephenson's "I wait". This
was a persona poem.Persona poems allow poets to write what they don't
know, in order to find out what they do know. Stephenson chose as his
persona a baby. Based on an article from the Donegal Democrat in 1956,
which reported a verdict of murder against some person or persons unknown
on the body of an unknown infant, the poem intersperses the voice of the infant
with a narrative line which may or may not be the mother or a whale. We are
not sure. The opening line of the poem "My bones lie still" are suspense laden
, but the poet opts for a recalling of the infanticide rather than surprising us with
a denouement that unsettles us even further. The metaphor of a dead child is one
which has resonances in the culture and there was a palpable frisson in the room
when it was read so well by Brian Smeaton. The image half of a metaphor, in this
case the baby, needed to give additional meaning each time she speaks, and he
almost always gives this. The last verse echoes the first and kills the suspense he
had so painstakingly built. An excellently crafted and chillingly macabre poem.

The process of writing is one of discovery. Sometimes that process can lead a
poet to break new frontiers. James Finnegan's "philosophy of the face" (for artist
Helene Schjerfbeck 1862-1946) stunned, and was my Poetry choice. Ekphrastic
poems are now understood to focus only on works of art, Homer's description of
how the blacksmith god forged the famous Shield of Achilles in Chapter 18 of The
Iliad is among the earliest examples of "ekphrasis". Modern ekphrastic poems have
tried to interpret, inhabit, confront and speak to their subjects.Finnegan is inhabited
by the opus of his chosen artist, an artist I didn't know prior to reading and hearing
the poem. When a writer gives us a poem he/she presents us with a metaphor that
represents some aspect of his/her world. Finnegan embraces his multiple selves and
discards gender divides in his ability to enter and empathise with the sea and snow
of this artist's life.
The repeating pattern he sets up in the first line is that of the face-
"there is your face your face your face"
The face and what it echoes allows us to guess she is a portrait painter, and I do
not think I have ever read or heard such a chilling portrayal of the rise of fascism
as I did in his third stanza. The black mouth and the one eye protruding are omens
of fear and terror, and although the simile in this verse is slightly jarring, "like a
tintin cartoon" it works, as there is nothing quite as macabre as the cartoon, where
violence has a throwaway quality.
When Rilke was praising the painter Cezanne, he said that painting is something
that takes place among the colours, and what Finnegan does is bring us to an
emotional epiphany through the melancholy of what was obviously the increasing
isolation of this woman's work. The broken lines, the haunting quality of a face
when looked at, really looked at, the break up of the rhythm all match the emotional
epiphany at the end of the poem. I was moved to tears. In old Irish bardic schools,
poets were expected to understand the world from the point of view of a  stone,
a leaf etc,, If men can look at the world from the point of view of a woman's life
in paint and be changed and moved by it, and by so doing change us to become
less binary in our gendering, then there is hope indeed. Maith thu James.
This is a long blogpost, but one I wanted to do as a way of saying Thank You to
all those who participated and made Thursday night possible. I think that every
one of the poets and fiction writers who performed will make it into print in the
very near future. I would like to thank Kaartikeya Bajpai for asking me to
co-ordinate this event and to congratulate he and his team for making their magazine
a part of the history of the literary journey of Letterkenny, and the wider world.And
finally, I would like to give an especial thank you to Eamonn Bonnar of North West
Words for his photographs and continued support. And to my mother, Grainne, for
stepping in and reading Sorrel Mae Florence's poem so beautifully when she was
too ill to attend.

Spray painting, Assassins and the Immortal Poet..

Although Patrick Kavanagh is best known and loved for his poetry, he had another less well known side. His prose was luminous in its truth and honesty, exposing many of the criminal activities of his time. For the most part his prose appeared in he and his brother Peter's publication 'Kavanagh's Weekly', The Irish Press, and in The Farmer's Journal.

One column in that particular journal prompted an assassination attempt on the writer's life.

He had written of his experience of spray painting barns. The reader was able to infer that the whole business was of an illegal nature. A lawsuit from the gentleman referred to threatened libel. Libel laws then meant that almost any critical comment on a person could be construed as libel under the law. It was common to hear the law of libel explained in the phrase: 'The greater the truth, the greater the libel.' Patrick informed the complainant's lawyer that the gentleman referred to had a criminal record, and therefore hadn't a character to be threatened. The Dublin Underworld of that time were not satisfied.

One dark November night in 1959, as Patrick left Searsons bar at closing time to make his way home, a car pulled up. Its occupants invited him to come to a flat for some drinks, and to make peace with the aggrieved crime boss. Always keen to appease hatred of any sort Patrick agreed. However, he blacked out after one drink. He was brought to Baggot St. Bridge, the intention being to drop him over the edge and leave him to drown. As the wall was over seven feet in height, the two assassins were confident that he would be unable to scale its side, even were he to come to. It was not an incident that would have to be investigated, as the verdict would assume it to have been an accidental death.

However, just as he was being pushed over the side a very personal spiritual force intervened. He came to and saw the faces of the two brothers who were pushing him and felt his father around him. Mr.Kavanagh Senior had died in 1929, and Patrick had always had a special type of spiritual relationship with him.

