I always find it interesting to bring something to the Workshop, just to see what other poets think I might be doing in a poem. I don't always do what they suggest, but I think carefully about why they have suggested it. Poets as critics are like the old BASIC computer punch cards; they can only show you where the error is in your programming, they can't fix the error for you. Their suggestions help me consider other options when I rewrite, and more importantly, when I encounter the same sort of problem next time.
Often, just reading the poem out loud, in front of other poets you respect, gives you the distance you need to judge the work for yourself. In the poem about the opening of the new British Library building (circa 1997), I wanted two things from the group: to see if they could get a sense of the anonymity of Enoch Soames, whether they knew the story or not, and to see if the poem was conveying the idea of being part of history, while at the same time, knowing you are part of the history which will be forgotten.
Some comments from the group surprised me. For example, I hadn't expected people to think I was being disparaging about the size of Kathy Lette's bum. It isn't a reading that would have occurred to me, but it was useful to think about how to rewrite the stanza so that it wouldn't occur to anyone else, either.
I don't know if 'antipodal' works in the new draft, but I like its double meaning of 'people or places on the opposite sides of the earth,' and the root of the word, from the Greek, meaning 'having the feet opposite.' Both applied to Kathy Lette, an Australian novelist whose 'head-over-heels' two minutes of Post-Colonial clowning effortlessly subverted the solemn press coverage of the event. Although all the invited writers posed for a group picture, most newspapers used the picture of Lette, sprawled mock-seductively on a Reader's desk-top at the new British Library at the Official Opening (quoted as saying she wanted to 'put the clit back into Lit).
Max Beerbohm's work was also playfully irreverent. He wrote of William Morris: 'Of course he was a wonderful all-round man, but the act of walking round him has always tired me.' A witty satirist, as well as a talented caricaturist, Beerbohm's personal library included fake inscriptions, and doctored photographs, covers, and annotations as delicious and incongruous as Joe Orton's more public efforts.
In Beerbohm's "Enoch Soames" (published in Seven Men and Two Others), the title character sells his soul to the Devil at ten past two on June 3, 1897, to visit the reading-room of the British Museum a hundred years hence. He intends, triumphantly, to find posthumous poetic fame when he checks his entry in the 1997 card catalogue. Instead, the only critical mention of him is as an imaginary character in a short story by Max Beerbohm.
Instead of Soames, I could have used a 'real' writer whose works have fallen into obscurity, like Colley Cibber, or Hall Caine who was greatly admired in his lifetime (although not by Beerbohm). Hall Caine was very sociable, as well as very prolific and if there had been an 'Official Photograph' for any literary event in 1897, most readers would have recognised him. Today, his novels are dismissed, and he is known largely for his autobiographical Recollections of Rossetti.
I used Enoch Soames because Beerbohm's story adds a resonance to the poem and in my poem, I tried to mimic that air of casual familiarity and false intimacy readers feel about writers when they read their work. If the writers mentioned in the poem keep their literary reputations, readers a hundred years hence will be able to guess their identity from their first names; if not, they will be forgotten as completely as Enoch (and Hall).
I think poems have to earn the right to be read closely; the first reading of a poem has to be intriguing enough to make people want to reread it. Although no one commented on it, I found the shape and rhythm of the poem very unsatisfying, and I thought the poem needed more levels of meaning. I wanted to be able to evoke emotion with the ease that Hugh Epstein does in his poem about urban landscape :
Spare
Level headed cow parsley by the line.
Back wall bricks drying in a rainbreak.
The tower blocks of south London
gleaming before steady clouds;
a trundle of movement.
It can seem enough.
Reading Hugh's poem, it's easy to see why my poem wasn't working: there were no textures or contexts in my poem, no evocative sights or sounds specific to the reading-rooms, no depths. In later drafts, I tried to make the poem more intense, and give it a better sense of place. I've also tried to articulate the extraordinary affection readers feel for the British Library – old or new.
This third draft is moving towards what I want the poem to be.
LOST PHOTOGRAPH: OPENING OF THE NEW BRITISH LIBRARY, 23/11/1997
There are too many writers to stand
so we sit on the chairs
yes, that's me!
three down from Penelope,
leaning towards Helen
just two to the right of Tony Benn
the old Reading Room only a memory
its great airy dome made redundant
by this new halogen-bright sky
no one's thinking of Max, of course,
but Harold's in mid-pause at the back
--- being historical
and that's me!
watching Kathy, triumphant,
rub the shine of her desk
with her sleek Antipodal bum
to the left are the new reader's rows
of post-modern computers long gone
in a hundred years time
but that's me!
and in a hundred years time
when the negative's turned
I'll still be there:
in front of Harold
leaning towards Helen
three to the left of Penelope
two up from Tony Benn
right beside Enoch Soames
--- unidentified.
comments on the workshop
This was a good, close reading of the poem, and I've made several small, but important change because of it. I still haven't resolved the 'Enoch Soames' quandry. If I'd called the poem 'Roads' and dedicated it to Bob Dylan, then I'd clearly be making a link between Bob Dylan and some lyric associated with him. Iin the same way, I'm hoping dedicating the poem to Max Beerbohm, and giving Enoch Soame's name in full will nudge the reader just enough to suggest there might be something else going on in the poem.
I don't want a footnote because I agree with Richard; footnotes are either jokes, or unbearably pedantic. Giving a name in full means the persona thinks it's important and any literary dictionary can tell you about 'Enoch Soames.' If you don't know who he is, you lose a layer of meaning, but I think that layer is already implied by the tone, and the turning of the photgraph. So, in this version, at least, I've decided to solve the problem by dedicating the poem to Max Beerbohm, and leave it at that. Of course, a poem doesn't become 'final' until it's in place, in print, in a book, for me, so I can still change my mind in two years time, when 20th Century Vices comes out.
04.05.1999. Final Draft: Kim Morrissey
Official Photograph ( Now Lost)
[British Library Opening
23.11.1997]
for Max Beerbohm
There are too many writers to stand
so we sit on the chairs
yes, that's me!
three down from Penelope
leaning towards Helen
just two to the right of Tony Benn
the Round Reading Room only a memory
its great airy dome made redundant
by this post-modern halogen-lit sky
No one's thinking of Marx, of course,
just Harold in mid-pause at the back
being historical
and that's me!
Watching Kathy, triumphant
press the shine of her desk
with her sleek Antipodal bum
to the left, the new readers rows
of pre-millennial computers
already obsolete
but that's me!
And in a hundred years time
when the negative's turned
I'll still be there:
In front of Harold
Leaning towards Helen
Three to the right of Penelope
Two to the right of Tony Benn
Right beside Enoch Soames
- unidentified