A Very Quick Introduction to the Poetry of John Welch

Born in 1942, John Welch lives in Hackney. For many years until his retirement in 2002 he worked in East London schools teaching English to children recently arrived in the UK. His Collected Poems appeared from Shearsman Books in 2008. Other collections had previously appeared from Anvil and Reality Street. He has run a poetry publishing imprint, The Many Press, edited an anthology of South Asian Literature, Stories from South Asia, and worked with poets from South Asia and Iraq on the English versions of their poems. He has written extensively on the subject of poetry and psychoanalysis. His most recent collection of poems is Its Halting Measure, which appeared from Shearsman in 2012.

John Welch’s writing is often based on the details of life and cityscape in the North East quadrant of London. It combines vivid detail with psychological investigation and honesty, expressed in language both direct and haunting. The poems convey a real world, a shared world, but one that is also riddling, seen with eyes that fixate on its rich detail, but in a way that conveys both its familiarity and its strangeness, and the vital but indefinable processes that mediate between the two. This precise blend of the visual and the psychological, conveyed with clear and delightful language, is forceful and honest, quite gently attracting the reader in and presenting by the end of the poem a complex and energising pattern of language, sound, sight & feeling.

Art and vision are important within his writing – John Welch has collaborated with artists, indeed is married to the painter Amanda Welch. His poems often involve processes of seeing and understanding through vision, with all the mixed and confusing imagery of London as it is. There is also an interesting fascination with a language which is, like the city, being continually seen afresh – his professional and artistic involvement with new communities in London has sharpened a sense of the English language’s strangeness, in a lived and understated way. It is outstandingly contemporary poetry – pleasingly unfashionable and unaffected unlike much that tries for this.

Here are two interesting summations from reviewers: “Yet the characteristic Welch poem is out walking through the north London streets, measuring the presence of the conscious self in its passing settings, and making more of this modest and unmistakeable music:

“And I will walk slowly
Making the most of it
Absenting myself in the song
“This book is full of integrity – again and again, the seriousness of address; writing as if poetry were a matter of life and death. Quiet lyrics following one another like cold waves onto an autumn shore. No flash effects, no random scramblings, no posturing, nothing sly or trivial. Writing as if your life depended on it.” (Peter Hughes reviewing the Collected Poems on Intercapillary Space website.)

“Attention is the poet’s true task, as many writers have reminded us. John Welch reinflects the notion, asking us, ‘Is there a reward for all this watching?’ The reward is, of course, the attention itself; a ‘seeing emptiness.’”  (Andy Brown reviewing the Collected Poems in Stride Magazine.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Poetry

A Place Like Here (Katabasis, London 1968) Six of Five (The Many Press, London 1975) The Fish God Problem, with drawings by Ken Kiff (The Many Press, London 1977) And Ada Ann, A Book of Narratives (Great Works Press, Bishops Stortford 1978)

Performance (The Many Press London 1979) Out Walking (Anvil, London 1984)

Blood and Dreams (Reality Street Editions, London 1991)

Greeting Want (infernal methods, Cambridge 1997)

The Eastern Boroughs (Shearsman Books, Exeter 2004) On Orkney (infernal methods, Stromness 2005) Collected Poems (Shearsman, Exeter 2008)

Untold Wealth (Oystercatcher, Hunstanton 2008) Visiting Exile (Shearsman, Exeter 2009)

Its Halting Measure (Shearsman, Bristol 2012) Prose

editor, Stories from South Asia (Oxford University Press 1984)

Dreaming Arrival (Shearsman, Exeter 2008) – on the relationship between psychoanalysis & writing

articles, reviews etc  in The Bowwow Shop,  fragmente, Jacket , London Review of Books, nth position, PN Review, Poetry London, Poetry Review, The Reader, Scintilla, Tears in the Fence, Use of English, Wasafiri.