As soon as he hit the water, he was fully conscious and clambered out. It must be remembered that although Kavanagh was a giant of a man he was missing one lung. On the first of March 1955, he had survived lung cancer by having it removed. It is, therefore, even more remarkable that he was possessed of the physical stamina to climb the wall, and make good his escape. He went to the house of a friend of his, a woman doctor, called Dr. Patricia Murphy in Wilton Place. She put him to bed after treating him and drying him off. The time was 1.30am. He had lost one of his shoes and his spectacles in his determined bid for freedom.
He was able to retrieve his hat on the canal bank the next morning.
That afternoon, Kavanagh and Dr. Murphy went to Mc Daids to celebrate his survival.
They were sitting at the bar, when in the mirror Patrick saw the reflection of one of the men who had tried to kill him. The man paled and fled. Kavanagh likened him to Macbeth on seeing Banquo's ghost.

Patrick wrote two accounts of the incident: one for Walter Carroll, the State Solicitor and one for the Farmer's Journal. He titled the piece for the Journal:" The Man They Couldn't Kill".
He refused, however,to allow proceedings against his assailants. The reasons for this were twofold. In the first place, he was concerned for the welfare of his brother, Peter. He had supported him spiritually and physically at various times throughout his life,and he feared for his closest sibling's life.

In the second, he had had enough of the legal profession and the Courts. To understand
why one has to look at what happened in 1954, when he had decided to take a libel
action against the publishers,printers and distributors of "The Leader". The article that
had incensed him was titled "Profile" , and was unsigned. It certainly defined him as a
barfly. His lawyers were so certain of winning that they accepted the case pro bono.
His defence involved the re-invention of his character. A non-drinker who frequented
coffee shops. As the case consisted of cross-examining the injured party for thirteen
hours it was no surprise when he lost it. Although monies for the winning Appeal was
raised from a committee which included literary luminaries such as John Betjeman and
T.S.Eliot, Kavanagh left the courts exhausted and sick.
His response to his assailants, therefore, was one worthy of his great Imagination. He
befriended them. Two years later, one of his assailant's wives gave birth to a differently
abled child. Patrick was asked to lay his hands on the baby as the parents believed
that this was the result of attacking a poet. Belief in the poet's curse was prevalent.
He wrote : "Words like Eternal Judgment or Contemplation are so loaded with
associations that we are inclined to think of God as pompous, whereas even the
facts that we know show the opposite to be true."
The next time you read the lines of his infamous" Canal Bank Walk", whose opening
lines read-
"Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me..."
or read, the opening lines of "Lines Written On A Seat On The Grand Canal,
Dublin"
"O commemorate me where there is water
Canal water preferably, so stilly
Greeny at the heart of summer...." you may find an extra resonance in their meaning.

A Postmodern Bestiarum Vocabulum.

A Bestiarum vocabulum, or bestiary is a compendium of beasts.

Originating in the Ancient world, they were made popular in the Middle Ages in illustrated
volumes that described various animals, birds and even rocks. The natural history and
illustration of each beast was usually accompanied by a moral lesson, reflecting the belief that the world itself was the Word of God,and that every living thing had its own special meaning.
In the Middle Ages, animal stories were the chick-lit, the soaps of the day. They had an allure that held Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East in thrall. Although each of these geographical regions adhered to different religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, many of the same spiritual and religious texts were shared by all three. In particular, all three considered all or most of the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament by Christians), which contains many references to animals, to be sacred.
                                                                                                                                                           

Bestiary manuscripts were usually illustrated.

Bestiary images could be found everywhere. They appeared not only in bestiaries but in
manuscripts of all kinds; in churches and monasteries, carved in stone both inside and

out and on wood on misericords and on other decorated furniture;painted on walls
 worked into mosaics and woven into tapestries.

 Medieval animal illustrations are usually not 'realistic', as in many cases, the artist could never have seen an example of the beast.
The Bestiary could be defined as being part scientific observation, part spiritual lesson,all
to impart happy reminder of man's distinction from the animal world. What could a bestiary
offer the modern world? A world where several species disappear into the void of extinction almost daily?

Les Animots: A Human Bestiary is just such a postmodern bestiary, and is a collaboration
between poet Gordon Meade and artist Douglas Robertson. The collection is so cleverly
constructed that it can take several field trips before the complexity of its ecosystem is
fully appreciated. The collection is divided into four galleries with seventeen poems in
each, but is prefaced by quotes from The Old Testament, Derrida, and Laurel Peacock,
followed by a Proem, and concluded with a poem about the only fabulous beast in the
collection, Dragon as a mischievous Postscript.
The relationship between animals and Adam in the Old Testament was one of dominion.
The quote Meade uses refers to Adam's naming of all living creatures. Derrida is best
known for a form of analysis known as deconstruction, a critical outlook concerned
with the relationship between text and meaning. Deconstruction tries to show that any
text is not a discrete whole but contains many irreconcilable and contradictory meanings,
that any text has therefore more than one meaning. Derrida coined the term 'animot' to
evoke a multiplicity within the singular term 'the animal', a term he considers to be the
fundamental violence against animals in our language, that enables real violence.The
quote 'The animal is a word..' has layered significance then. Finally, Laurel Peacock
writes 'An animot is an animalistic kind of word, and a linguistic kind of animal,
attributing animation, even agency, to language.' This leads the reader to expect a
departure from the habituated poetic topos of the animals we will meet. The quote
is taken from Peacock's essay 'Animots and the Alphabete in the Poetry of Francis
Ponge'. The Proem which the collection opens with is a delightful subversion of the
solemnity which ordinarily accompanies mention of Saint Francis. The poet asks
'Who the Hell/ did he think he was, that two-legged,/joining in all their conversations?'
The fabulous elements of bestiaries accommodate the impossible, and the ability to
talk to animals is entirely apropos here.A proem is a brief introduction to a book, and
what is real and what is not real is immediately turned on its head, which is necessary
if we are to re-enter our relationship with the subjects of all the subsequent poems.

