Dear Folks -

Zipping through the recent archives of this list (which didn't take as
long as it once might have done, by the way) I found a reference to
reviews of my recent publications in Tim Allen's Terrible Work:
http//terriblework.co.uk 

Now a good review is hard to find, as Mae West probably meant to say -
and these (Norman Jope on Magpie Words and Tim on Tony Flowers'
conversations with me) struck me as good, not in terms of any
adulatory gush (there wasn't any) but as reviews which at least hit
the right buttons, caused my remaining grey cells to get agitated (in
a constructive sense). Thanks, guys. It's not usual for me to pick up
and reply to reviews, and I guess in a way it's quite a suspect thing
to do - but I do think that some of the issues raised briefly or
hinted at there are worth it, worth looking at a bit more, and, who
knows, might stimulate the dialogue on this list. Tim refers to "the
problem area of 'sound' and 'meaning'" with reference to my work, and
it'll be no surprise to many that I'm interested in this "problem
area" myself, and ready to bat it around again, without suggesting any
solutions other than my own provisional ones, that is, ones that I
feel have worked for me.

At least one doesn't have to apologise anymore for making a feature of
the sound of a poem, a fairly simple working practice which at one
time was thought very outlandish. There's enough other folks of repute
and worth who've done it over the years, and enough poetry readings
taking place to suggest that poets consider it worth at least trying
to make the sounds, and in some cases enough audiences turn up to hear
them. At the risk of appearing naïve (one could, after all, suggest
many other motives for both poet and audience) there seems damn all
point in going through this particularly thankless niche of the
performing arts, unless one thinks the sound of the poem is important.

Tim describes my non-standard route into poetry, via composing music -
so it's no surprise I hope that sound is important to me in poetry.
But it's a considerable jump, as I see it, from there, to the point
where one can speak easily of "Caddel's elevation of sound over
meaning" - indeed, it's my hope that what I've been doing is using
sound as a compositional element, along with lexical sense and other
things, as specifically a means of making meaning. There's a hell of a
lot of musicians out there who are going to get very stroppy indeed,
with some justification, at the suggestion that what they do has no
meaning! More to the point, I guess Tim might have put it that at
times in my work, sound-sense and word-sense jostle for priority -
with which I'd agree - though I'd hope that in general terms it's
clear that at least my intention is to integrate the two most of the
time - and indeed all the other bits and bobs such as shape and
structure which contribute to the way the poem means.

Having nailed my colours to this Mast of Meaning, it'll be no surprise
if I say that I gagged somewhat at the notion (imputed to Norman by
Tim, though not appearing in Norman's review) that the elevation of
sound was "a symptom of the fear of making statements, of saying
anything important etc, a reluctance to being understood". Now hold on
there, that hurt! My poetry makes statements all over the place! My
aim in making it is to voice something which can be understood in some
way! Why would I bother otherwise? Why would my devoted audience - all
three of them - bother? Perhaps best not to answer that...

I think it's clear that poetry doesn't just work in one way, and this
certainly isn't intended as just an apologia for my own approach. But
I hope I've made it clear that for me, at any rate, sound is not an
alternative to meaning, but a necessary part of it. 

It could be, of course, that the meaning of a poem - mine or anyone's
- is difficult to express, or paraphrase. Difficulty is not, of
course, restricted to poems where sound is a key element, nor does it
automatically invalidate a poem. I'm moderately happy to put my hand
up, to come quietly, on the "difficulty" rap (though I'd insist that
an element of responsibility lies with the audience here, unless they
want to be treated as complete turnips) but not to the
"fear-of-statement and reluctance-to-understanding" blag, which I wuz
fitted up for, orficer. It'd perhaps be different if all the audience
always found a particular poem non-navigable, devoid of thought-line
etc, but Guv, all my poems are road-tested before they leave the
works, everything gets read out loud, and I genuinely believe (on the
basis of anecdotal evidence) that it ain't so...

Given the emphasis which I've placed - here and elsewhere - on the
noises of words, and on the performing of poems out loud, it's perhaps
surprising that Norman Jope should link me with a generation of poets
such as Harwood or John Riley (both of whom I'd be proud to be
associated with, of course, but who are actually ten or more years
older than me, and radically different in their approach). He
characterises this generation - and by extension me - as seeking to
escape from noise into "something [...] more silent". To produce this
- uh - quietist vision of my work, which he responds very kindly and
positively to, he's ended up cutting out from his review all
consideration, all mention in fact, of that troublesome old sound
thing. I think that's a pity, if it's a general condition in his
attention to poetry, because it's an important dimension not just of
my work, but of many others too. True, we don't all have the volume up
loud all the time (and yeah, I guess some of us wear the literal or
metaphorical elbow-patches he imputes) but it is there, a necessary
counterbalance and contributor to the whole. Ignoring the noises of
language is not, I'd say, sound sense.

I'd want to stress that this isn't intended to be a general carping at
these two engaged and responsible reviews, which have many accuracies,
and for which I'm profoundly grateful - but I am seeking to redress
what I see as an imbalance in many approaches to poetry, which simply
set aside as an exoticism any consideration of sound, even when it's
implicit in a poet's work. It's no longer possible to suggest that
this is a new thing, and yet refusal to apprehend it lies at the root
of most misunderstandings about such poetry. The "sound and meaning"
thing remains, as Tim suggests, a "problem area" to which there are
many practical poets' responses, and mine is never more than one
provisional approach - but it's only by engaging with the problem that
we'll get beyond it, to what I believe are the really important
difficulties of listening and meaning.

& best, as ever, to all britpos,
Richard Caddel