Centre and Periphery in Modern British Poetry : bibliography
rewrite
Foreword
Eric Homberger, The art of the real
Crisis of authority
Kirby and Robinson Geography of Britain
PJ Cain and AG Hopkins, British Imperialism: crisis and deconstruction 1914-90. Peter J. Taylor, 'The changing electoral geography' (in: The changing geography of the British Isles, ed RJ Johnston and V Gardiner)
David Smith, North and South
Communitarian ideology and poetry
Beveridge and Turnbull, Scotland after Enlightenment. Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Bobi Jones, Ysbryd y cwlwm. JR Jones, Bychanfyd. Jeremy Hooker, The presence of the past. sympathetic circularity defined by Basil Bernstein in Class, Codes, and Control. for further discussion of middle class patterns, see J Klein, Samples through English cultures, and Elias and Scotson, The Outsiders.
Regionality
Cyril Fox, The personality of Britain. Barry Cunliffe, Greeks, Romans, and Barbarians. F Heer, Der Kampf um die oesterreichische IdentitŠt.
an acoustic swarm
nil
An open elite?
MAK Halliday, Language as Social Semiotic
The Georgian revolt
Elton's memorial essay on Abercrombie (Proc British Academy 1939) includes biographical data; otherwise see Robert H. Ross's classic interpretation in The Georgian Revolt.
Courtly poetry
NF Blake, The English language in mediaeval literature. RH Robbins, Secular lyrics of the XIV and XV centuries. Reto Bezzola, Les origines et la formation de la littŽrature courtoise en occident, 500-1200. Gervase Mathew, The court of Richard II. Gary Waller, Poetry of the sixteenth century. van Tieghem, le Romantisme dans la littŽrature europŽenne. Erik Gustaf Geijer, Om den gamla nordiska folkvisan. Inledning till Svenska folkvisor fran forntiden. 1814. (in: Samlade skrifter, 1875, vol.1) George Thomson, Marxism and Poetry. MacDiarmid, Albyn.
Doubt and deceit
Anthony Mellors: from a personal communication. Wetherell, Potter, Stringer, Social texts and contexts. P. Fuller, Beyond the Crisis in Art.
The Georgian Moment
Robert H. Ross, The Georgian Revolt. Lawrence quoted from the introduction to New Poems. Berthoud in the Cambridge Guide to British Culture.
Northern poetry
Dick Leith, A social history of English
D Hey, Yorkshire from AD 1000
Frank Musgrove, The north of England
HM Jewell, 'North and South: the antiquity of the great divide' (in Northern History, 1991)
The fifteenth century, ed. Chrimes, Ross, Griffiths includes Storey's essay.
DLW Tough, The last years of a frontier: a history of the Borders during the reign of Elizabeth I
MH Keen, English society in the later middle ages
Scottish ffeilde was produced in the circle of the Stanley Earls of Derby. about 1515? Chetham Society 1935.
J Youings, English society in the sixteenth century
P Sheavyns, The literary profession in the Elizabethan age. GH Gerould, The ballad of tradition.
on metal and horses: L Stover and B Kraig, Stonehenge: the Indo-European Heritage. on the chariot and the horse: references in VG Childe, Prehistoric Migrations. Lynn White, Mediaeval technology and social change. Arthur: G Littleton, The new comparative mythology.
retail market for books: AS Collins, The profession of letters 1780-1832. Manchester: Brian Maidment, The poorhouse fugitives, is a study and anthology of poetry by self-educated poets of the 19th century, and chiefly in Lancashire.
Gary Messinger, Manchester in the nineteenth century. The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750-1950, ed. FML Thompson, vol.1 contains long essays on the north-west and the north-east of England. Maidment's article in City, Class, and Culture (ed. Kidd and Roberts)
Discussion of the rise of unearned wealth in Ensor, England 1870-1914
for relations between industry, government, and finance: Keith Middlemas, The politics of industrial society.
Mervyn James Society, Politics, and Culture, 1986
Graham Turner, The north country (1967) is a remarkably informative description of society and business, relevant to much of our period.
Jeremy Seabrook, City Close-up.
Geoffrey Bateson: The Naven.
Kirkup: his artistic statements in Poets of our Time, ed FES Finn (1965), and Contemporary Poets (1975), both give solitude as his theme.
