Rough Breathing

by Harry Gilonis

  Both Ts’ui Shu versions are *; the second borrows a phrase from Couvreur’s French translation of the Chinese ‘Classic of History’ (Shu Ching) which drifted into my head many years after first meeting Ezra Pound quoting it in one of the Cantos in Rock-Drill. Not literary reference but live memory.

  The first Tu Fu version appeared in Damn the Cæsars magazine (2008), and is dedicated to Karen Brookman; it was read at one of her salons; second version *.

  The first Tu Mu version appeared in the erroneously titled ‘North Hills’, which appeared as an issue of Free Poetry magazine (2009) – the correct title should have been Minor Players; second version *.

  ‘Tzü Yeh’, a nominally female poet, is almost certainly fictitious, though not my invention. Both versions of ‘her’ poem *.

  The first Wang Wei version (of what is arguably the most famous Chinese poem) appeared in Wheel River (London: Contraband, 2015), featuring the entirety of a co-written sequence by Wang and his friend P’ei Ti. An enlarged reprint will include a further seven translations of this poem in an appendix (though not the second version here, made for this book *).

  Wei Shuang’s poem is set in the ‘Jinling landscape’ that features in J. H. Prynne’s Kazoo Dreamboats, and the second version here uses only vocabulary from that book. The first version echoes a photograph by its dedicatee, Fern Bryant, seen in an exhibition of photos of China. (Both versions *.)

  The poem by Yü Hsuan-chi (with ‘Tzü Yeh’ the only female poet herein) was commissioned for ‘A certain slant of light: in response to the work of Emily Dickinson’, held under the aegis of the London-based events series POLYply; the second version uses only Dickinson’s vocabulary to translate the same poem. (Both versions *.)

  Both Ch’ien Ch’i versions *; the second one is for David Rees.

  The first Li Po version appeared in Veer Away magazine (2007) and Damn the Cæsars magazine (2008), and was reprinted in eye-blink (London: Veer Books, 2010); the second version was made for this book *. The poem uses a recurring Chinese poetic trope, visiting a sage in a remote retreat and finding him away. Li concentrates in consequence on what ‘is’ ‘there’, the landscape.

  The penultimate Li Shang-yin version appeared in eye-blink (London: Veer Books, 2010); the final version was written as a sixtieth-birthday gift for Robert Sheppard, and recognises some of his vocabulary and enthusiasms (e.g. blues harmonica, or ‘mouthharp’). ‘The cuckoo is a pretty bird, she warbles as she flies’ is an Appalachian folk-song, of British origin, collected by Harry Smith. This final Li Shang-yin poem appeared in An Educated Desire: Robert Sheppard at 60, ed. Scott Thurston (Newton-le-Willows: Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2015).

  * an epithalamy, or ballad was written for the wedding of my artist and curator friends David and Carolyn, at Harty (on the Isle of Sheppey off the north Kent coast), a potential site for the hall of Heorot – which explains why stanza 2 combines Beowulf’s lines 8 (under wolcnum), 93 (swá wæter bebúgeð) and 211 (under beorge). The Latin tag – ‘as the clinging ivy / embraces the tree’ – is from Catullus, poem LXI, an epithalamium; ‘unconcealment’ is Greek ἀ-λήθεια (again! – here reflecting David’s interest in Heidegger) and ‘rest and peace’ come, as they would, from Bach (specifically the Cantata bwv 208: ‘Kann man Ruh und Friede spüren’). The title comes from George Puttenham’s 1589 Arte of English Poesie; as with the other wedding-poem collected here, use is made of Sappho (and Catullus) as also Spenser.

  * Bass adds Bass was written for the bass player Dominic Lash and performed at his ‘farewell’ concert / leaving party in London’s Café oto before a temporary move to New York in early 2011. The title and a few words are lifted from the very fine song Bass Adds Bass by Family Fodder. The party performance by myself with Dom Lash on bass was filmed by Helen Petts: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PmFR5xNhjE

  Georg Trakl fails to write a Christmas poem – the nearest he got, according to a title index I started from, were ‘Im Winter’, ‘Wintergang in a-Moll’ and ‘Winternacht’. Phrases from these are permuted, a notion I got after prolonged contemplation of his often exceedingly eccentric usage of colour-words. This was published as a year’s-end card in 2014.

