{"id":7881,"date":"2022-12-01T12:48:40","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T12:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/?p=7881"},"modified":"2022-12-02T12:18:50","modified_gmt":"2022-12-02T12:18:50","slug":"ian-brinton-paper-from-the-john-james-conference-2017-and-2-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/7881\/ian-brinton-paper-from-the-john-james-conference-2017-and-2-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Ian Brinton: Paper from the John James Conference 2017 and 2 Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Paper given at the John James Conference in Cambridge, 11th March 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his introduction to the 2010 Salt Companion to John James Simon Perril, referred to a \u2018politics of poise\u2019 existing in James\u2019s poetry and to my mind this relates to the poet\u2019s wry sense of transience and his concern for the particularity of the moment. The artist Peter Cartwright\u2019s contribution to that book was titled \u2018art is a balm to the brain \/ & gives a certain resolution\u2019 and his field of observation was \u2018The impact of, and engagement with, the visual arts in John James\u2019 writing\u2019. In particular Cartwright noted how throughout John James\u2019 oeuvre there appeared to be a constant interaction between the poet\u2019s full awareness of what he saw and the ensuing fluidity of these perceptions as they then appeared in his poems.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To Read the Full Article: Talk at John James Conference<\/a><\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Two Reviews.<\/h5>\n

Sabots<\/em><\/strong> by<\/strong> John James, Oystercatcher Press, 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Peter Hughes wrote to me last month to say that there was a new John James chapbook on the cards he intimated that it was \u2018very unusual\u2019 and was to be titled Clogs<\/em>, \u2018Pastoral dialogues from the deep south (of France)\u2019. My reaction was one of keen anticipation on account of considering the Equipage volume from last year, Songs in Midwinter For Franco<\/em>, one of the most important and moving sequences of poems I had read in a long, long time. I recall reviewing that volume for Shearsman<\/em> on-line magazine and saying that what had moved me was contained in the absence of the self-regarding nature that can act as an intrusive shadow looming over poems of loss. In those \u2018Songs\u2019 (for Franco Beltrametti who had been published alongside John James by the Tim Longville, John Riley & Gordon Jackson enterprise Grosseteste Books) there were references to a culture of reading and recalling as well as comments on the necessary sharp eye of the wine grower who looks out for a \u2018bud break yet to come\u2019. When I read Sabots<\/em> for the first time this morning I was not in any way disappointed in my great expectations.<\/p>\n

The opening dialogue between Peadar and Alphonse, resident wine growers on the land of South West France, confirms that steady voice that John James has acquired over years of poem-making:<\/p>\n

ah bon I don\u2019t begrudge you in fact I marvel<\/span><\/p>\n

at your calm in the face of our abjection it<\/span><\/p>\n

besets us all this fear of fear & discontent<\/span><\/p>\n

& there was I gathering in my grapes each year<\/span><\/p>\n

till the Mairie dropped me with their flood defence<\/span><\/p>\n

oh I sometimes think I should have seen it coming<\/span><\/p>\n

but was too entranced perhaps by the reverie<\/span><\/p>\n

induced by days of pleasure working in that field<\/span><\/p>\n

Reading these lines I was prompted to take down a book which I have long admired since its first appearance from the Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative in 1979, John Berger\u2019s Pig Earth<\/em>, the first of his three books which he collected together under the arching title of Into Their Labours<\/em>. In the final chapter of Pig Earth<\/em> Berger directs our gaze towards the survival needs of peasant communities:<\/p>\n

Peasant life is a life committed completely to survival. Perhaps this is the only characteristic fully shared by peasants everywhere. Their implements, their crops, their earth, their masters may be different, but whether they labour within a capitalist society, a feudal one, or others which cannot be so easily defined, whether they grow rice in Java, wheat in Scandinavia, or maize in South America, whatever the differences of climate, religion and social history, the peasantry everywhere can be defined as a class of survivors.<\/p>\n

Within the first of the two dialogues that open up Sabots <\/em>Alphonse almost seems to echo the tone of Berger\u2019s assertion<\/p>\n

I thought in my youthful ignorance everyone<\/span><\/p>\n

was like my parents bitches bore their tiny pups<\/span><\/p>\n

kids grew up to be such dams but now a monster<\/span><\/p>\n

grows to enormous size & threatens all of us.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps it is partly in the pun on \u2018dams\u2019 that John James suggests the continuation of a peasant life that is also now threatened by the inexorable passing of time with its accompanying changes to community life. It is also the hallmark of James\u2019s writing to present a convincing sense of the here-and-now, the immediate moment caught as it passes, and Alphonse confirms that \u2018sooner will the hind graze on the air or barbel \/ lie on the bare stones of the beaches of the Orb \/ than I\u2019d allow my steadfast gaze give up this place\u2019.<\/p>\n