Recordings

CD: Lip Service, a selection of poems (Optic Nerve 2008)

JOHN WELCH ON THE INTERNET

John Welch:     www.johnhopewelch.co.uk/

John Welch’s blog:     http://johnwelch.blogspot.co.uk/

author page at Shearsman Books:      http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/authors/welchA.html

audio recordings on the Archive of the Now:     www.archiveofthenow.com -  search for “John Welch” or look under Authors

poems on Great Works:     www.greatworks.org.uk/quickindex.html#welch

recent poems in The Fortnightly Review:     http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2012/08/poems-john-welch/

reminiscences: Being There     http://jacketmagazine.com/28/welch-being.html

& Getting it Printed: London in the 1970s     http://jacketmagazine.com/29/welch-print.html

Reviews

Andy Brown, Laying Siege to an Empty Fortress:  Collected Poems, John Welch      www.stridemagazine.co.uk/Stride%20mag%202008/June%202008/John%20Welch.htm  

Peter Hughes, John Welch, Collected Poems     www.intercapillaryspace.org/2008/07/john-welch-collected-poems.html

 Tom Lowenstein, John Welch, Collected Poems     www.signalsmagazine.co.uk/5/welch.htm

A VERY QUICK INTRODUCTION TO THE POETRY OF FRANCES PRESLEY (reading & talking about her poetry at 7.30, July 4, Coffee Corner cafe, Bishops Stortford)

Frances Presley was born in Derbyshire, grew up in Lincolnshire and Somerset, and lives in north London.  She studied modern literature at the universities of East Anglia and Sussex, writing dissertations on Pound, Apollinaire, and Bonnefoy.  She worked on community development and anti-racism projects, and also at the Poetry Library.  She collaborated with artist Irma Irsara in a multi-media project about clothing and the fashion trade, Automatic Cross Stitch (Other Press, 2000); and with poet Elizabeth James in an email text and performance, Neither the One nor the Other (Form Books, 1999).  The title sequence of Paravane: new and selected poems, 1996-2003 (Salt, 2004) was a response to 9/11/2001, and the IRA bombsites in London.  Myne: new and selected poems and prose, 1976-2005, (Shearsman, 2006) takes its title from the old name for Minehead in Somerset.  Lines of Sight, (Shearsman, 2009), includes an approach to the Neolithic stone sites on Exmoor, part of a multi-media collaboration with Tilla Brading, published in 2010 as Stone Settings (Odyssey Books & Other Press).  Presley has written various essays and reviews, especially on innovative British women poets.  Her work is included in the recent anthologies Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets (edited Carrie Etter, Shearsman, 2010), and A Ground Aslant – Radical Landscape Poetry (edited Harriet Tarlo, Shearsman, 2011)

Her poetry is marked by its high seriousness of intent and theme, made lively by her constant innovations in style and presentation, and a quiet humane humour. It is a remarkably unified project, in which avant-garde procedures such as improvisation, collaboration, multi-media presentation and site‑specificness come from long work in feminism and social activity as much as from artistic experimentation. Games are played with the meaningful things of this world (like words and stones) to rearrange them and see what they say to us. This isn’t complicated or obscure – it is what both children do and what our ancestors did. It is how we get to know language, land, ourselves and our relationships with others. It is the very project of human culture.

This is poetry, then, which reflects contemporary social and artistic practice, but also picks up on the play with words and stones we all engage in and can relate to. The ancient stone relics on Exmoor that have interested her recently are characterised by their obscurity and small-scaleness, far‑removed from megalithic mega‑monsters (doubtless commemorating the power of our eternal ruling elites) like Stonehenge, Avebury and Brodgar. The Exmoor stones are equally marks on the landscape, but presenting not domination and incomprehensible awe, but smaller-scale, more human action, and need searching for rather than thrusting themselves upon their on-lookers.  This is the level we actually live and work at, where our consciousness is formed. Her close attention to the sounds & letters of language is evident in her forthcoming Alphabet for Alina sequence (Five Seasons Press, 2012), and in the poem “Learning Letters”, an improvisation on her childhood Dutch primer (her mother’s tongue): “a new formation” always, whether from childhood words or quartz pebbles.