  David Davis’s bone density was written for Badge of Shame, one of a series of responsive anthologies, Purges (edited anonymously and with no place of publication given, but declared to be a ‘strong and stable production’, 2017). It was prompted by the widely reported suggestion of the elder statesman it commemorates, that refugee children should have their teeth x-rayed to assess their age – and thus whether their plight should count for anything. Since the poem was written and first published Davis has, of course, been promoted to glory, and his density has become common knowledge worldwide. There is a snatch of dentally related speech from the film Marathon Man near the close.

  * The Matter of Ireland is a term for the corpus of mediaeval Welsh stories involving Ireland (e.g. ‘Branwen, daughter of Llyr’ in the Mabinogion). Here, again, ‘matter’ is taken literally, applying a simple acrostic process to the title of a book (London: Writers Forum, 1996) by the dedicatee, the Irish poet Billy Mills (co-publisher with Catherine Walsh of my first book). I have reused minerals named in Billy’s book, without checking that they are in fact found in Ireland; that correlation was more important than strict geological accuracy.

  Revisions (after Roy Fisher) was published online in Molly Bloom (http://mollybloom-tributes.weebly.com), in a memorial supplement for the late Roy Fisher (2017). The poem wrote itself, many years ago now, onto a scrap of paper that ended up interleaved in a book of Roy’s poems; it is a Widerruf, or poetic reversal, of the fifth of his 1980s set of ‘New Diversions’:

  Vigil

  taking over hours and losing them

  into a moist gleam,

  a single light

  The Latin tag translates roughly as ‘that activity might through reflection forge the various arts’ (Georgics I.133); Fisher was of course a highly adept jazz pianist as well as a great poet.

  Coping Batter (for Tom Raworth) was published online in Molly Bloom (http://mollybloom-tributes.weebly.com), in a memorial supplement for the late and much-missed Tom Raworth (2017).

  a breath of air was commissioned to accompany the cd release of a 2008 concert of solo soprano saxophone improvisations by Evan Parker (whitstable solo, Psi 10.01). Parker has run through this book subliminally as well as openly: he’s said that piobaireachd is influential on his work, and he recorded with Steve Lacy. This poem takes its intricate stanza-structure and rhyme-scheme from ‘l’aura amara…’ by the twelfth-century troubadour Arnaut Daniel, in an attempt to hint at the complexity of Parker’s playing. That untranslatable word for pure pleasure, jouissance, is from Barthes; a chalumeau is a pastoral (thus ‘unsophisticated’) reed instrument; the fourth stanza in part describes the interior of St Peter’s church, Whitstable, where the solos were recorded; gemutató (‘presentation’) was cited by Parker from Bartók on a previous solo recording; de motu is the Latin title of a piece of writing by Parker, available online (www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/fulltext/demotu.html); remir is the Occitan word for ‘I gaze’, found in the corresponding line in Arnaut’s original (a different poem, though, than the one Pound remembers as the focus of a moment of jouissance in Canto xx). The poem was written for Evan Parker’s cd, but would like to remember the late Bill Griffiths, one of the few poets writing in English who could rival Arnaut Daniel for complexity and breadth of inventiveness.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I owe my principal debt of thanks to Tony Baker and the late Richard Caddel, my first friends in the world of poetry (and outside it, too, importantly); and to Billy Mills and Catherine Walsh, who offered me the chance of book-publication at a point when I was about to turn my energies to other things. More recently I am indebted to Peter Manson, who nagged at me for years to consider the notion of a Selected Poems (and later was of direct practical assistance); and in the recent past to Luke Allan, for acting, independently, on Pe
ter’s suggestion; and finally to Elizabeth James, for sterling, sometimes stern, advice, and much hard graft helping me get this book into shape.

