I’ve
been thinking a lot about this subject lately, in order to contribute to a
panel discussion with several other poets, put on as part of the campaign to
save Redland Library in Bristol. Trawling through my childhood for influences
was an interesting and useful process, and I was particularly pleased that the
story attached to one of the books I settled on centres on another local
library. Moreover, I recommend the exercise. I think it’s important to explore
where you come from as a writer, as it helps to establish a route map for
future writing. It might even inspire you.
Hymns
and Psalms
My
grandmother, who raised eleven children between the wars and who always kept a
pencil and a scrap of paper in her apron pocket to write down lines of poetry
as they occured to her, taught me my nursery rhymes, and these were my first
poems, but the first book of poetry I encountered was Hymns and Psalms, the
hymn book of the Methodist Church. Methodism influenced my relationship with
language throughout my formative years, and has had a huge, if mainly
subconscious, effect on how I use it in my writing.
I
attended Sunday School every Sunday afternoon from the age of two until I was
about 12, and every Sunday morning I sat through the regular church service.
Having the attention span of a gnat, I spent years dreaming my way through
sermons and prayers. I also found that if I stared very hard at the minister
without blinking, I could make a halo appear right around his body, a bit like
a Ready Brek kid (only less orange).
The
bible stories back then were read from the King James Bible with its strange
language and beautiful rhythms, as were the psalms, which Methodists render in
a call and response format, between the minister and members of the
congregation. The minister reads the first part of the verse, and the
congregation the part that answers and augments the original statement. This
meant that as soon as I could read, I was speaking poetry aloud, and something
about these ritual readings seeped into my bloodstream.
Then
there were the hymns. These required serious, getting-to-your-feet attention,
and because I was so short, I was allowed to stand on the pew. And the words! … the dark paths on the wings
of the storm, the fiery cloudy pillars, the death of death and death’s
destruction … and that’s without tackling the magnificent hymns of Charles
Wesley, co-founder of Methodism with his brother, John. I really didn’t have a
clue what we were singing about, and for that reason, I’m sure these mysterious
outpourings had a far greater effect on me than they would have done. I was a
five-year-old child soaking up mysticism, metaphor, and the language of poetry.
I was a rhythm Methodist.
‘The
Red Pony’ by John Steinbeck
Like
the Methodist hymn book, this is another case of not fully understanding what I
was reading at the time, and the impact that had on my developing imagination.
It also involves the second most important place in my childhood, after my
grandmother’s house, and that was the old library on the big roundabout in
Filton, where I grew up. Even now, if I close my eyes, I can smell floor
polish, and picture the 1960s formica reception desk, which wouldn’t have
disgraced the Tardis or Starship Enterprise.
My
father would take my sister and me to the library every fortnight, but it was
when I could read for myself that it really came into its own. Those brown card
tickets we had back then were as precious to me as an EU passport, and served
much the same purpose, in that you could travel anywhere with them, albeit in
your imagination. I soon secured double the number under 12s were permitted to
have, and it was a point of honour always to have read all eight books by the
time the two weeks were up – unless the book was a particular favourite, in
which case I would renew it and renew it until another customer demanded its
return.
Neither
of my parents had any interest in literature themselves, so my choice of
reading matter was largely unguided. For a long time, I was addicted to Enid
Blyton; then I moved on to pony books, revelling in stories of gymkhanas, shows
and rosettes.
Then
one day, when I was about seven or eight, I took out ‘The Red Pony’, thinking
it would be more of the same: fictional heroines living my pony dream. If
you’ve read it, you’ll know how far off the mark this expectation was. I got as
far as this episode:
‘Billy
Buck stood up from the box and surrendered the cotton swab. The pony still lay
on his side and the wound in his throat bellowsed in and out. When Jody saw how
dry and dead the hair looked, he knew at last that there was no hope for the
pony. He had seen the dead hair before on dogs and on cows, and it was a sure
sign. He sat heavily on the box and let down the barrier of the box stall. For
a long time he kept his eyes on the moving wound, and at last he dozed, and the
afternoon passed quickly. Just before dark his mother brought a deep dish of
stew and left it for him and went away. Jody ate a little of it, and, when it
was dark, he set the lantern on the floor the pony’s head so he could watch the
wound and keep it open. And he dozed again until the night chill awakened him.
