What is Scottish Poetry?

Rob Mackenzie has gone and got himself interviewed by Yang-May Ooi of FusionView. Part 1 of the piece is here. I was intrigued by the two following questions and answers:

Is being Scottish a strong part of your identity? What does being Scottish mean to you?

I’m not particularly nationalistic, until someone criticises Scotland. I am Scottish and Im sure thats shaped me in all kinds of indefinable ways. Its not something Ive explored all that much. Maybe I should. That might well be a future project.

Is your poetry Scottish poetry? (as opposed to English poetry/ Welsh poetry or just plain old “poetry”)

I feel its just plain old poetry. I dont write in Scots or Gaelic and while I've written a few poems about Scottish identity, its not a theme Ive majored on. I know some of my poet-colleagues here are far more interested in doing this than I am and are influenced mainly by other Scottish poets. I like several Scottish poets John Burnside, Edwin Morgan, Norman MacCaig, Don Paterson, Roddy Lumsden they are excellent writers. But my influences come from all over Rilke (Germany), Roy Fisher (England), Simic (USA), Miroslav Holub (Czech Republic), and many others.

One wonders, first of all, what exactly the second question means. It's a fair question in it's own way, but how does one define "Scottish poetry" aside from the obvious and banal poetry written in Scotland and/or by Scots? More to the point, what does Yang-May Ooi have in mind when she asks the question and what concept does it evoke in Rob's mind as he answers it?

However, what caught my eye most was the discussion of influence. Whether or not this his intention, there is an implication in the way Rob phrases his reply to the second of those questions that his international set of influences makes him a less Scottish poet than those who "are influenced mainly by other Scottish poets". It's an implication I'd contest. There is and long has been an internationalist bent to Scottish thought and culture. By that account, those whose influences are more narrowly Scottish could actually be regarded as less Scottish than Rob with his literary internationalism.

I have to say, I'd love him to name names: not only the names of the poets whose influences are "mainly Scottish" but of the poets who influence them. It would be fascinating to see how many of those Scottish influences are good Scots internationalists. After all, to pick two of the prominent Scottish poets Rob mentions, Edwin Morgan is certainly international in outlook--witness his volume of Collected Translations, for example--and John Burnside not only looks considerably to American writers and musicians but is interested in Scandinavia.

Perhaps Rob might comment ... Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to reading the second half of the interview.

Feeling Hungry? You Soon Will Be ...

I'm sorry, but I just had to post this link. (Thanks to Yang-May Ooi of FusionView for posting it originally.)

The Knoxian Shore

Richard Dawson, musician of the month, provided a fine complement to the poetry, as on his previous Shore Poets appearances. In fact, to Richard goes the best rhyme of the evening: gregarious:areas. If I remember rightly, the lines were: "my pocketbook guide says they [bullfinches] are naturally gregarious; and found in cemeteries and heavily wooded areas."

First poet was Rob Mackenzie. I particularly enjoyed his more surreal, quirkier poems, such as "Advice to the Lion-Tamer on becoming a Poetry Critic" and "Scotlands". You can read his assessment of the evening here.

My set was almost exclusively unpublished poems, with the exception of "Wandelvakanties dicht bij huis" and "Sketchbook of a Trip to the Hebrides", although perhaps we could also count "Waukrife", which is about to be published in Lallans. I was slightly apprehensive about the two newest poems I read, partly because they were longer pieces. Moreover, one of them is in Scots with a fair bit of German thrown in--much too much to gloss--and the other is quite intense and concentrated. But both went down well.

We were fortunate that Alistair Findlay could bring forward his reading by a whole year to replace Kate Clanchy, who was suffering with bronchitis. Fortunate in more ways than one, because his reading was hugely entertaining. He read from Sex, Death and Football as well as from his new book, The Love Songs of John Knox. The latter poems dissected aspects of the Knox myth and today's Scotland but were saturated in a wonderful surreal, postmodern wit. Sophisticated and imaginative stuff. Very Scottish. I bought the book and might blog on it a bit once I've had a proper read.

A Bad Case of the Rogets

Reading Kate Clanchy's Samarkand the other week, I spotted the word "rheumy" in two consecutive poems*. It stood out enough in the first as that unusual beast, a rare cliché**, but for it to be found twice in not only the same collection but in such close proximity struck me as a significant slip-up in the poet's and publisher's editing processes.