Celticity Cumulative and in Decline
You can find the Egyptian (i.e. Christian and Greek) poems in Lietzmann's Kleine Texte, Heft 14 (Lietzmann, Griechische Papyri nr.22): "Auch von christlichen Liedern ist mancherlei erhalten, darunter StŸcke aus Akrostichischen Hymnen. Der umfangreichste Text dieser Art, aus dem 4 Jh. p.C., zeigt immer drei mit dem gleichen Buchstaben beginnenden Glieder, wŠhrend andere nur zweigliedrig gebaut sind und nur beim ersten Gliede den Zwang des Anfangsbuchstabens gelten lassen. Als Gedichte stehen diese Hymnen... ziemlich tief." (Schubart, Einf. in die Papyruskunde, 1918, p.179). (Various elements of Christian songs have also been preserved, among them fragments from acrostic hymns. The most extensive piece of this kind, from the 4th century AD, shows always two three members beginning with the same letter, while others are built from paired members, and only feel the compulsion to alliterate in the first member. As poems these hymns are... rather low.)
cumulative Celticity: C Hawkes, "Cumulative Celticity in pre-Roman Britain", Revue des Etudes Celtiques, 1973.
I Grant and Cheape, Periods in Highland History
Gavin McCrone, Understanding Scottish Society
I wrote on Lowlands poetry in Fighting Over the Shared Imaginary, as yet unpublished.
J Ennew, The Western isles today. Malcolm Chapman, The Gaelic vision in Scottish culture. These works are by social anthropologists. Chapman's interpretation of the Celtic myth in Scottish literature is the best I have seen.
Sorley MacLean, critical essays edited by Raymond Ross and Joy Hendry
Osborn Bergin, lecture published in Irish Bardic Poetry.
remarks on syllabic metre in Thurneysen, Revue Celtique. remarks on rise of popular Gaelic metrics in Grant ut supra and WJ Watson, Introduction (in English) to Bˆrdachd Ghˆidhlig.
J Bardon, A History of Ulster
Anglo-Welsh Poetry
Geraint Jenkins, The foundations of modern Wales 1642-1780. D Hywel Davies, Plaid Cymru 1925-45. Kenneth O Morgan, Rebirth of a Nation, Wales 1880-1980. Glyn Jones, The dragon has two tongues. Jeremy Hooker, The presence of the past. Anthony Conran, The cost of strangeness. Emyr Humphreys, The Taliesin Tradition. Gwyn A. Williams, When was Wales?. Dai Smith, Wales! Wales?. Ned Thomas, The Welsh Extremist. back issues of Poetry Wales and The New Welsh Review.
Afterword
nil
When I was writing, I didn't see Dai Smith's "Aneurin Bevan and the World of South Wales", a classic.
Afterword
Discursive amplifications (for Internet release)
Mervyn James (in Society, Politics, and Culture, 1986), states (p. 97) that "The Percy household (...) was a true regional court" (in about 1550), which undermines what I have said. Nonetheless, the thinness of Northern courtly culture remains significant, as James' discussion of the literary patronage of the Percys evidences. This is an important book dealing with the 16th and early 17th centuries, about half of it dealing with three North Country magnate families. His description of the structural rules of the Northern social order as it was before the demilitarisation and bringing of centralised law an authority, is remarkable. He relates these rules to the literary productions of that society throughout. Previous accounts have treated this system as anomalous, barbarous, and irrational.
Triumphalism
Peter Medawar quoted from "Pluto's Republic". Schnabel: "Deutsche Geschichte im 19en Jahrhundert" vol.4. critique of reason: for example "Dialektik der AufklŠrung", by Adorno and Horkheimer, and "L'archŽologie du savoir", by Foucault.
comments on the Repeat Word
I wrote on Lowlands poetry in "Fighting Over the Shared Imaginary", an overall interpretation of modern British poetry. as yet unpublished. Most of that section was published in Parataxis, #3. Other material, on Welsh poetry, was deliberately left out of "Centre-Periphery", because it was in "Shared Imaginary".
On peripheral nationalism. Political history tends to be sharp in chronological focus, whereas my aim is to give a background to poetry written over several decades, and not precisely signed up to any political platform; and so is diffuse. We are interested in the ideas affecting Iain Crichton Smith and RS Thomas in the 1940s and continuously since then, not in a unique conjuncture in 1988 or some other time. There is a natural end to the story with the opening of the National Assemblies (in Cardiff and Edinburgh), which hasn't happened as I write; but that is in reality the beginning of the story.
"Scotland after Enlightenment" (see above): there is another book, The Eclipse of Scottish Culture, by the same authors; both were part of an impressive series put out by Polygon (an imprint of Edinburgh University Press) during the 1980s. I am not advancing this as 100% intellectually true, but as an example of what peripheral nationalists were saying and thinking in our period; besides, the authors put up rather a good case for the underdevelopment of Scottish studies, which means that a reliable history doesn't exist. This makes Scotland a more interesting field of study than England. Beveridge and Turnbull are attacking a range of accepted notions, such as the one that Scottish kitsch, like the pictures you get on tins of shortbread, is more kitsch and more sickly than the kitsch of other nations. As they rightly say, this isn't true. Reasons why it is accepted might include the greater predominance of the working class in Scotland, compared to England, and the high-mindedness of educated Scots, but also, in lead position, Scottish feelings of inferiority and the habit of giving precedence to other nations, such as England or the USA.