The wind was blowing fiercely, bringing the north cold with it. Jody brought a
blanket from his bed in the hay and wrapped himself in it. Gabilan’s breathing
was quiet at last; the hoIe in his throat moved gently. The owls flew through
the hayloft, shrieking and looking for mice. Jody put his hands down on his
head and slept … ‘
In
the morning Jody awakes and the pony is gone. He runs up over the ridge after
it.
‘He
looked up and saw a high circle of black blizzards, and the slowly revolving
circle dropped lower and lower. The solemn birds soon disappeared over the
ridge. Jody ran faster then, forced on by panic and rage. The trail entered the
brush at last and followed a winding route among the tall sage bushes.
At
the top of the ridge Jody was winded. He paused, puffing noisily. The blood
pounded in his ears. Then he saw what he was looking for. Below, in one of the
little clearings in the brush, lay the red pony. In the distance, Jody could
see the legs moving slowly and convulsively. And in a circle around him stood
the buzzards, waiting for the moment of death they know so well.
Jody
leaped forward, and plunged down the hill. The wet ground muffled his steps and
the brush hid him. When he arrived it was all over. The first buzzard sat on
the pony’s head and its beak had just risen dripping with dark eye fluid. Jody
plunged into the circle like a cat. The black brotherhood arose in a cloud, but
the big one on the pony’s head was too late. As it hopped along to take off,
Jody caught its wing tip and pulled it down. It was nearly as big as he was.
The free wing crashed into his face with the force of a club, but he hung on.
The claws fastened on his leg and the wing elbows battered his head on either
side. Jody groped blindly with his free hand. His fingers found the neck of the
struggling bird. The red eyes looked into his face, calm and fearless and
fierce; the naked head turned from side to side. Then the beak opened and
vomited a stream of putrifled fluid. Jody brought up his knee and fell on the
great bird. He held the neck to the ground with one hand while his other found
a piece of sharp white quartz. The first blow broke the beak sideways and black
blood spurted from the twisted, leathery mouth comers. He struck again and
missed. The red fearless eyes still looked at him, impersonal and unafraid and
detached. He struck again and again, until the buzzard lay dead, until its head
was a red pulp. He was still, beating the dead bird when Billy Buck pulled him
off, and held him tightly to calm his shaking.’
I
got no further. I slammed the book shut and marched straight back to the
library with it, outraged. It was the only book I ever recall not finishing –
and I never forgot its invocation of death, even during all the years when I no
longer remembered the title and the name of the heartless bastard who’d written
it.
Later,
when I came of age, I read the major Steinbeck novels and short stories, but
never glanced right to the bottom of the list of published works – or if I did,
I didn’t twig. I was in my mid-thirties
before the penny dropped, and I finally read it to the end, and cried for the
boy, and the pony, and the old stable hand … and for the child whose
imagination was to be so marked by a half-read book.
Birthday
Letters by Ted Hughes
When
I was 16, the door to my future was slammed shut by my teacher, who insisted I
wasn’t good enough to study English at A-level (despite getting two As at O-level).
As a working-class girl on an assisted place in a posh private school, I
suspect my accent was all wrong, and my face probably didn’t fit either. To
make matters worse, my parents, who were firm believers in deferring to one’s
elders and betters, sided with my teacher and agreed I should study something
else.
I
took it to heart. I took it deep. I took A-levels and a degree in subjects that
were interesting but weren’t what I longed to study. And since I could no
longer be an English teacher, I married the first man who asked me and had four
children in six years, two of whom were diagnosed with autism at the ages of
four and three respectively. By my thirties I was stuck in a damaging marriage
with no career, kids I loved fiercely but who needed all my energy, and no
self-esteem. Moreover, I was estranged from literature, and everything it had
represented for me, for decades.