This got me asking myself what degree of repetition of any given word is acceptable in a collection. The question is particularly pertinent to me at the moment, because I'm trying to put together a manuscript for a book-length collection of poems. So, today, I read through the pieces I've been thinking about collecting with that in mind. I got a bit of a shock: I reuse quite a number of words, a significant handful of which I stick in fairly frequently.

However, when I say "fairly frequently", I mean they pop up in, say, between five and seven poems out of 60-odd. None of the words repeated with such frequency is uncommon. Does it matter how common a repeated word is? Is it easier to get away with repeating a common word than a (comparatively) rare one? The above example would indicate that the answer is yes in both cases: I suspect the second "rheumy" would have stood out to me even if it had been several poems later in Clanchy's book, and I didn't spot any other repetitions (though I might be paying closer attention in future).

But if that's the case, how often can one get away with repeating a common word, such as "eyes" or "voice" or "coat"? If significant weight is put on the word in a poem, does that make it harder to get away with using it elsewhere even if it isn't carrying so much freight in the second (or third, or fourth or--gulp--fifth) poem? Up to what point is repetition of a word/image (perhaps we could call it a "poeme") part of an aesthetic and at what point does it become simply irritating to the reader?

I would be extremely interested in any comments on this. I suspect it's something on which every writer has to reach his or her own conclusions, but those conclusions are probably best arrived at in concert with other writers and some segment of one's audience or readership. So come on, pitch in. (Just don't repeat yourself.)

*Page 11, line 10 of "Act 2" and page 13, line 29 of "Deep Blue".

**The cliché is, of course, "rheumy eyes", which is the precise phrase used in "Act 2"; in "Deep Blue", by contrast, we have "rheumy, hooded eyes": a double cliché!

Somhairle MacGill-Eain Air-loidhne

(This post is in Gaelic* then English)

Tha mi dìreach air làrach-lìn ùr mu bheatha is bhàrdachd Somhairle MacGill-Eain lorg a-mach. Tha mòran ann: dàin, eachdraidh-beatha, dealbhan, clàran is bhideo, is mapaichean. Chan eil facal Beurla ann idir ach anns na earrannan bhideo anns a’ bheil Iain Mac a’ Ghobhainn neo Somhairle fhèin a’ bruidhinn mu a bheatha is Seamus Heaney a’ bruidhinn mu a bhàrdachd. Ann an bhideo eile, tha Aoghnas Pàdraig Caimbeul a’ bruidhinn mu a bhuaidh is tha tri earrannan bhideo ann anns a’ bheil Somhairle a leughadh dàn leat. Is e làrach-lìn fhèin math a th’ann.

I have just discovered a new website dedicated to the life and work of the great 20th century Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean. It is full of stuff: poems, biographical information, photos, recordings and video, and maps. There isn't a word of English on the site, apart from in the video exerpts in which Iain Chrichton Smith and Sorley himself speak about his life and Seamus Heaney speaks about his poetry. In another video, Angus Peter Campbell speaks (in Gaelic with subtitles) about his influence and there are three excerpts in which Sorley reads a poem of his. It's a tremendous site.

*Ma tha duine sam bith airson a' Ghàidhlig agam ceartachadh, b' urrainn dhaibh post-d a chur dhomh. Seo mo sheòladh: light [aig] gotadsl [dot] co [dot] uk

Constitutional Blogging

It seems something of a shame that my day job constrains me from blogging about this fascinating new era in Scottish politics. But there we go. Instead, I recommend to anyone interested in an analysis of developments the new blog by BBC Scotland correspondent Brian Taylor. His is a far more interesting, more entertaining analysis than I could ever give anyway.

I also highly recommend Neal Ascherson's openDemocracy article on the debate about a written constitution for Britain. That might seem a wee bit of a leap in one blog note but, as you'll see if you read the piece, the new situation in Scotland also has profound implications for British politics as a whole.

Change to Sunday's Line-up

Just got word that Kate Clanchy has had to cancel for Sunday due to bronchitis. Fortunately, we have managed to secure a last-minute replacement: Alastair Finlay, writer of Sex, Death and Football* and, more recently, The Love Songs of John Knox, both from Luath.

The rest of the line-up and other arrangements remain as advertised. It should make for a lively, interesting and varied night--with, I expect, a fair bit of demotic Scots from Alastair Finlay. Just a bit of a pity it's turned out all male.

*A book I enjoyed very much, somewhat to my surprise given the title. I haven't read the John Knox book.