Joseph Macleod. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about Macleod's career. I'm not even sure about how many books he published. I was held back by the knowledge that Robert Read had extensive material from interviews with Macleod, of about 1980; which hasn't been published and which I don't have access to. There is an article about him by Robert Calder in Chapman (number?), and now my article in Eratica #1
A recent article in Cencrastus voices dark rumours that a proposed census question about use of the Scots language was removed after a detailed tryout, involving thousands of citizens, indicated that about 30% of the population of Scotland would claim it as their daily language. This would have given it status as a minority language of the European Union, giving the government all kinds of problems with protecting it and making official information available in translation into it. So the question was removed. Information that doesn't suit is being thrown away. But I predict that Scots will acquire minority language status. (There is a legend that a deal was done, whereby Scotland would get the Stone of Scone back in return for not having the language question in the census. This sounds like paranoid fantasy, and is quite unconfirmable, but I am here also to record legends.) Very interesting for the sociologist would be the different densities of Scots speakers in different parts of the country: up to 90% in Buchan and Aberdeenshire, Cencrastus suggests (on figures which are certainly leaked and may have been "topped up" on their way), presumably close to nil in some parts of the country.
Andrew Marr, "The Struggle for Scotland", is a brilliant account, with accurate politological apparatus, of the recent history of nationalism in Scotland. James D Young, "The very bastards of creation: Scottish International Radicalism 1707-1995: A Biographical Study" is a fiery retelling of the lives and thought of some Scots who didn't approve of the status quo; Young methodically sustains the argument set out by Beveridge and Turnbull about the selective and underdeveloped nature of textbook accounts of Scottish intellectual history. George Elder Davie, in "The democratic intellect" and "The crisis of the democratic intellect", supplies virtually all the Scottish intellectual history there is published, outside the works just cited; these are vital for the understanding of Scottish poetry. The second one includes a long discussion of Hugh MacDiarmid's philosophical preoccupations.
The history of the North. Frank Musgrove has given a brilliant interpretive history in his "The North of England", which unfortunately leaves out culture almost entirely. The periodical Northern History (since 1966?) has piled up a lot of detailed information (the surveys of publications are especially useful), hard to use, and mostly far too detailed and non-interpretative, but which pave the way for future synthetic history. I have used it in a largely negative way: if Northern History does not tell me about synthetic history of the North or about significant literary works from its past, I have presumed that these do not exist.
Mervyn James (in "Society, Politics, and Culture", 1986), states (p. 97) that "The Percy household (...) was a true regional court" (in about 1550), which undermines what I have said. Nonetheless, the thinness of Northern courtly culture remains significant, as James' discussion of the literary patronage of the Percys evidences. This is an important book dealing with the 16th and early 17th centuries, about half of it dealing with three North Country magnate families. His description of the structural rules of the Northern social order as it was before the demilitarisation and bringing of centralised law and authority, is remarkable. He relates these rules to the literary productions of that society throughout. Previous accounts have treated this system as anomalous, barbarous, and irrational.
"Scottish ffeilde" was produced in the circle of the Stanley Earls of Derby about 1515. This bizarre and old-fashioned work is one of the more interesting productions of the North in the pre-modern period. (published by the Chetham Society 1935.)
Colin Simms and the Campaign for the North. This is based on information supplied to me by the poet. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any Campaign for the North magazines/pamphlets/ electoral literature. Colin disagreed with my list of "Northern" poets on the basis that only poets who actively took part in campaigns to help the North should be so counted. This is not my interpretation. My list of Northern poets is likely to be incomplete and should be taken as a pioneering effort (i.e. liable to come apart under criticism). Finding out whether someone spent significant parts of their lives in the region, as opposed to just being born there, is not easy. The list leaves out, of course, any number of poets whose work I find bad and banal; not strictly sociological criteria, I'm afraid.
Jeremy Seabrook's account of Bolton in 1967, "City Close-up", is a sociological masterpiece; comparing it with the work of Michael Haslam, who was growing up in Bolton during the sixties, displays the problems of using sociology, as "City Close-up" is of no use whatsoever in explaining Haslam. There is a sketch of Hebden Bridge (as a village full of arty drop-outs) in Jeff Nuttall's "Performance Art" which sheds a great deal of light on the surroundings Haslam lived in, if not necessarily on his poetry.
Graham Turner, in his account of the North Country in the book of the same name, interviews many mill-owners in Lancashire; Nik Cohn's book on fashion in the sixties ("Today there are no gentlemen") shows, for exactly the same time, who was deciding what clothes the nation would buy. The contrast is singular; the manufacturers were living in quite a different world from the customers. The shift of power towards retailing and the cajoling of the consumer by the media, away from manufacturing, has been massively a transfer of power away from the North.