Gallery One opens with a quote from the American poet Charles Wright's poem 'I shall be released'.
It speaks of the change that comes when we move beyond naming. This is a leap into
unknown territory. The territory of giving animals their own voice. We transmute into
humans determined by Panther's leap into the unknown, Snake's rattle, Raven's magic,
Fox's self-determination, Beaver's reclamation of his own identity, Wolf's life story
contained in a single sound, the societal rejection of Seahorse's surrogacy, Crab's
 heart, Coyote's gastronomic inclinations,Gannet's indifference, Magpie's eye for
 colour and dazzle, Hare's lunar presence, Woodpecker's drilling of truths, Spider's
 oblique approach and Seal's view of the parallel universe of the human.
To a certain extent the poems are concrete poems in that some of the meaning
is conveyed partly or wholly by visual means. I particularly loved the playing cards
Robertson sketches in the tail feathers of Raven, adding extra meaning to Meade's
opening stanza.
                            Raven is bringing magic.
                            It is not the sort of magic
                            you see on Channel Four.
The television sets the majority of people glean their knowledge of the animal
kingdom and the society that has created the human animal that knows so little
of the world it inhabits is given a wry tug by Seal in the final lines of this gallery.
'To him, watching us is like us watching a movie, on television.'
My favourite poem in this section is Fox. Meade doesn't reduce any animal
with a determinant, such as 'a' or 'the'. This is a clever decision and a humane
one,as it removes any distancing such a use allows. When Hughes said that he
thought of his poems as animals, in Poetry in the Making, Meade satirises the
industry that has built up around such poetic statements in Fox. Although Hughes
wanted to show what man and animal had in common, Meade appears to be
saying that Fox is much more than a poetic topos.
                                    Fox is sick
                                    of being chosen
                                    as the subject
                                    of so many poems.
He goes on to say that she wishes 'to be left alone/ to get on/ with her business/
of being a vixen;/of raising the next/ generation of/ inspirational cubs'. Meade's vixen
is the prototype of any emancipatory movement, and the plaster cast of her pawprint
that Robertson uses to accompany the text could be read as man's reduction of the
mammal Vulpes to recognising its track and beyond that nothing. It struck me as I was
reading this collection that the interplay between text and image is one that would lessen
both if they were separated.
The lightness of touch in the line drawings that Robertson has chosen to use and Meade's
short lines with each poem opening with the heavy stress on the named animal works.
The book has the feel of a naturalist's field journal, although the absence of colour assumes
the reader/listener can visualise the species described.
Gallery Two is spellbinding, opening with a quote from Michael Collier's poem
'Birds Appearing in a Dream'.
                     'Everything is real and everything isn't.
                      Some had names and some didn't.'
This was my favourite section of the collection as this is where many demonised
species are reinvented and in many cases given a rare airing in the world of the poem.
Tadpole remembers Spawn who is thrilled at her endless possibilities, but Frog has
grown far beyond Spawn. This little triad can be read as a metaphor for human growth,
animal biology or more interestingly as the similarity in the maturation process in so
many living things.Butterfly is a poet , as reclusive as Emily Dickinson, but her reasons
are purely down to the detrimental affect chaos theory is having on her life. Brilliant!
                      She drifts, slowly, around
                      the rooms of her house, silently mouthing
                      favourite lines of verse.
Meade's use of enjambment lulls the reader into almost thinking these sound like prose
pieces. Don't be fooled. There is a technical virtuoso here that comes from years of
writing poetry, and nowhere is this evidenced more clearly than in Mole. Mole is to
worm a vengeful God, whose blindness causes his crucifixion on the mole catcher's
barbed wire. This says so simply what miles of print media has failed to adequately
explain about the lengths we all go to or indeed try to run from in the name of belief.
                          Mole, however, is also
                          a blind God: a God who, at the end,
                          will face his own
                   
                          annihilation at the hands
                          of Man; a clumsy crucifixion
                          on a barb of wire.
This has the simplicity and the profundity of a Greek myth, and as such will I believe have
a timeless appeal.

The consequences of man's objectifying of the animal kingdom, their role in our
entertainment business, their depiction as marauding beasts, as demonic as the
serial killer, the lasciviousness with which we look at them, our lack of knowledge
 about them are addressed in Gallery Three.This is prefaced by a quote from
Rose Mc Larney's poem 'Facing North'.
                                   I said I would never use animals
                                   as the figures for my sorrows again.
This section has a sadder tone, which is amplified by the images used by the
illustrator. Padlocks, chains, dismembered body parts, scales as protection,
jagged shadow, six cat prints to name a few. Mc Larney's poem has the
euthanasia of a goat as its subject matter, but the damage that we have
done to ourselves as a species in our treatment of the other is what this section
handles so deftly.
Gallery Four is the darkest of the four. Opening with a quote from Jim Harrison's
Songs of Unreason it intimates what is to follow.

