Bob,

Great that you have taken the time to  respond again to ol' Col and his
poem.

Re unemployment: I was as explicit about employment as I was likely to be in
the last stanza. I can't remember exactly what I said but it was sth like, "
I will work as a rag man a bone man, a banger of nails" , implying that the
protag was desperate to find work.  People often talk in this way when they
are desperate for work. Of course they use more exact terms like " dustbin
man, brick-layer, toilet cleaner" and so on. For reasons I won't bore you
with I opted not to use those terms. Earlier on in the poem the protag turns
off at the roundabout when he shouldn't have. This is not an explicit ref to
work but indicates that however he got there it was his own fault ( or I
should say, was a consequence of an earlier decision).

Re My reaction to your amiable search for refs to unemployment, I must
humbly take this as an amber light. I'm getting close to the obscurity
barrier, yet again. Fact is that the feedback here is from a comparatively
elite audience. It's from people who have read, written and criticised a lot
of poetry. To top it all ol' Bob has read one or two of mine now and has had
feedback on his feedback. So if ol' Bob doesn't get it (or some aspect of
it) then what hope has the man on the street? Hence ol' Col should be wary
of pushing thro' the amber light.

Re "Lobster" the protagonist isn't about to eat lobster. He feels like a
lobster caught in a lobster trap. He has got into his predicament but can't
turn back. Or were you joking again in an uninflected kind of a way?

Re The poem finding its own voice, I agree with you on that one. I have
always tried to encourage that process. Might learn something about myself
too. My view of poetry is that it is a compromise between what you want to
say and what wants to be said. Nor do I mind people coming up with their own
interpretation of a poem, as long as it's in the general domain of what I
intended (as indeed you did).

Re: What was going thro' my mind before I wrote the poem, I was fascinated
by how different the world can seem when certain securities are lost. Many
people in society get themselves into a way of doing things that is dull but
reassuring. Life can be so simple. Get up a certain time, do the Reggie
Perrin thing and come home again. All the while they may be dreaming about
something else, poetry perhaps (as pleasant accompaniment or incipient
escape). Why not turn off at the roundabout? This choice is offset by the
possibility of disintegration, imagined or actual.

Re: The Armitage/Kees connections, it was definitely the poems of Kees that
I was reading before I wrote this poem and both consciously and
unconsciously was influenced by the mindset of his characters, particularly
Robinson. Did I use the mindset to look for a subject or was the subject
there and the influence coincidence? I don't know. But I had also read
Armitage (and a very able songster he is too) some time before Kees and this
had included the poem with a similar last line. It could easily have had an
influence too, I don't know. These things are often unconscious. However I
hadn't made the Robinson connection between Kees and Armitage until I subbed
a previous poem about a corpse. Mike tho't it reminded him (slightly) of a
Kees poem (tho' I hadn't read Kees when I wrote it)  and I asked him how
he'd heard of Kees and Mike answered that he knew him thro, Armitage's
Robinson poems. Around the same time I was coming to the realisation that I
had to do better with my titles. They were just too boring. So I thought
that if respected and down to earth people like Simon Armitage can pop
Robinson into their title and not be called obscure then so can small Colin.
The original title was "Detour". How dull can you get? As for "sabbatical"
this was just a passing swipe at irony. I have always liked the word, and
use it in preference to "year out" or "gap year" which sound negative.
Robinson is so unfortunate even his sabbatical is a disaster, no holiday for
sure.

Re: The reader knowing more of Armitage than Kees I don't really mind how
they attribute it or how they see the influences. If anyone wants to see it
as an Armitage poem that's fine, as long as they see it firstly as a poem.

BW and thanks again for your comments.

Colin

and now you've made me want to get my book of Simon Armitage poems out to
read them some more.