Debut Authors Festival 2007

The programme for the the Debut Authors Festival 2007 came through the door this week. This year's festival has a 100% increase on the 2006 poet count: there are two--namely Daljit Nagra and Annie Freud--but that's still one down on 2005.

Also as with last year, the poets are mainstreamed into the programme alongside the prose writers: Nagra on the panel for "Britain Today" and Freud in the "Love Against the Odds" event. In 2005, there was a poetry event with Jacob Polley, Matthew Hollis and Choman Hardi. Which approach is better for poets? Minority that we are, perhaps we can garner a slightly greater audience by being placed alongside novelists, but my memory of the 2005 poetry event was that it was pretty full. Besides, this festival is pitched particularly at emerging writers, so mainstreaming shouldn't be necessary from that point of view.

Of course, there's something to be said for a thematic approach, which seems to be the way the festival is going. However, it still feels to me like the poets are a slender add-on to the prose writers, not so integral a part of the programming as their novelistic brethren and sistren. That impression is reinforced by the "Unpublished Writers Jam Session" (emphasis mine), billed as "a fantastic opportunity to read your unpublished work in front of an expert panel." But, if it's the same as in previous years (and the blurb is identical, as far as I can remember) it's not a fantastic opportunity if you're a poet. In fact, it's no opportunity at all. I'd be much less irritated if the event called itself an "Unpublished Novelists Jam Session". Y'know, as a poet, I'm a writer too.

But don't get me wrong: I'm otherwise impressed with the programme and very pleased that poets are on the increase again in it. Last year, I was told that the paucity of poets was because there were few debut poets to choose from. Well, that might be the case if all you're considering is the main publishers (Nagra's with Faber and Freud is with Picador), but there's a lot of work worth hearing furth of the Mighty Handful and smaller presses are becoming ever more important to poets. After all, it was a Seren poet who beat Heaney, Feaver and Williams to the poetry Whitbread--sorry, Costa--last year.

A Routine in its Infancy

A little time to write today. I shouldn't be spending it scribbling a note on the blog but I haven't had enough mental space for poems to grow in since the baby was born, although I've had plenty feverishly paced thoughts about poetry, politics and various other matters. As a consequence, I'm facing the fear of an hour or so filled with blankness or writing less rewarding than poetry.

I'd be interested to know how other writers with small children and day jobs have managed the transition into writing and working parenthood. Perhaps it's just a matter of time and patience. The wee one is only just shy of eight weeks, after all, and only in the past week or so has something approaching a routine begun to develop. Still, any thoughts from anyone who is or has been in a similar position would be welcome.

Salty ruminations on bad news from Bloodaxe.

*

Which come after Mark Ravenhill writes on arts funding vs sport funding in The Guardian.

*

Meanwhile, here's a new poetry podcasting project.

*

And something else that could set poetry alight.

Interesting Times

So, the SNP came out on top, only just. Given my day job, it's inappropriate for me to express any opinion on the result, except that there's no denying it's a momentous change in Scottish politics. However, with the possibility of challenges to the result and no prospect of a coalition big enough to form a majority, the future looks pretty uncertain. A minority Administration now appears likely, but the possibility remains that the majority in the Parliament could vote against Salmond for First Minister, which could force Scotland back to the polls. If that were to happen, at least there would be less room for confusion over ballot papers.

Reasoning Rhyme: To Begin at the Beginning: the Role of the Onset 2

The previous post in this series examined the role of the onset in Wilfred Owen's poetry. In this post, I'll consider the subtle ways in which the onset participates in the rhyme scheme in a couple of poems by Simon Armitage.

"Poem"
Many contemporary poets exploit a wide variety of rhymes, often within a single poem. One piece with a fascinating relationship between onsets is Armitage's sonnet “Poem”, which mixes nuclear and fraternal rhymes:

And if it snowed and snow covered the drive
he took a spade and tossed it to one side.
And always tucked his daughter up at night.
And slippered her the one time that she lied.

And every week he tipped up half his wage.
And what he didn’t spend each week he saved.
And praised his wife for every meal she made.
And once, for laughing, punched her in the face.

And for his mum he hired a private nurse.
And every Sunday taxied her to church.
And he blubbed when she went from bad to worse.
And twice he lifted ten quid from her purse.

Here’s how they rated him when they looked back:
sometimes he did this, sometimes he did that.