Another delightful quality is the openness of her writing to the world around her – whether it is writing where the site of its writing is important (poésie en plein air) or where the world itself forces itself in. Thus the poem “Culbone”, written in the numinous location of Culbone Church, with language overheard earlier at the Ship Inn, Porlock (various Romantic poet memories ion these places!) ends with the famous “Nonsense” that had got Walter Wolfgang ejected from the Labour Party Conference the day before.

Frances Presley on the Internet

Poems online

from Alphabet for Alina 

• Carrie Etter: Poet, teacher & critic (blog): http://carrieetter.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/infinite-difference-sampler-no-5.html
• Litter http://www.leafepress.com/litter2/presley-skelt/presley-skelt.html

earlier poems

• Great Works  http://www.greatworks.org.uk/poems/fp1.html
• How2  http://www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal/vol_3_no_2/ecopoetics/presley.html

About herself & writing

• Edmund Hardy, “An interview with Frances Presley”, Intercapillary Space, http://www.intercapillaryspace.org/2006/10/interview-with-frances-presley.html
•  “Collaboration… collaboration…….collaboration”, 'Readings': Response and Reactions to Poetries, http://www.bbk.ac.uk/readings-old/r2/frances.html
•   “Statement of Poetics”, British Electronic Poetry Centre, http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~bepc/poets/presley_3.htm
•  “Hazel Eardley-Wilmot: a search for origins”, Junction Box, http://lyndondavies.co.uk/w/769/frances-presley-hazel-eardley-wilmot-a-search-for-origins/

Criticism, Reviews etc 

• Tony Frazer & Frances Presley, “Frances Presley” (+ bibliography), Poetry International  http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poet/item/9177/29/Frances-Presley
• Douglas Messerli, “Frances Presley” (+ bibliography), The PIP (Project for Innovative Poetry) Blog, http://pippoetry.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/frances-presley.htmlSteve Spence, “Remembering & Interpretation: Lines of Sight, Frances Presley (Shearsman Books)”, Stride Magazine, http://www.stridemagazine.co.uk/Stride%20mag2010/march%202010/Lines%20of%20Sight.htm

Bibliography

•              with Irma Irsara, Automatic Cross Stitch (Other Press, 2000)
•        with Elizabeth James, Neither the One nor the Other (Form Books, 1999)
•               Paravane: new and selected poems, 1996-2003 (Salt, 2004)
•               Myne: new and selected poems and prose, 1976-2005, (Shearsman, 2006)
•              Lines of Sight, (Shearsman, 2009)
•              with Tilla Brading, Stone Settings (Odyssey Books & Other Press, 2010)
•              with Peterjon Skelt, Alphabet for Alina, (Five Seasons Press, forthcoming 2012)

·         Anthologies

• Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets (edited Carrie Etter, Shearsman, 2010
•  A Ground Aslant – Radical Landscape Poetry (edited Harriet Tarlo, Shearsman, 2011)

Jeff Hilson on the Internet

Poems

In the Assarts:

• Onedit (opening 10 poems)
• Intercapillary Space (31-36)
• Veer Books Page for the book on Veer Books website, with some poems given, plus mp3 of Hilson reading at the book’s launch event
• The Argotist Online
• streetcake magazine

• Archive of the Now hosts a number of recordings of Hilson reading his earlier work
• Canary Woof is Hilson’s blog, with poems, photos, articles. Nothing added since summer 2010, but what is there interesting and revealing
• Interview at The Old Abbey Inn, Manchester, July 2010, in connection with The Other Room reading is poor quality video; but well edited to make clear points

Criticism, Reviews etc

Reviews of In the Assarts

• Steven Waling , “In the Assarts by Jeff Hilson”, on Hand + Star
• Steven Johannes Fowler, “In the Assarts by Jeff Hilson “, on Galatea Resurrects #16
• John Latta, “Jeff Hilson’s In The Assarts”, on Isola di Rifiuti

• Ron Silliman, “The Reality Street Book of Sonnets”, on Silliman’s Blog begins “flat out the best book of its kind I have ever seen”, ends “If, going forward, a poet takes the sonnet seriously, this book is where they will begin.”

