Peter & all
“This “debunking” as it’s called in the book, of Petrarch is confirmed
by the section of Peter Philpott’s book Wound Scar Memories, which I
reviewed here, attacking Petrarch from a P.C. position and using both
Atkins and Hughes as source material.” I really object to this sentence,
Peter. Can you explain how a “Debunking” of Petrarch is “confirmed” by
the first section of Wound Scar Memories, “Fragments of Vulgar Things”?
– is this all evidence of an actual conspiracy, involving me, Tim
Atkins, and presumably Jèssica Pujol (who, to my mind ill-advisedly,
uses that word in her “Introduction” to expand on “dethroning”)? I use,
as I make clear in Wound Scar Memories, Atkins’ and Peter Hughes’
versions (a word I would use for both, but not for my little piece) to
provide “copyings and distortions” of their language in the early poems
of the sequence. I also use smaller quotations from Nicholas Kilmer’s
translation of a selection of Petrarch’s poetry, and a range of other
linguistic sources material, including the Rough Guide to Provence, my
daughter’s writing, and the actual signage I observed in
Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. Are they too party to the conspiracy?
“Fragments of Vulgar Things” was certainly not conceived as an
“attack” on Petrarch. A comic and absurd tone is used, voicing the
important but silent female other in Petrarch’s poetry and life,
conflating Petrarch’s Laura, who may have been a Laura de Voes, later
Countess de Sade, and a very fertile mother, with the anonymous women
who fathered his two sons, and between past and present Provence. This
voice mocks and scolds, because I find the motif of poetry dedicated to
inspired by and focused upon a female figure we are given as possessing
some slight actual connection in some way (poet’s sighting of her once
upon a time), but owing her role as energy-source to her idealisation
and physical unattainability really silly, and, yes, a rather grotesque
weakness within the magnificent edifices which are both Petrarch’s life
and his “Sonnets”. Yeah, “a literary convention.” Well, so’s my female
voice(s), who wishes to see Petrarch not as enthroned master poet – and
we European poets are all Petrarch’s children, he is inescapable, and we
are sealed by him – but as a live poet one should engage with, like
other poets, in a fearless, honest and creative manner. I address
Petrarch directly and positively, apart from the playful scolding, thus:
“. . . no one
absolutely no one has done all this before
this windy mountain totally his own creation
ascending not to god but a mirror & a door”
So, I think you are misreading me and somehow this helps you misread
Atkins, which is unfortunate. You use my work to confirm yourself in
your negative opinion of his project, as if my very secondary use of his
words and manner is his responsibility and should be projected back onto
his Collected Petrarch.
Moreover, you use language I find insulting. “A P.C. position.” Bloody
hell – what reductive, cliched and denigratory language, worthy of a
Daily Mail columnist. Yes, I do believe in the value, in society, in
language use generally within society, and within the project of
contemporary poetry, of inclusion of people in all the variety of their
lived experiences, and no longer privileging the limited circles who
traditionally control us and our language and poetry. This isn’t
following some set of arbitrary or jejune protocols to disrupt and
destroy Culture As We Know It. It is looking at what do, primarily, and
making it as open to others as possible, and enabling a wider reading,
too, of what has been done already. In my life this value has been built
up by my career as a teacher, mainly in Harlow, of teenagers & young
adults, of union activity connected with this profession, of family
life, now extended to grandchildren, and of occasional attempts to help
build up a community of contemporary poets. I’m not smashing the stained
glass, I’m trying to shine more, different lights through it. And,
ironically, this value led me to voice Petrarch’s female other (and thus
criticise – that’s all!) because it seems to me an inadequacy in Atkins
(& Hughes) that “Laura” is cut out of the excitement. (Yes, it’s a
subdued and friendly attack on them, really, rather than on Petrarch,
who, like, is dead and won’t really respond.)
I know, it’s only a footnote. Your actual review overawed me at times
with praise and understanding, but I think there were also major
misreadings. I’ll deal with elsewhere. But I think you do misread Atkins
in a really negative way, and I don’t like being made part of that
process, nor a stupid phrase really unworthy of you being used against me.
best wishes
Peter Philpott
|