If one ignores the onsets, the rhyme scheme appears to run aaaa bbbb cccc dd, an incredibly simplistic scheme which parallels the matter-of-fact tone of the poem. An attempt to parse the rhymes into a more complex scheme on the basis of the codas would produce something highly irregular, such as abab cddc efee gg. The first stanza is the easiest to parse, and abab the most sensible option, based on the identical codas of side:lied, but it does leave the somewhat distant relationship drive:night in which the only features that the codas share is that they are not sonorants.

The second stanza is more problematic: none of the codas is identical and each possible relationship has complications. The closest relationship is saved:made, on the basis of which the stanza is parsed as cddc, but this relationship would involve syllable-internal intrusion. The relationship wage:saved would involve swapping the continuancy feature in the final two segments, and the relationship saved:face involves breaking the continuancy and coronal features.

In the third stanza, determining fellowship on the basis of the codas would leave church without a fellow and produce a three-fellowed rhyme in a poem which otherwise uses only two-fellowed rhymes. However, there is no question about the final stanza, as this contains only two candidates for fellowship.

A standard approach to rhyme obviously has grave problems parsing the rhyme scheme of “Poem”. However, if one determines fellowship within stanzas partly on the basis of shared features of the onsets, a choice of schemes more complex than aaaa bbbb cccc dd and more regular than abab cddc efee gg emerges: abab cdcd efef gg--the rhyme scheme of the Shakespearean sonnet form--or possibly aabb cdcd eeff gg.

As all the onsets in the first stanza are coronal, determining fellowship boils down to a choice between drive:night; side:lied (abab) or drive:side; night:lied (aabb). Since the former choice involves a stronger relationship between the onsets of the a-fellows in that they both contain sonorants and obstruents, it seems reasonable to opt for this as the scheme. This also accords with, but provides a stronger relationship than, a choice based on the codas and provides a rhyme scheme which looks like a Shakespearean sonnet.

In the second stanza we are faced with three labial segments ([w]age, [m]ade, [f]ace) and one coronal ([s]aved). Obviously, the place feature is insufficient to define fellowship here, so we turn instead to the manner feature, which divides the stanza neatly into two sonorants ([w] and [m]) and two fricatives ([s] and [f]). Thus this stanza is parsed as wage:made; saved:face (cdcd).

The third stanza can be parsed as efef or eeff. As with the first stanza, the former choice accords with the sonnet rhyme scheme and is based on a stronger relationship: nurse:worse ; church:purse as opposed to nurse:church; worse:purse.

Interestingly, the least intimate relationship between onsets occurs in the gg stanza: back:that, two voiced obstruents. Although comparable weak relationships are found in other stanzas, they are partnered by stronger relationships. However, there is no functional need for a strong relationship here, since there are only two candidates and therefore no questions as to what rhymes with what.

These observations indicate that the onsets are strengthening in their role as compensation for a weakening in the differential role of the nuclei. This compensation is not so strong if the codas provide enough differential information to determine fellowship (e.g. side:lied versus drive:night) or if there are only two candidates. This strengthening is probably motivated by a preference for a complex but regular rhyme scheme, for which the nuclei normally provide sufficient differential information for fellowship within a single stanza.

"Kid"
Another poem by Armitage informative for the status of onsets is the single stanza, 24 line “Kid”, the title poem of the collection from which “Poem” also comes, and therefore roughly contemporaneous with the latter work:

Batman, big shot, when you gave the order
to grow up, then let me loose to wander
leeward, through the wild blue yonder
as you liked to say, or ditched me, rather,
in the gutter ... well, I turned the corner.
Now I’ve scotched that ‘he was like a father
to me’ rumour, sacked it, blown the cover
on that ‘he was like an elder brother’
story, let the cat out of the bag on that caper
with the married woman, how you took her
downtown on expenses in the motor.
Holy robin-redbreast-nest-egg-shocker!
Holy roll me over in the clover,
I’m not playing ball boy any longer
Batman, now I’ve doffed that off-the-shoulder
Sherwood-Forest-green and scarlet number
for a pair of jeans and crew-neck jumper;
now I’m taller, harder, stronger, older.
Batman, it makes a marvellous picture:
you without your shadow, stewing over
chicken giblets in the pressure cooker,
next to nothing in the walk-in larder,
punching the palm of your hand all winter,
you baby, now I’m the real boy wonder.

This poem uses exclusively feminine rhymes, including one mosaic rhyme (took her:shocker ll.10,12), all of which end in unstressed schwa, in a highly irregular scheme: abbc acdd efef ghij jikg khll. As expected, the stressed syllables participate in the rhyme scheme.