Section two of this sequence permits historical, geographical and mythical presences of this world to speak their presence as \u2018Les Randonneurs\u2019, the hikers across this landscape, trace a path through what changes within the unchanging. The wines of \u2018Les Grill\u00e8res\u2019 for instance mutter<\/p>\n

who lives here now as that spy George Borrow might say<\/span><\/p>\n

the house & barns & spread of land all up for sale<\/span><\/p>\n

the crumbling old stone wall is broken by sweet bay<\/span><\/p>\n

some leaves for a civet to perfume the cheval<\/span><\/p>\n

Or, of course, \u2018good apothecary\u2019 to \u2018sweeten my imagination\u2019 as I contemplate the inevitability of loss.<\/p>\n

The third and final section of these Sabots<\/em> which pace their way through a world of Southern France is spoken by John Le Poireau, the \u2018leek man\u2019, who responds to Alphonse\u2019s invitation which had concluded Section One of the sequence:<\/p>\n

& we still have our strength & the power to walk<\/span><\/p>\n

tomorrow let\u2019s call on John Le Poireau & hike<\/span><\/p>\n

three together on the trail to Pech Saint Vincent<\/span><\/p>\n

Le Poireau\u2019s response holds out a hand also to Peadar to join this saunter through wine-scape lands which reflect a continuing way of life:<\/p>\n

well Peadar we need to turn the earth between the vines<\/span><\/p>\n

now that we\u2019ve honoured Vincent with a second cut<\/span><\/p>\n

the sun begins to shine more strongly as we begin<\/span><\/p>\n

to glide on into spring the freakish snow has disappeared<\/span><\/p>\n

into the soil the olives are showing paler green<\/span><\/p>\n

the soucis decorate the banks of le chemin with gold<\/span><\/p>\n

a virgin hovers over us & smiles on our obsessions<\/span><\/p>\n

& opens up the year to all our efforts<\/span><\/p>\n

As if echoing the comments made by a ploughman in Edward Thomas\u2019s poem from May 1916 in \u2018As the team\u2019s head-brass\u2019 John Le Poireau affirms a continuation of life as he says that although \u2018La Tramontane will crumble the broken clods as we stumble \/ on the rising ground\u2019 the work of the new season must proceed:<\/p>\n

but this year we\u2019ll beat the weedy grasses & the tares<\/span><\/p>\n

not let them hamper our shins in passage through the ranks<\/span><\/p>\n

let the moist soil cleave to our boot soles<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Sabots<\/em> is an uplifting sequence of three poems which restores a sense of vitality and endurance to a world threatened by commercial bureaucracy and \u2018targets\u2019. It is a tribute to the quietly unchanging in a fast-changing world. It\u2019s terrific!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Songs In Midwinter For Franco<\/em><\/strong> by John James, Equipage, 2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

John James\u2019s last three volumes have been haunted by ghosts and we are aware of the poet being \u2018touched by their sacred lineage\u2019 (\u2018Thoughts Beyond the Stricken City Long After Ren\u00e9 Char\u2019 in Cloud Breaking Sun<\/em>, Oystercatcher Press, 2012). Certain ghosts are more frequent haunters than others and we had met Andrew Crozier \u2018walking on grass\u2019 in the Equipage publication of 2011, In Romsey Town<\/em>, before a line of Crozier\u2019s \u2018Free Running Bitch\u2019 opens that 2012 \u00a0Oystercatcher volume. Another major presence is Jeremy Prynne who appears with his \u2018tie a strip of orange on white\u2019 and as the dispenser of \u2018a generous glass of Glenmorangie\u2019 in the same little collection of thirteen poems.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The third of these volumes, the one with which I am immediately concerned here, was written at La Mani\u00e8re in the South-West of France and it is one of the most moving sequences of poems, or songs, that I have read for as long as I can recall. What moves me is contained in the absence of the self-regarding nature than can act as a shadow to poems of loss. Here there are references to \u2018we\u2019 but not to \u2018I\u2019, references to a culture of reading and recalling as well as to the sharp eye of the wine-grower who looks out for a \u2018bud break yet to come\u2019. Threading its careful path through these poems is a meticulous concern for a palpable \u2018now\u2019, an attention to detail that echoes an earlier poem, \u2018The Conversation\u2019 in which the importance of Jeremy Prynne\u2019s leafing through pages \u2018gave some new sense of strengthening regard for common things.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The cycle of songs occupies a weekend and the first days of the ensuing week in mid-winter La Mani\u00e8re. It opens with a reference to Prynne\u2019s Equipage publication from 2003, Biting the Air<\/em>, and the placing of moment by moment attention, \u2018to gain the day \/ key by key\u2019, becomes a pathway of clear steps. One is very much in the present but it is a present with one eye looking over the shoulder at the Col de Fontjun, scene of a massacre of French Resistance fighters in 1944, whilst recognising that \u2018the sun \/ will soon \/ break out at noon \/ despite the chagrin\u2019 dropping from memories of that event. These songs of midwinter herald a stillness within change: the sun will soon break out again despite that atrocity of seventy years ago and feelings of loss are placed, perhaps by implication, against an event which took place not that far away at Mt S\u00e9gur seven hundred years before on a March dawn in 1244 when the Proven\u00e7al civilization was snuffed out as the Cathars burned in their hundreds; an event which prompted Pound to refer to the \u2018wind space and rain space\u2019 haunting the slope of the Pyrenees.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Another voice shadowing this cycle of songs is that of John Donne\u2019s celebration of the midwinter season, \u2018A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies day, Being the shortest day\u2019. In the second of James\u2019s songs, after a lingering sense of the past\u2019s presence in a reference to the domesticity of a table being set \u2018not to forget\u2019, there is a cry for an end to rain. As with Donne\u2019s \u2018generall balme th\u2019 hydroptique earth hath drunk\u2019 we hear the plea<\/p>\n