                    A few years back I began to lose
                    the world of people. I couldn't hold on.
In the poems that follow the lines blur between the two kingdoms. Owl has fiscal
surety, Jackdaw has adopted human addictions, namely alcohol and cigarettes,
Three Toes (sloth) is the victim of capitalist greed, Squid is harvested to whet the
ego of we writers, Rhino is impervious to extinction, Arctic Fox lives in a habitat
affected by global warming, Eagle Owl refuses to migrate from Chernobyl,
Crane has found utopia in the Demilitarised Zone between the ubiquitous North
and South, Horse has gained and lost from being protected by the upper classes,
Elephant has forgotten what he once had, Vulture knows the paradox of life
in death and death in life, Dogfish is a bit of a con, Moth is the black sheep,and
Kingfisher is able to traverse different universes. The poem that clinches this whole
collection for me is Badger. If deconstruction is ' an antistructuralist gesture' then
Badger is the signature poem in this collection. I must admit that I am adverse to
the ongoing cull of old Broc, and that Badger was my favourite character in
 'The Wind in the Willows'. Indeed I have had my best romantic encounters by
the kissing gate at the bottom of the Tor in the presence of an ambling badger
and her cubs, who regarded me as an impediment to their nocturnal feed.

                           Badger has been
                           on the receiving end
                           of a government

                           initiative to try
                           and wipe him out. There
                           must be something

                           about his stripey snout
                           that upsets the ruling classes.
                           A representative of

                           the downtrodden
                           masses, there is little he can
                           do about it. Just lie

                           low, until the men
                           with the double-barrels either
                           hit or miss, then go.
The accompanying illustration is not of the badger but of a fox, the trickster human and
two empty shotgun cartridges.This is a tour de force. If only Damh the Bard would set
some of these to music my happiness would be complete.
Gordon Meade is reading from this collection in Cafe Blend in Letterkenny as part
of the celebrations for North West Word's six years of celebrating music and the
spoken word on Thursday 31st March at 8pm. Entry is free, and it will be a
privilege to hear Meade read from what is in the opinion of this blogger a
collection that will be seen as seminal in not just the world of poetry, but also
 in the world of environmental politics.The evening will be hosted by Eamonn
Bonnar, who is a compere of wit and sensitivity. Google Letterkenny now.
Book a flight. Be part of a historic literary event.
'Les Animots' is published by Cultured Llama and can be purchased for the most
reasonable price of £13.00 by clicking on www.culturedllama.co.uk/books
You won't regret it.







                     




 

. 

The Shadow of Shelley in February.

I have always found the month of February full of the surprise of growth and the return of hope.When the beginning of the month saw Ashraf Fayadh's death sentence commuted to eight years in prison and eight hundred lashes I knew February had once again gifted a special treasure..Only time will tell if his appeal will be successful. I hope it will. It is impossible not to be reminded of Shelley, when contemplating poets, assassination attempts and the interest those in power take in silencing them forever.
Of all the Romantic poets, Shelley's major creative efforts were concentrated on producing a series of long poems and poetic dramas aimed at the main political and spiritual problems of his age and society. Although better remembered for his late Italian lyrics-'To a Skylark', 'The Cloud', or even the well worn school renditions of 'Ozymandias' there was an early Shelley who is still the prototype of today's political activist, and whose ties with Ireland and its fight for emancipation cannot be written without reading him, in particular his infamous 'Declaration of Rights'.
 Right 27-
'No man has a right to be respected for any other possessions but those of virtue and talents. Titles are tinsel,
power a corrupter, glory a bubble, and excessive wealth a libel on its possessor.'
Even in his prose there is leaning to the lilt and beat of rhythm.

Why is one of the great biographical mysteries of his life of vital interest to all champions of freedom today? What did Shelley do that convinced the shadows of power he needed to be silenced? And was the attempted assassination in Tan-yr-allt real or a figment of his imagination? Is the mysterious case of Tan-yr-allt a precursor for the panopticon? The poet, of whom exile, infamy and opprobrium played such a large role in his life, shelters many who attempt to break down the walls of falsehood in today's virtual world.
I decided to write this blog using the stanza of 'The Revolt of Islam' which Shelley took from Spenser's 'The Faeire Queene', without the rhyme scheme. There are two reasons for this. The first is that in 'The Revolt of Islam' learning is passed on by the learned philosopher to the youthful activist. Shelley wrote this after he had abandoned political activism, and I would suggest that were Fayadh to be freed what he would next write could be of great interest to all readers everywhere. If Shelley had been killed in Tan-yr-allt we would never have had one of my favourite poems. Secondly, this is a blog about poets and poetry, and I thought it would be fun to write it in verse. It did take longer than I had planned running to 243 lines, and I hope, that you the reader enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.Finally his atheism is misunderstood and ill defined, a commonality he shares with some of those facing death for similar accusations, and I thought it high time to stop shying away from the difficult.