Fellowship was determined by finding as many identical vowels as possible then looking for the closest overall match in the remaining fellows. This was straightforward for longer:larder (identical onsets, and low, back vowels) and winter:wonder (identical onsets and near-identical codas). The choice for picture:cooker was determined by the lack of any other possible fellows within reasonable distance. The choice of caper:motor; took her:shocker was based on the backness of the vowels and identity of the codas in the latter pair.

Seven out of the twelve rhymes are fraternal (that is, have identical vowels); the remaining five do not have identical vowels. These two types are not arranged with any regularity. Five of the onsets of the seven fraternal rhymes (i.e., approximately 70%) share fewer than three features. In three out of these five, one fellow has an empty onset (order:corner ll.1,5; clover:over ll.13,20; shoulder:older ll.15,18). Four of the onsets of the five other rhymes (i.e., 80%) share three or more features. In two of these, the onsets are identical (longer:larder ll.14,22; winter:wonder ll.23,24). These figures indicate that, for this poem at least, onsets in a rhyme relationship are more likely to bear some similarity to each other if the nuclei of the syllables differ. It would therefore appear that the role of the onsets strengthens to compensate for weakening in the role of the nuclei.

Besides the features mentioned above, there is another notable aspect to the rhyme scheme of “Kid”, namely that the onsets of the second syllable are not always identical between fellows as would be expected with feminine rhymes. Examining these yields startling results. Of the twelve rhymes, seven exhibit this dissimilarity, the same proportion as exhibit vowel identity. However, onset dissimilarity is in no way connected to vowel identity, as only four out of these seven (i.e., approximately 56%) do not exhibit vowel identity. Strikingly, in all seven rhymes, both fellows share three major features. Two of these rhymes, d and k, may share four features, if, for cover:brother, the dental nature of the two fricatives counts, and if, for picture:cooker the secondary, palatal articulation of the /k/ counts as parallel to the frication in the affricate. There is a striking regularity to the shared features, as shown below:

proportion in which
- lack of sonority is shared: 6 out of 7, approximately 84%
- continuancy or lack of it is shared: all 7, i.e., 100%
- non-continuancy is shared: 6 out of 7, approximately 84%
- voicing or lack of it is shared: 5 out of 7, approximately 70%
- place is shared, excluding d and k: 3 out of 7, approximately 42%
- place is shared, including d and k: 5 out of 7, approximately 70%

It therefore appears that rhymes with dissimilar and similar onsets in the second syllable are involved in a separate rhyme scheme from the stressed syllables. This makes sense if one recalls that the rimes of all the unstressed syllables in the poem are identical, an unexpected feature of the work. Thus the onsets of these syllables appear, in terms of this separate subscheme, to be strengthening in their roles and simultaneously, in terms of the overall feminine rhyme scheme, to be weakening in their roles in order to compensate for weakening in the differential role of the nuclei. This is a very similar situation to that discussed above in relation to “Poem”.

What is Mainstream?

I've been musing a little about the usefulness or otherwise of the term "mainstream" in relation to Scottish poetry. I think it's fair to say that, in UK terms, Hugh MacDiarmid would not be regarded as mainstream. His non-mainstream status is emphasised by the fact that he turns up in the marvellous PENNsound archive, which focuses on the more experimental/avant-garde end of American poetry, and the fact that Eliot Weinberger considers his work in an admiring essay in Karmic Traces. And yet MacDiarmid is a hugely significant figure in 20th century Scottish poetry by anyone's standards. This surely makes him mainstream in a Scottish context, which perhaps emphasises his contention that Scottish literature is a separate tradition to the so-called English literature canon and market.

An analogous situation obtains with Gael Turnbull. Gael's role in injecting postwar modernist American poetry and poetics into the British scene was highly significant. He was an unceasing experimenter and his work sits comfortably with Shearsman Books, who published his Jacket tribute also fitted easily into the much more mainstream arena of Shore Poets, of which he was a valued (and is a much missed) member. Is Gael's work mainstream or experimental? Why should I (or anyone else) care? It's full of inventiveness, wit, insight, beauty, energy, playfulness and seriousness. It's simply worth reading.

Does this mean that, in Scotland, we have less of a distinction between the mainstream/accessible and the experimental/difficult? I'd like to think so, but I'm not convinced. After all, the poetry scene in which I'm involved is pretty much the main stream. But then, where do writers such as Frank Kuppner, David Kinloch or Price sit in relation to this supposed dichotomy? They have all appeared and/or are appearing on the bill at Shore Poets and other mainstream poetry readings, but they certainly don't row down the main current of the main stream, as indicated by the fact that Kinloch and Price both appear in the Archive of the Now.