oh keep away<\/span><\/p>\n

pass into blue<\/span><\/p>\n

sky tomorrow<\/span><\/p>\n

the earth in truth<\/span><\/p>\n

can swallow no more<\/span><\/p>\n

enough be still<\/span><\/p>\n

John James\u2019s sequence of songs moves from Saturday to Sunday through numbers five and six and there is an alert sense of a future waiting to unfold as \u2018all is ready \/ for the next step \/ under hidden starlight\u2019. This cycle of songs gives us no quick resolution to loss and growth as the awareness of a movement beyond this year\u2019s midnight is brought to our attention with precision and a low-key style that registers loss and waiting for all of us and not only for the poet:<\/p>\n

over the way<\/span><\/p>\n

darkness come early<\/span><\/p>\n

before the Angelus<\/span><\/p>\n

space closing in<\/span><\/p>\n

& sparing no one<\/span><\/p>\n

from the night<\/span><\/p>\n

The presence of the Donne \u2018Nocturnall\u2019 recurs in song seven with \u2018invisible midnight love\u2019 and its pertinence is recorded for \u2018each of us \/ a very particular case\u2019. It is this particularity which itself recalls \u2018a thousand embraces \/ in each room\u2019 and the following pun on the word \u2018tear\u2019 in which that which drops is also that which is torn.<\/p>\n

These \u2018Songs in Midwinter\u2019 are threaded with particularities of the sort informing that quality of \u2018thereness\u2019 found in paintings by Vermeer. We are aware of how the sharpness of La Tramontane, the wind from the North, can devastate the growth of the vines and we are given a reference to Andrew Crozier\u2019s 1987 anthology A Various Art<\/em>. As the mind rests restlessly in midwinter it recalls pints of Kingston Black at The Ostrich in Bristol and how \u2018a sudden enormity \/ changes everything\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018Songs in Midwinter\u2019 was published in Shearsman Magazine online in 2014 and \u2018Sabots\u2019 in Tears in the Fence online in 2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ian Brinton\u2019s most recent publications include Language and Death<\/em>, a translation of poems by Philippe Jaccottet (Equipage, 2022), a translation of\u00a0 Paul Val\u00e9ry\u2019s Selected Poems<\/em>, (Muscaliet Press, 2021, with a Preface by Michael Heller), Paris Scenes<\/em>, a translation of Baudelaire\u2019s \u2018Tableaux Parisiens\u2019, (Two Rivers Press, 2021) and Islands of Voices<\/em>, the selected poems of Douglas Oliver (Shearsman Books, 2020). His translation of de Nerval\u2019s Les Chim\u00e8res<\/em> is due to appear shortly from Muscaliet Press. He reviews for The London Magazine<\/em>, PN Review<\/em>, Litter<\/em>, Long Poem Magazine<\/em> and Golden Handcuffs Review<\/em>. He co-edits the magazine SNOW<\/em> and is closely involved in running the archive of modern poetry at Cambridge University Library.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Click here to go back to:\u00a0Contributors and Links to Pages 1 – 4<\/a><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Paper given at the John James Conference in Cambridge, 11th March 2017 In his introduction to the 2010 Salt Companion to John James Simon Perril, referred to a \u2018politics of poise\u2019 existing in James\u2019s poetry and to my mind this relates to the poet\u2019s wry sense of transience and his concern for the particularity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[68,12],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/images.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42xiC-237","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7881"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7881"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8300,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7881\/revisions\/8300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}