I am greatly indebted to Shelley and also to Richard Holmes' masterful biography 'Shelley-The Pursuit', a copy of which I bought  while on a J1 Visa to  America, where I worked in Amagansett Farmers Market twelve hours a day five days a week and dreamed of being a writer..His poems and pamphlets accompanied me in the years I worked as a Community Worker. As I began to experience the sharp end of prejudice he strengthened me. It comes as no surprise that on the anniversary of his attempted assassination the Irish populace changed voting patterns that had been in place since the Civil War. Perhaps his spirit never really left, and remains to guide us to a kinder and more just world. Perhaps.

                 The Mysterious Case of Tan-yr-allt and Percy Bysshe Shelley. 

And through his westward facing windows
beyond the wide lawn those enormous
cedars,rook resting elms, American reds
doorways to deeper, darker shading firs,
and joined by a stone bridge those two ponds
the bigger of which they called Warnham Pond
whose Great Tortoise rose out at night from pool
he'd dug three hundred years ago
to trundle into the Great Snake's monster lair.

Each childhood has its world, a flagless land,
where what is seen and heard and done and felt
sketches out a pattern -his was Field Place
Beauty there was his mother giving alms
A father who never mentioned God made them
all go to Church, servants too as he sat
beneath a print of Vesuvius and Christ
crucified when he came down from Parliament
to hear Shelley say Gray's " Nor all that glisters gold".

Under its roof the home of the Alchemist
entered by removing one board of floor
was brought to eternal life by tales
told by lamplight in his sisters thrilling
ears, and an orchard cave was dug for
the arrival of Cornelius Agrippa,
but pegtop, leap-frog, marbles, cricket
the charades he couldn't play made school
the place his inner monster temper took root and grew.

Each night the monsters of dark Syon days
awoke the daemon sleepwalker from dream
frightful and strange that followed him to
the end of his days as 'fire-tailed stars'-
All the old orders of the past gave way
to Paine, rural pace to cotton machine
infernal, revolutionary image,
discovery of electricity,
William Pitt's brainchild the Home Office's surveillance system.

In exchange for cheese, bread, fruit a grocer
gave old books, battered dictionaries-
blue paper Minervas were doors to haunt
the gothic horrors of  fantasies
that blew the boundaries of his playground
with more than gunpowder in those nightly
friendship kisses until occult Walker
opened up his mind to other worlds
showed this son Saturns through solar microscope.

They called him 'mad Shelley' but what was sane
in Etonian fagging he fought not
to join. Like all caged spirits everywhere
his rages erupted volcanically
in fire balloons, grave wanderings,until
from Lind hermetic lore ,daemon raising
and the art of postal debate disguised
as distressed sender became a way
to turn authority inside out and roundabout.

His gothic novel, Zastrozzi A Romance
brought him into the fold of eccentric
with his high sharp laughter at strange moments
and an allowance to continue 'pranking'-
'Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire'
written with his sister brings his exile
cursed to eternal wandering as
omened premonition the summer before
he left for Oxford's fortressed and hallowed halls.

All youth delights in desire and love
forbidden by foreboding redwoods that
cast their fearful shadows on new growth
so that all change becomes a type of war
waged in 1810 by Hogg and Shelley
in pistol shot at parliamentary
franking, paper sailing boats, Voltaire
Godwin, Paine and Franklin,dreams of Venus
played out in all her different starring guises.

I see him now illumined by ideal
waging a secret war against warfare
monarchs private and public, poverty,
and all the igions that are or were-
The windows of Slatter and Munday's
brought Mrs. Nicholson and Bedlam to
Oxford in Posthumous Poems,but chance
footfall brought Necessity of Atheism
into Reverend Walker's hands and infamy.

Had he not mailed all the bishops
all college heads copies of his pamphlet,
or pledged support for Finnerty in the Herald,
would it have become a party affair?
Or behind it all was it Hunt's attack
on military flogging? Or was it his
refusal to acknowledge his authorship
before the assembled authorities
on the grounds of Anonymous publication?

Not belief nor allegiance nor inquiry
expelled him from Oxford but rule breaking
at the age of eighteen barred from family
an outcast in exile. Fiction was now
fact born with fiend of solitude in cave
of  Fancy by dream mists within dream
of soul that terrified and mesmerised
the pillars of his disbelief in Xt,
chasing after his chase of commune with Venus.

There is nothing quite as Shelleyan as
an August coffee shop lurk on Sunday
in an enchanted 1811,
Nothing spells romantic more than elope
in a night train from Green Dragon Inn bound
for Edinburgh with Harriet Westgrove.
There is a rescue urge chasing Shelley
along the rushing river and rocky
heights below the wooded valleys of losses.

After wedlock his wolf would prowl the price
of forbidden match. His pack gathered
first from Hogg, Harriet and he was lost
in York to his wife's sister's scheme
of proper and Hogg's improper lust,
So Eliza, Harriet and he were
the three that ran to Keswick leaving Hogg
his first proper friend, his first forbidden,
where he wrote 'An Address to the Irish People'.

