For me, place and displacement are linked as much to language as to
landscape (in which I include the urban landscape, with which I'm most
familiar) and therefore do have some link into my writing. Apart from a
year in Paris as a student and a year in London immediately after
graduating, I have lived in the North of England all my life - in
Preston (like Leicester not really anywhere, despite being the cradle of
the industrial revolution), in Liverpool (very definitely somewhere,
with a mythology, or various mythologies to go with the terrain), York
(somewhere and nowhere, a tourist town which always felt like a facade
behind which the chocolate makers lived in cramped terraces) and now in
Teesside (nowhere and somewhere - invisible culturally, but undeniably
impressive in its visual effects - the industrial belt looks like Blade
Runner in the dark, and is indeed where Ridley Scott grew up).
IN my writing I have at various times reflected these environments.,
because it was what surrounded me, and what infected my imagination. I
collaborated on a book about Teesside with a photographer and another
poet which was very much about feeling at home. This is partly due to
extra-poetic factors - because my kids are growing up on Teesside, I
feel more rooted here, but also becuase the setting (landscape, culture,
politics) feels in keeping with what I try and do in writing and
worklife - because Teesside has suffered economically, has embattled
communities with which I've worked and continue to do so - but also
something to do with the language.
Clearly the accent, the rhythms and intonation is different from my
'native' Lancastrian (though I don't have a strong acccent it is still
marked by preston's characteristic 'carr parrk' vowels) but it shares
both tone and sharpness. This is something I rightly or wrongly
associate with northern speech (the north here including Scotland I
guess). This links in with a certain set of feelings I have about class
and writing poetry. Of working class origin, being a poet still feels
slightly like being in a foreign country, speaking a foreign language. I
always remember having my accent remarked upon by a tutor on my first
day at University, and still feel uneasy/aggressive around the polished
vowels of the proper academics in Durham. (And the polished RP accents
of the traditional students, come to that). I think this comes across in
my poems, where I am often attempting to control/use the resultant tone
in my head. I am writing about/from my place, I think, even when not.
(Of course, knowing your place also has a specific and dear meaning to
us Brits.) But I don't wish to be limited by this - or painted as a
'streetwise, urban, Northern' poet, as has happened.
I recently had cause to start looking seriously at the jobs pages
(crisis passed fortunately) and whenever a suitable looking job came up
that was in the south I was reminded how much the thought of moving to
say, Hampshire, or Kent, would feel like emigrating. I imagine/have
experienced those places as almost as foreign as France or Germany - the
language is understandable to me, the customs aren't that different, but
it is somehow alien. Conversely, I don't have to go back to Preston to
feel 'at home' again, merely go and see Preston North End play away and
stand on the terraces listening to the accent I've had rubbed away.
To just throw a final curve ball into the picture before I go, and at
the risk of sounding like the real Phony Tony (the one with the grin), I
wonder how much for me, and maybe others, the family is the key Place,
Locality, Environment? Certainly I think having kids has had a bigger
impact on my poetry than moving from York to Teesside. It's that that
now dominates my place.
Mark
>
--
Mark Robinson
Programme Director, Arts & Humanities
Centre for Lifelong Learning
32 Old Elvet
Durham
DH1 3HN
England
[log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|