----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Cooper" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, September 13, 2003 2:47 PM
Subject: Re: feedback/sabbatical/thanks


> Hi Colin,
> You say you were thinking about "unemployment" but, search as I may
(grin),
> I can't find anything about it in the poem! Maybe it's the lobster that
> distracts me - people on Benefits don't eat lobster! - and this poem might
> have ended up becoming a poem that's found it's own voice - saying
something
> beyond what the poet intended. It's great when that happens isn't it just!
> And the title, the great irony of "sabbatical" doesn't hint at
unemployment
> either! I just like the way the poor guy get's to where he ends up in his
> time out!
> The whole flavour of the poem as a "descent" (from comfortable living to
> life without the cash or comfort) comes across with no problems - I sort
of
> took that as read). As a way of exploring the fear of what might happen to
> any of us I felt it touched the right nerves (as I guess Dante may have
done
> for the folk he thought he was writing for...)
> The Armitage flavour and feel of the thing, tho, may need some further
> thought. For UK readers I feel he may appear in their ears well in front
of
> Weldon Kees. As soon as I read the last line the whole poem took on a
> Huddersfield/Armitage accent. I find I can't read it without hearing
> Armitage - Grin!!
> Bob
>
>
> >From: Colin dewar <[log in to unmask]>
> >Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
> >To: [log in to unmask]
> >Subject: feedback/sabbatical/thanks
> >Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 19:03:15 +0100
> >
> >Thanks for all feedback.
> >
> >Arthur, I have Mike to thank for the title tho' he doesn't know it. I had
> >been reading a lot of Weldon Kees before I wrote this poem and so it is a
> >Weldon influenced Colin poem. As they say in China, if you read a hundred
> >poems you can write one poem. In commenting on a previous poem of mine,
> >Mike had let slip that the Kees character, Robinson was a popular subject
> >in other poems e.g. by Simon Armitage. So I quietly changed the title on
> >this one. But the changing wasn't just because I had been thinking about
> >Robinson when I wrote the poem. I felt I could make this influence
explicit
> >without being too obscure. Or could I? What's obscure and what isn't in
> >this community, when it's so international and eclectic, or in this day
and
> >age when you can meet highly educated people who haven't heard of Plato
and
> >pronounce it as "plateau" (a real experience). I wouldn't have got thro'
> >Grassy's  "Bast" without your input, Arthur. And thanks Arthur for going
> >thro how this poem came across to you, (underdone in feedback IMO,
perhaps
> >thro' a fear of being "wrong"). You were not wide of the mark. I've read
> >Dante's Inferno and may well have been influenced at an unconscious
level,
> >or influenced by people influenced by Dante. As for W Kees, he was an
> >American poet not long after TS Elliot and influenced by him. He's not
> >known for his cheeriness (which might make him "modern"). Sylvia Plath
and
> >Philip Larkin seem elated in comparison and he did away with himself at
an
> >early age. I came across his work in much the same way that you came
across
> >GMH.
> >
> >Bob, thanks as always for your criticism and attention to detail. I was
> >thinking about unemployment when I wrote this poem, with its very
derailing
> >effect on the psyche. Does it have to be unemployment? Any bumping from a
> >worn groove into a suddenly more frightening and unfamiliar world would
do.
> >I don't hide the protagonist's pre-conceptions (quite a mouthful there).
> >They're a small part of the poem too. A reader might well shout, "Hoi, my
> >Granny lives in a house like that." Or what's wrong with it, then?!" I
> >suppose it's an exploration of a common middle-class fear of descending
> >into a sordid underclass. A bohemian poet type might not share his
> >perceptions and fears.
> >
> >Matt and Bob, the lobster and the altered water refers to a lobster trap.
I
> >have heard difficult cities described as lobster traps for motorists. You
> >can drive into them but you can't drive out. You just get into
> >progressively smaller and more threatening streets, going round and round
> >in circles until you're bursting for the toilet and just about to run out
> >of petrol. You ask someone for help and they say "Beware, sor I wouldn't
be
> >out driving at this time of night sor, not when the moon be full" or less
> >helpfully, "Death to the humans".
> >
> >Mike, the repetition and the gradual loosening of associations are meant
to
> >represent increasing agitation. Is the protagonist's state of mind an
> >excuse for bad poetry? Where does it end? You could end up defending an
> >unreadable poem, "Of course the guy's inarticulate, he's just been
stabbed,
> >mauled and near drowned and now he's lying in a pool of blood,
blind-folded
> >and heavily drugged. You don't expect him to be spouting poetry do you?"
> >
> >Colin
> >
> >
>
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