Pattern of myth making key events,
Pattern of three in free love households
occlude easy tale but occult had lit
a spark that fanned to flame in his time
of occupying army in an
England that was hungry, discontent, angry,
and those strange lights and noises at his
cottage brought out an atheist in all
believers in non-believers in gang attack.

Is there a myth more mythical than that
of son falling from his father in faith
and art? In his search for meaning he met
his double future in Southey who met
his past self in Shelley. Misunderstood
is his disbelief. God's will as tool
to justify the ways of Man to men
defined God for him as mass of infinite
intelligence bringing his heart to all he saw.

There is something braver in cowardice
that stands its ground despite its fear.There was
something stronger in them now after this.
They left Whitehaven in the rain for Dublin.
The echoes of their pamphlet throwing
ghost chase the wind when papers blow about
Fishamble Street in February rush.
His speech was heard and noted by special
agents and his name was filed away in Whitehall.

In letters he sent to his soul sister
Miss Hitchener tales of human despair
replaced theory, but in letters sent to
Godwin he tempered down as he wrote his
Declaration of Rights he sent on to Devon
in a large deal box. The Irish mission
was a defeat but they had made a friend
Mrs. Nugent and swallowed the truth
of doormen guarding bigotry by keeping out.

The wolf that snapped at his heels gave
him reason not to always pay his bills
and gave customs reason to open up
the deal box to see what it hid within.
A watch was set upon Miss Hitchener
by Sidmouth's network of informers
and spies that followed her to Lynmouth
fished 'vessels of heavenly medicine'
boats and bottles as fire balloons floated above.

Only Dan Healy, their Irish convert
was caught in Barnstaple by covert spies
pinning up hated Rights to barnyard doors
and sentenced to six months for subversive.
The watch that was set up to observe him
lost him to Tremadoc, wonder of Wales
in Tan-yr-allt with Godwin's household
his centre of gravity that led him
to throw Portia to Propriety's gaping maws.

If his soul sister Portia had fallen
from favour the Embankment project was
vision of reform in earthly surround-
As he followed promised payments
did he see the irony? If all hunted
accept the role of hunter what do they
reflect but wolf? All packs have alpha males
that maintain the social order with force
but Shelley threw caution to February winds.

If the Embankment was to survive work
unrest could let high spring tides fatally
breach all. Perhaps the future that he saw
blinded him as he displayed again his
sympathies for fourteen executed
frame workers for Luddite activities.
When the Honourable Robert Leeson
was given the Irish pamphlet he sent
it on to London and the wolves picked up his scent.

If storm can be read as future portent
or warning that third February week
blew dark and stormy gales across rivers
of roaring roads and notice of rewards
were posted for breaking and entering
felons as Dan Healy returned from six
months gaol as rumour blew into true fact
about an ex-con to abet dissent
from Tan-yr-allt the house that means 'Under the Hill'.

Saturday 26 February
saw that sabre wielding poet retire
with his pair of pistols. Perhaps he wrote
some more of Queen Mab or perhaps he spoke
to Harriet of their child that was due
in June. Some like to say the house that night
was visited by a haunting ghostly,
others that his doppelganger was who
he wrestled with that night after shots were fired.

One thing is sure his nightgown was shot through
and in the only note he wrote he said
'I have just escaped ( read how sure he is)
an atrocious assassination' but there
was not one word in all local papers.
The conspiracy of silence he thought
was built against him carried him across
the waves to an island in Killarney
never to be the sword of prophecy again.

As in every mystery the theories
that emerge say more about the teller
than any tale. The hallucination
tale centres on absent footprints on ground
wet from torrential and paved with stones on
all three sides of verandah. The impression
of ball on wainscot spoke of shot fired towards
the window not from but trajectory
of downward from east holed gown before wainscot rest.

Behind deleted and obscured lies
Lady Truth written down as letter by
Harriet which finds intruder quitting
office through shrubbery window who missed
his shot at S who fired before struggle
on wet ground found target on villainous
who swore revenge by God on wife and sister
before he fled .The clock chimed four to sound
of pistol shot then broken glass by death struggle.

That they had heard it said Leeson had sworn
to drive them out of that country is fact,
or was it 'a contemptible trick' as
Madock's manager Williams wrote?
Was Mr. S taunted by gothic tale
made real to terrorize their terror?
Or was it done on Sidmouth's orders
or was this a practice run by Shadow
shadowing agents before Perceval in May?


I leave this biographical mystery with you to ponder, or to wonder, or to even dismiss out of hand. One thing is certain. Shelley is one poet whose biography and work is peppered with signposts that signal the future that we are living now.





 



















 

A carmen and an error, An Emperor and a poet, and a 2000 year old enigma.

More than any other classical poet, Ovid has had the longest and most far reaching influence on western literature. His 'Metamorphoses' , a fifteen book mythological narrative written in epic metre, and ' Amores' and ' Ars Amatoria' his collections of erotic poems,are his most famous, if not infamous works. How did the first major Roman poet end his life in a banishment by the inclusive intervention of the Emperor Augustus, without the participation of the Senate, or of any Roman judge? Which poem did Augustus never forgive him for? Why did he end his days in Tomis on the Black Sea without revealing the nature of his error and the identity of the 'carmen' (poem)? What was it about his writing that caused the Goliards, those wandering scholars of medieval Europe , to claim him as their patron? The man, who influenced Chaucer, Bernini, Cervantes, Montaigne. Shakespeare, and the Romantics, was unable to use his considerable linguistic dexterity to sway the heart and mind of Augustus, a fellow writer. Or was his crime too serious for words to remedy?Perhaps, the answer lies hidden in the lines of the very poems he was banished for. Was it fear or superstition that silenced him? Was it something otherworldly?Or is there substance to the most recent thesis that Ovid's exile was not real, and that the gap between biography and invention that Roman poets talk about is in Ovid's case true? I believe the answer may lie in his first book of poetry, and in Ovid's breach of something that was dearer to Augustus' heart than any of his moral reforms.