Then,
the Christmas after Ted Hughes died in 1998, something happened. One evening –
by some random miracle – I found myself in the front room when a programme
about ‘Birthday Letters’ came on the telly. Somehow my husband and all the kids
were elsewhere, and none of them interrupted me. I poured myself a glass of
Shiraz, and watched and wept as the story of another destructive love
unravelled through poetry.
If
you’re familiar with the poetry of Hughes, you’ll know that the fox is a
totemic animal for him; a guiding spirit.
Epiphany
London.
The grimy lilac softness
Of
an April evening. Me
Walking
over Chalk Farm Bridge
On
my way to the tube station.
A
new father – slightly light-headed
With
the lack of sleep and the novelty.
Next,
this young fellow coming towards me.
I
glanced at him for the first time as I passed him
Because
I noticed (I couldn’t believe it)
What
I’d been ignoring.
Not
the bulge of a small animal
Buttoned
into the top of his jacket
The
way colliers used to wear their whippets –
But
its actual face. Eyes reaching out
Trying
to catch my eyes – so familiar!
The
huge ears, the pinched, urchin expression –
The
wild confronting stare, pushed through fear,
Between
the jacket lapels.
’It’s
a fox-cub!’
I
heard my own surprise as I stopped.
He
stopped. ‘Where did you get it? What
Are
you going to do with it?’
A
fox-cub
On
the hump of Chalk Farm Bridge!
‘You
can have him for a pound.’ ‘But
Where
did you find it? What will you do with it?’
‘Oh,
somebody’ll buy him. Cheap enough
At
a pound.’ And a grin.
What
I was thinking
Was
– what would you think? How would we fit it
Into
our crate of space? With the baby?
What
would you make of its old smell
And
its mannerless energy?
And
as it grew up and began to enjoy itself
What
would we do with an unpredictable,
Powerful,
bounding fox?
The
long-mouthed, flashing temperament?
That
necessary nightly twenty miles
And
that vast hunger for everything beyond us?
How
would we cope with its cosmic derangements
Whenever
we moved?
The
little fox peered past me at other folks,
At
this one and at that one, then at me.
Good
luck was all it needed.
Already
past the kittenish
But
the eyes still small,
Round,
orphaned-looking, woebegone
As
if with weeping. Bereft
Of
the blue milk, the toys of feather and fur,
The
den life’s happy dark. And the huge whisper
Of
the constellations
Out
of which Mother had always returned.
My
thoughts felt like big, ignorant hounds
Circling
and sniffing around him.
Then
I walked on
As
if out of my own life.
I
let that fox-cub go. I tossed it back
Into
the future
Of
a fox-cub in London and I hurried
Straight
on and dived as if escaping
Into
the Underground. If I had paid,
If
I had paid that pound and turned back
To
you, with that armful of fox –
If
I had grasped that whatever comes with a fox
Is
what tests a marriage and proves it a marriage –
I
would not have failed the test. Would you have failed it?
But
I failed. Our marriage had failed.
I
bought the book and read it. I bought Plath’s Collected Poems and read them.
Then, three months later, I dreamt of dead Ted Hughes sitting on the steps of
Filton swimming pool with his head in his hands. He was all grief, and
physically too huge for me to comfort, and I knew immediately that he
represented me, and that I needed to attend to this part of me that was dying
before it was too late.
My
confidence was so shattered I was no longer entirely sure what a poem was, but
I started to write. Finding each word was agony; even worse was finishing a
poem in the certainty I’d never write another. Then an abrupt and untimely
death occurred in my extended family, and poetry felt too dangerous a place to
go, so I wrote a novel, one day a week for seven years. But I kept reading
poetry, and during the final year of my marriage, I started to write it again.
My
ex-husband once claimed these poems broke up our marriage. At the time I blamed
his rages and constant affairs, but ten years on, I find I agree with him.
Faltering as they were, they represented something that was beyond his control
… and beyond mine too. Within six months of our divorce, my first collection,
Communion, was published, and I wonder now if all the setbacks and the chance
encounters that could just as easily have not happened, had to occur for me to
be here now.
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