Jeff Hilson Reading at Stort Poetry Group

The poet Jeff Hilson will be visiting Stort Poetry Group on Wednesday March 7, at 7.30 pm, to read and talk about his poetry. The event will take place upstairs in Waterstones, Bishops Stortford, and there will be free admission, but a collection for the poet’s expenses.

Jeff Hilson has been a major actor within Innovative Poetry in London through the period since 2000. With Sean Bonney and David Miller he co-founded Crossing the Line in 2001, a poetry reading series based in London, initially downstairs at the Poetry Café, with a wide range of figures reading, to an audience always heavy with their fellow poets. Jeff Hilson’s teaching of Creative Writing at Roehampton University has established him with a major reputation as a nurturer of poetic talent (teeshirts bearing the legend “Hilson School of Poetry” have been sighted). He has also edited one of the most important anthologies of recent years, The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (Reality Street, 2008) – sonnets remade for a whole new world.

Most importantly, though, he is a witty and haunting poet, whose performances of his own poetry engage, astonish and amuse his audiences. His poems combine “found language”, from sources such as literary or natural history or of course poetry itself, with lively contemporary speech and attitude. His early published work provides an ironic commentary on the traditional English poetic subject of Nature – the poem sequences are constructed from fragments of language used to define & describe grasses (A grasses primer) and birds (Bird Bird), worked up into longer collections of fragments. In stretchers, the range of source materials is expanded, but Hilson also matches this to a single repetitive formula: 33 short lines refusing narrative coherence (but not narrative) and enforcing a true heteroglossia, a creatively conflicting range of voices, from the bus, the pub, the book, the dream.

His most recent book of poems, In the Assarts, is centred around what were historically waste places, newly cleared land where people could live free lives. In a series of rough sonnets, Hilson jumps between the past roots of our culture and landscape and our messy present day – to show what is similar, what different, what tragic, and what comic (especially). It is poetry about the idea and the reality of present-day “Englishness” – and being English, does not take itself seriously (but is, inside, deeply so). The poet Tim Atkins, whose brilliant “translations” of Horace and Petrarch likewise show us ourselves through anachronism, violent tone-shifts and sheer comedy, describes thus In the Assarts: “Jeff Hilson's hilarious, tragic, wobbling, witty poems mix the high seriousness of Stein, Spicer & Ceravolo with the pleasingly ridiculous Englishness of both Stevie & Mark E. Smith…Reading [them] is like encountering Buster Keaton in a codpiece staggering down the Walworth Road clutching a handful of Clifford T Ward & Krautrock albums whilst being pursued by Francis Picabia & the Sheriff of Nottingham. Hooray! Jeff Hilson's happy project is the most exciting in contemporary British poetry.”

Hilson has achieved a poetry which is both learned and unlearned, lewd and ludicrous, loud when he reads it, never laudatory. Yes, the word “ludic” hovers around here – it is a solemn and obsessive game, serious and comic, an invented ritual which engages you through its vitality and humour, and which could boast “All human life is there.” What in some ways started as a formalist patterning of found language has grown into a quite lovable account of our life in language. It does you good to encounter or hear Jeff Hilson’s poetry.

Bibliography

A grasses primer (Form Books, 2000)
stretchers (Reality Street, 2006) which also includes essay “Why I wrote stretchers”
(editor) The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (Reality Street, 2008)
Bird Bird (Landfill, 2009)
In the Assarts (Veer Books, 2010)