The 'Amores' was Ovid's first book of poetry, and it was published in 16 BCE It was originally published in five books, but was later edited by the poet into its surviving three book form. It follows the popular model of the erotic elegy, involving the possibly fictitious Corinna, the name Corinna being a pun on the Greek word for maiden, 'kore'. Although Ovid followed the popular model of the erotic elegy, he is often subversive with its tropes, exaggerating common motifs and devices. He makes extensive use of humour and parody to celebrate the elegy as a creative mode as deserving of immortality as the Virgilian epic.Reading it now all these years later, Ovid surprises in his modernity. Few poems address abortion as directly as he does in Book 2 Elegy X111 and X1V, named The Abortion and Against Abortion. In Elegy X111, he writes:

'Corinna lies there exhausted in danger of her life,
after rashly destroying the burden of an unborn child.
I should be angry; she took that great risk
and hid it from me:but anger's quelled by fear'.

This is then countered in Elegy X1V with;

'But tender girls do it, though not unpunished:
often she who kills her child, kills herself..'
This is a typical Ovidian two-scene sequence. Augustus imposed penalties on those who failed to marry, or who married but remained childless. From this and from the references to abortion in the literature, the frequent occurrence of abortion in Imperial Rome can be deduced. The legislative opposition, though, came much later. Was it then his promotion of adultery that caused offence?  Did the lines written in Elegy 4 in Book 2 provoke Augustus' rage? 'He's so provincial who's hurt by his wife's adultery/and he's not observed the ways of Rome enough..'Many commentators have insisted that as Augustus was determined to restore Roman public morality he could not fail to punish an author who represented himself as a promoter of what Augustus had made a civil crime instead of a personal one, the penalties of which did include punishment. However, if that were the case, surely writers would have commented on it in the years subsequent to the demise of both Ovid and Augustus. The absolute silence of the next four centuries-and indeed of such extant authors as Tacitus-argues strongly against such ex post facto knowledge. The balance of probability is that the secret was indeed well kept, that few were privy to it, and that for all practical purposes the truth died with Ovid, as he said it should, but there is a mischief in Ovid, a kind of Midsummer glee, that hides in plain view clues to the real subversiveness of his art, a mischief that demands we re-read the text of The Amores in the cultural context of his day. A cultural context that we have been reading in the language of the flesh, and by so doing, we may have mistranslated the language of the spirit.. The first clue lies in augury.

Augury was the practice from ancient Roman religion of  interpreting omens from the observed flight of birds. When the individual known as the augur interpreted these sign, it was referred to as 'taking the auspices'. There were five different types of auspices;ex caelo (from the sky),ex avibus(from birds), ex tripidus (from the 'dance' of birds feeding, ex quadrupedibus (from quadrupeds) and ex diris (from portents). Ovid gives us a portent of an ominous sort, disguised in humour in The Death of Corinna's Parrot in Elegy 6, Book 2. In a grove of dark holm oaks beneath the Elysian slopes 'Parrot gaining a place among those trees/translates the pious birds in his own words'. As the Roman Empire came to prominence, talking parrots, apparently Psittacula parrots from India, were all the rage among the upper classes. Professional parrot teachers were employed to teach the birds to speak Latin. The death of Corinna's parrot presages a much more serious assault on the very fabric of meaning in Augustus' Rome. It is one thing to poke fun at the belief system of augurs, but what he did in the subsequent book would have, I believe, rattled Augustus to his very core.
                                                                                               

Then a light-winged crow slid from the air
and settled cawing on the green turf,
and three times poked the snowy heifer's front
with impudent beak, tearing away a tuft of white hair.
Lingering a long time, she abandoned bull, and meadow-
but carrying on her chest a black bruise;
and seeing bulls grazing the pasture far away-
she hurried to them, and joined her herd,
and looked for earth with greener grass.
                                                                                                                      Elegy 5, Book 3.

