It is with some sadness that I must report that Daphne Gloag, a long-time stalwart of the Pitshanger Poets, has laid down her pen and closed her volume. She will be remembered for her swifts flying about her birch tree and her metaphysical explorations of space and time in verse. And for often arriving fifteen minutes late, but always being worth the wait. She would often split in a headnote between the title and the first line, briefly explaining the scientific concept she was about to explore, and had a habit of never reading this out – instead she would get straight down to business conversing with the memory of her late husband Peter, and weaving her metaphor through daily life, dropping in classical allusions and old masters while watching the wildlife with a quiet philosophy. She was never ashamed to display her education, nor pompous in her language when doing so. She found inspiration in anti-matter and leap seconds as much as from iridescent blue or the British Museum, and often managed to seamlessly tell us about all four in the same poem.
All of which has got me thinking on the lack of poetic science in our verses. The cliche of bards as one of being romantic fools too busy dreaming of what should be to pay attention to what is, of complaining of cold clinical calculation being the enemy of the soul, and latterly of the self-analysing confessional exploring the psyche but not the neurons. For properly peer-reviewed rhymes, one has to go back to Erasmus Darwin or May Kendall, with Stephen Spender later bringing some white-heat futurism to jolt us awake following the usual literary luddites like Wordsworth and Whitman. Thus Walt cannot hear about the wonders of astronomy without growing tired and sick, and Edgar mutters in the back of the class how Science (capital S) has driven the hamadryad from the wood (and I don’t think he’s referring to a type of beetle). And while we’re at it, how about some anatomically-correct pop songs ? Don’t worry, Elton, I won’t go breaking your heart, unless I have access to ‘thunderbolts and lightning’ or Mack the Knife.
Clearly it is true what they say about arts graduates not being the sharpest of students. So where are the poems that celebrate the universe as it really is ? I suppose it is hard to find a rhyme for ‘neutron’ or ‘heighth’ or ‘potassium permanganate purple’. But some have stepped-up to the petri-dish and attempted to take a metaphorical microscope to our culture: Richard Feynman dabbled, and Richard Dawkins has attempted it in prose, finding spirituality in the beautiful outcomes of natural processes, of how simple patterns can multiply in complicated ways, and how important it is to communicate all of this with the public in a way they’ll care about. After all, as Carl Sagan noted in possibly the most poetic observation ever, we quite literally are star stuff. We only exist in these bodies on this planet thanks to the activity of long-dead stars, and maybe we owe it to them to remember their unintended consequences. After all, we are a way for the universe to know itself.
In memory to Daphne, this week’s Workshop started a few minutes late. Christine Shirley set the tone for a reflective evening with her frustrations of having to relearn how to play the piano after many years of abstinence – the principals were still there, she explained, but the muscle memory had become forgetful. Amir Darwish then lamented the homesickness he felt in his pomegranate brain and his heart of sand, as he fell from the eye of reality into the blinding light. Meanwhile, Roger Beckett has been visiting the memory of visiting his mother in a home, hearing her familiar if unusual phrases amongst the ‘abundantly deprived’, keying-up Michael Harris to tell us of a forgotten sibling informally adopted by his neighbour and his unofficial other-half. Finally, Martin Choules has been musing on the native cherry trees of Europe and the apparent lack of any interest from folklore and tradition, as if the annual blossoming was met with a shrug.
Daphne may no longer be in attendance on a Tuesday night, but her spirit lives on as the poems are read and critiques offered. She has published a few slim volumes that were thoroughly workshopped to hone their lines, but she would always end by asking her audience the eternal question of whether her latest offering was “one for the collection, or one for the bin ?”.
The Pitshanger Poets 