  I have been at some pains to give as full an account as I could of my small participation in the wide web of small presses and little magazines that throughout the 1980s and on were of immense importance in supporting a wide range of writers and writing over a long period of time when outlets of more notional consequence took little or no interest. For prior publication (or major involvement therein) thanks are due to David Aldridge; David Annwn (in his own right and with Frances Presley and Peterjon & Yasmin Skelt); David Ashford; Tim Atkins; Kevin Bailey; Tony Baker; Jeffery Beam; Andrea Brady; Henrietta Brougham, Christopher Fox & Ian Pace; Rodger Brown; the late Richard Caddel (in his own right and with Ann Caddel and with Peter Quartermain); Maoilios Caimbeul; Maxine Chernoff & Paul Hoover; Adrian Clarke & Lawrence Upton; Bob Cobbing; David Connearn; Martin Corless-Smith; Sara Crangle & Sam Ladkin; Bill Culbert; Simon Cutts & Erica Van Horn; Andrew Duncan (with Tim Allen, and with Charles Bainbridge); Alec Finlay; the late Ian Hamilton Finlay; Allen Fisher; John Goodby & Lyndon Davies; Terrel Hale; Robert Hampson; Tom Jenks & James Davies; Andrew Lawson & Anthony Mellors; Rupert Loydell; Steve McLaughlin & Jim Carpenter (reproduced by kind permission); Peter Manson; Roy Miki; Billy Mills & Catherine Walsh; Peter Mortimer; Alec Newman & Scott Thurston; Rich Owens; Ian Pace; Andrew Parkinson, Duncan McLean & Alistair Peebles; the late Evangeline Paterson; Alistair Peebles (in his own right); Bridget Penney & Paul Holman; Helen Petts; Robin Purves & Peter Manson; Peter Quartermain (in his own right, and with the late Richard Caddel, and with John Tranter); David Rees (in his own right, and with Simon Smith); the late Ian Robinson; Aidan Semmens; Robert Sheppard & Patricia Farrell; Zoë Skoulding; Simon Smith (in his own right, and with David Rees); the late Geoffrey Soar; Andrew Spragg; Colin Still; Keston Sutherland; James Taylor; Scott Thurston; John Tranter & Peter Quartermain; Lawrence Upton; Erica Van Horn (in her own right, and with Simon Cutts); Paul Vangelisti; the Veer Books collective (William Rowe, Ulli Freer, Stephen Mooney, Aodán McCardle, Piers Hugill, Adrian Clarke, Carol Watts); Jont Whittington; Paul Wright & Jo Marriner; Luke Youngman; Yt Communications (Frances Kruk & Sean Bonney), and the anonymous editor of Badge of Shame. Also, for their artwork in and on the book, David Connearn (photography: Andrew Penketh) and David Rees; and for last-minute assistance and technical overviews, Neil Crawford, Simon McFadden and Ken Macpherson. Thanks to all.

  About the Author

  HARRY GILONIS is a poet, editor, publisher, and critic writing on art, poetry, and music. His books of poetry include Reliefs (1988), Pibroch (1996), Reading Hölderlin on Orkney (1997), walk the line (2000), eye-blink (2010), and For British Workers (2017), as well as collaborations with both poets – such as from far away (with Tony Baker, 1998) – and visual artists, such as Forty Fungi (with Erica Van Horn, 1994), Axioms (with David Connearn, 1995), and The Leiermann (with David Rees, after Schubert, 1998).

  Copyright

  Every effort has been made by the publisher to reproduce the formatting of the original print edition in electronic format. However, poem formatting may change according to reading device and font size.

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Carcanet Press Ltd, Alliance House, 30 Cross Street, Manchester M2 7AQ.

  This eBook edition first published in 2018.

  Text copyright © Harry Gilonis, 2018. The right of Harry Gilonis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. All rights reserved.

  Cover image: David Rees, detail from Henry and Peter, 2014.

  della pittura (fragments) by David Connearn, on pages 49 and 60: copyright © David Connearn, 2018.

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publisher, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN 978 1 78410 373 6

  Mobi ISBN 978 1 78410 374 3

  PDF ISBN 978 1 78410 375 0

  The publisher acknowledges financial assistance from Arts Council England.