In Ovid's dream a white heifer leaves her sleeping mate, a bull, after being pecked three times by a light-winged crow, to join bulls grazing a pasture far away.The interpreter of midnight dreams is consulted by the poet, who identifies the heifer as the adulterous wife and the crow as an old procuress. Some commentators have insisted that this elegy isn't even written by Ovid, which is strange because it is as typical of Ovid as any of his two-scene sequences. The major clue as to how this scene is to be interpreted comes in the preceding elegy, named 'Adultery'. The line 'Argus had a hundred eyes, at front and back' is a reminder for the reader as to which deity the white heifer in the dream represents-Juno. Juno is an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counsellor of the state. She also looked after the women of Rome. In Greek mythology, ravens are associated with Apollo, the god of prophecy. They are the god's messengers in the mortal world. According to the mythological narration, Apollo sent a white raven, or crow to spy on his lover: Coronis. Here, we suddenly have a possible reference point for the identity of Corinna. Is Corinna a play on Apollo's Coronis? When the raven brought back the news that Coronis had been unfaithful to him, Apollo scorched the raven in his fury, turning the animal's feathers black. Argus was Juno's faithful servant, whom she sent to spy on her husband's mistress, Io, whom Jupiter changed into a white cow to escape his wife's wrath. So all of a sudden this dream's significance casts a different light over the whole of The Amores. If gods engage in adultery who is Augustus to defy them? Romulus and Remus,who are mentioned in the previous elegy, founded the city of Rome after receiving divine signs at their hills. Remus first saw six vultures, Romulus later saw twelve.Dreams in antiquity were thought to offer access to the will and knowledge of the gods, and dream interpretation was widespread. According to the ancient theory of dream interpretation, the time of night determines whether a dream is false or true. Ovid says 'It was night', but places the dream in the 'dense grove of holm-oaks', the same place Corinna's parrot goes to when it dies. This place is the realm of the gods, and is it night because the gods are not being propitiated properly in Augustus' Rome? The interpreter of dreams is the midnight interpreter, so does this position the dream at midnight? Augustus believed so strongly in the prophetic nature of dreams that he created a new law requiring every citizen who had a dream about the empire to talk about it on the market in their town. In 17 BCE he reintroduced the Secular Games. The last games had been played a century before. Augustus' Secular Games was a Roman religious celebration, involving sacrifices and theatrical performances, held in Rome between May 31 and June 2. The games Augustus revived took place the year before the publication of Ovid's 'The Amores'.On June 1 white bulls were sacrificed to Jupiter, a white heifer to Juno before theatrical representations were offered to Apollo, the three gods that hover over The Dream. By celebrating these games, the Romans were taking out a new 'lease' with the gods. The name Augustus means 'blessed by the gods', but Ovid is implying that he isn't. In 133 BCE, Rome was a democracy. Little more than a hundred years later, it was governed by an Emperor. By the time Augustus dies, popular elections had all but disappeared. Power was located in the imperial palace. The idea of the 'free republic' was just the romantic pipe dream of a few nostalgics and poets, one of whom Ovid, devised an allegorical map in 'The Amores' that a careful reading will uncover as a direct assault on mortal Augustus' appropriating the will of the gods. One of my favourites is -
'The gods too have eyes: the gods have hearts!
If I were a god, I'd let girls with lying lips
deceive my divinity without punishment..'          Elegy 3, Book 3.
Of course Corinna is fictitious.As the paramour of a god, she is protected. No-one can pin an identity on to her, that could cause her to be prosecuted. She lives in the grove of holm-oaks. And it is the power of those gods that protects him from death. Augustus may not have been afraid of what would happen to him in that 'grove of holm oaks', but he would have feared revolt from those who remembered the old freedoms granted by gods, no less.
In 'Ars Amatoria' Ovid provides us with a tantalising insight into the manner of his poetic vision.
'Art works when it is hidden: discovery brings shame
and time destroys faith in everything of merit.'
                                                                     Book 2 Part 8
It is no surprise that several years after the games and the rise of Ovid, that Augustus had The Sibylline Books moved to the Temple of Apollo, where a new copy was made. The Sibylline Books were consulted on the order of the Senate at times of crisis and calamity, in order to learn how the wrath of the gods could be allayed. They were accidentally burned in 83 BCE, and envoys were sent all over the known world to collect a set of similar utterances. Augustus had the new collection put in the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill. This served to strengthen his position as representative of the gods, a position that religious leaders from all faiths have copied ever since, and then, and only then, did he banish Ovid to the Black Sea. In a final burst of melodrama, before leaving Rome, Ovid flung his 'Metamorphoses' in the fire, declaring it unfit for publication. Ovid knew there were other copies of his work in circulation.His banishment was of the type known as 'relegatio', in which the victim retained his property and citizenship, but had his place of exile specified. In Ovid's case, his books were banned from Rome's three public libraries. The poet who had so cleverly mocked imperial aspirations had been outmanoeuvred by a lesser poet, a powerful Emperor who believed in his version of the gods. And it was those very gods and their overweening presence in the hearts and minds of the Roman people that saved his life. The curse poem Ibis that he wrote in exile was probably directed at the person who divulged to Augustus the satirical intent of 'The Amores'. In this case, Augustus made a huge error, because had he ignored the opus, Ovid would not have attracted the attention of subsequent ages. Today, as writers face execution for their work, our present day Emperors would do well to remember the tale of the poet Ovid, whom the gods blessed for his championing of them against those who tried to garner all their gifts unto himself, and to whom they too gifted with an immortal influence on the affairs of present day man, whether we are quite aware of it or not. The grove of the holm-oaks continues to shelter all her poets, especially when their errors are seen as virtues by the inhabitants of that sylvan place.The poet, who died in present day Constanta in Romania, who has been dubbed The First Romanian poet, who had a town 'Ovidiu' named after him, and whose name is a common first name in Romania remains with us still to guide all poets as they traverse all sides of the moon.