Thanks indeed, Martin
(from the shrinking fishermen of Disjecta Membra that too)
Interesting about what vocal colour's can be heard on the 'page'. To take a
very different writer, I can 'hear' a certain West Midlands effect in
Geoffrey Hill's poems, they have a reddish tinge, but I'm sure too that I'm
more sensitized to that particular vowel-set than most.
What I think can carry across is a stress-emphatic focus, RSE writers tend
to 'smooth out' the line.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
A Chide's Alphabet
www.chidesplay.8m.com
Painting Without Numbers
www.paintstuff.20m.com/default.htm
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/default.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin J. Walker" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, October 13, 2001 6:10 PM
Subject: Re: poetryetc feature poet - David Bircumshaw
> I derived much pleasure from your poems, David, some of which I'd read
> before at your sites. I especially enjoyed <The Madness of King David>
(you
> seem to have a thing about days of the week, like you are Prince Hamlet
> "every other Tuesday" and here Wednesdays and Thursdays figure largely:
I'm
> now going to watch your work for the others!), <Wants Happen Amulet> (just
> love that neo-Jacobean mystery) and the hilarious <Ghost Machine...> (more
> please!!!). I wish you or Alison had included <Disjecta Membra> too, but
> then everyone is free to discover personal favourites on the website(s). I
> feel that if you develop that strain of wild humour you may well become
the
> Intelligent Person's Wendy Cope (if you harbour such ambitions: see your
> mail on subject). I forgot to mention <Still Life>, the delicacy of which
> rather belies your self-ascription of 'loudness', but certainly answers to
> your striking phrase 'like feathers on the tongue'. I wonder if many of us
> on the list can hear that 'Brummie' accent, actually, when reading your
work
> ~ I certainly don't, but living here in Germany for so long I've rather
lost
> touch with that class-bound feeling for accent: I just hear the individual
> sound when I listen (just by chance, I heard someone from Birmingham
> speaking on tv the other day, a model of clarity & music); when I read for
> myself I tend to make interior experiments with vowels etc.
> 'soi-distant' is very witty with reference to Eliot.
> 'Uncouth'! I'll drink to that! Couth can cod off.
> Best
> Martin
>
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