I haven't found any sources that really speak for the Northern lobby. I feel that the North of England is much less politically aware than Scotland and Wales, which do have a tradition of nationalist articulacy (however much they borrowed from the anti-imperialist movements in what were then the colonies). The automatic concern of the major political parties with winning national elections has militated against fighting for, even against discussing and documenting, regional problems. However, because the Labour Party of thirty years ago fitted the needs of the Northern working class so well, the New Left can be seen as a concerted attack on the North (more about this in "Shared Imaginary"). The redirection of radicalism into demand side issues, and away from manufacturing, strikes, investment, etc., turned its back on the working class; which most Northerners were. An exception would be feminism, which did address Northern problems. Later, Thatcherism was seen as an attack by the South on the North.
My discussion of what northernness in poetry might be is based on family relations, but none of the sources I found actually discuss these. The political history is fairly clear, from Musgrove and others, but when I come to the works of Wilfred Gibson there are no works on the history and structure of the family which I can consult when analysing his image of the family. Such research might contradict the version I have put forward-and indeed is likely to. Given the volatilising of political power to Westminster throughout the last millennium, investigation of smaller social structures would seem to be the way forward for historians of the North. I also admit that my account is synthetic in the sense that it equates all parts of the North with each other-something unlikely to be sustained by detailed research. One would be very surprised if the social customs of pastoral Northumbria resembled those of industrial South Lancashire.
Wales. "Diwedd prydeindod", by Gwynfor Evans, is an expose of the Plaid's policies. This is a very tedious book. "Achub Cymru", by Heini Griffiths, is a history of the nationalist idea in Wales, since Emrys ap Iwan. I do recommend this as a compendium of the political ideas which appear in pictorial or allegoric form in poems.
After completing the text, I read "Yn chwech ar hugain oed", an autobiography by DJ Williams, which made me reconsider my judgments on Anglo-Welsh poetry. All the devices I criticised are used by Williams in what is certainly a great book. He says a writer should stick to his 'square mile' (milltir sgwar), and so forth. So perhaps the problem with so much Anglo-Welsh poetry is not the basic aesthetic, but the fact that they're taking devices used in prose and trying to make poems out of them. Not only are the poems derivative, but also the recontextualisation fragments and isolates episodes, whereas the aesthetic point in DJ is the continuity and tranquillity.
I started out in regional studies (how far should I go in narrating all this?) by doing a degree (actually, part 2 of a degree) in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, which was at elementary level, really, but did leave me with a knowledge of mediaeval Welsh. I did classes in modern Welsh a long time after that, and I reached the point of reading novels in Welsh at very much the time I was writing this book. It follows that I hadn't got the knowledge of Welsh literature, to write about it, while Centre-Periphery was being written. So I just left it out. I have just been reading "Yr Wyddor", by David Greenslade, which so far as I know is the first avant-garde poetry ever written in Welsh, and is really good.
After completing the final rewrite, the last thing I did was go to Aberystwyth, to the National Library of Wales, to read a couple of books (in Welsh) which the British Library didn't have. One of them wasn't there, and the other one was very short, so I was able to spend most of the day on the beach. But what happened was that being in North Wales, even for a day, changed my feelings about the Welsh language, peripheral resistance, metropolitan culture, and so forth, even though I'd just spent several years pondering these questions. So there is a geographical basis to thought, which is just what regionalists say. I didn't actually change my (finished) script, but temporarily I felt as if someone else had written it. Sometimes I feel that it is only possible to accumulate knowledge by freezing one's personality so that the basis for the knowledge does not drift and shift, falsifying the knowledge and spilling its value.
Responses to the manuscript wanted Ireland to appear in the book. I was much taken aback by this. Ireland is not the periphery of Britain. Ireland is not part of Britain. Western Scotland used to be part of the cultural periphery of Ireland, but this link was probably less important after AD 1600.
On diacritic h.
a reference in Anglo-Welsh review to Y Gelhy, as a spelling for Y Gelly (the town of Hay on Wye). The -ll- spelling became more familiar to the English eye after the arrivl of mass literacy in Wales. Compare also "Floyd", as an attempt to render the name "Lloyd".
I left out the /gh/ graphy because it is confusing in some ways; people no longer know what sound it used to stand for. I have a reference (originally, M Lister in Philosophical Transactions for 1694, although I got it from new Scientist for 2000) to a spelling of tydhin for the Welsh word tyddyn; the -dh- graphy was also used, as it were speculatively, to transliterate other exotic names, like Odhin. These were sensible ideas, although the language system expelled them as it stabilised. The idea of diacritic h was eight centuries old by that time.