Gists and Piths

Gists and Piths is a newish British poetry and poetics blogzine, which seems to lean towards the experimental. I haven't read the poetry on the site, but I enjoyed "Some thoughts on the mainstream" and the review of Daljit Nagra's book (which I also haven't read yet). Should be worth following this blog's development.

A Brief Note on Translation, Politics and Art

Today's Guardian Review includes a reasonable piece by Jennie Erdal on literary translation. It has no especially profound insights to offer on the process/art/act of translation but is more concerned with the profile of translators and translation in the world of books in the UK (woeful, but improving slightly). However, I liked the final sentence:

"Translators let us see another way of life, other possibilities, other matters, other manners, increasing the understanding between nations far better than politicians."

This is a significant function not only of translation but of much art of whatever form.

A Little Respect

If you missed David Martin's recent exhibition at the RSA, don't despair, because there are images of the work from the show (including the "studio wall" collage) on his blog.

I managed to get along to the RSA for a quick visit just before the exhibition ended. What struck me about the work was its depth of colour and depth of seeing, by which I mean not least the respect I sense towards the people and places Dave encountered on his journey. That deep respect is not new in his painting--I remember it from his degree show about seven or eight years ago--but, by the time it came to his last but one show, it seemed to have dissipated somewhat. It was there in his previous exhibition, but the slightly alegorical nature of the work diluted it, so it's good to see it back in full force. That respect made it seem a timely, even essential, exhibition because there is too little visible in our culture that treats the middle east in such a manner.

Rob For President

Rob A Mackenzie has been nominated for poet laureate of the blogosphere! Thing is, he says he doesn't want it, which is tough, 'cause I've never heard of the other nominees. I don't know much about what the accolade entails, either. First I heard of it was when Ron Silliman said his stint was now over, so at least one predecessor is hardly an insignificant name, which makes it all the more something to celebrate that Rob has been nominated.

The Trouble with Normal

is, as Bruce said, it always gets worse.

Dark Matters

I managed to scoot up to the Ingleby Gallery on Thursday to catch Alison Watt's installation "Dark Light" on its last day. Her shift from white canvases to black is logical: a further step in the stripping down that is represented by her progression from full-blown portraits to paintings of fabric to paintings of purely white fabric. White is a combination of all the colours of the spectrum, so a move to black marks a removal of that underlying richness.

Thursday was, of course, Maundy Thursday, one of the days on which it is traditional in some Christian demoninations to hold a tenebrae service, in which the light in the church is gradually extinguished--another stripping back to black. The churches in Linlithgow held a joint tenebrae service on Good Friday, but experiencing Watt's piece was a tenebrae for one: standing in the cube waiting for the paintings to emerge from the dimness was highly contemplative, not unlike waiting for God to emerge from the gloom of prayer. It put me in mind of the closing stanza of Henry Vaughan's poem "The Night":

There is in God (some say)
A deep, but dazzling darkness; As men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear;
O for that night! where I in him
Might live invisible and dim.

Ecce Choco

David Taylor at Diary of an Arts Pastor has a very good post on the stoushie about the

The Cusp of Fame

Something else I had to miss because of Eilish's sense of timing was the opening of the new show by painter David Martin: "The Cusp of Change: A Journey Through the Middle East". This is Dave's RSA show of work arising out of his Salvesen scholarship. There's a lot of stuff from it appearing daily on his blog, so take a look. I hope to get down to the RSA before it finishes. I missed his last show entirely, even though I'd written poems to accompany some of the work.

What I Missed

Looks like the 100 Poets Gathering at StAnza was a pretty incendiary event! You can catch up with some more of what went on at the festival with Rob Mackenzie's series of StAnza postings at Surroundings. Rob, a fellow HappenStance poet, read at a pamphlet poets event this year, as I did last year. He even gets a plug from George Szirtes, who delivered this year's StAnza lecture, which I must read at some point. Jorie Graham, didn't make it apparently, so at least I didn't miss her.

Readings Update

Due to family circumstances, I've had to pull out of the 100 Poets Gathering at StAnza and won't be able to make it to the festival at all. This means that my next scheduled reading is at the Shore Poets event in May, when I'll be appearing alongside Kate Clanchy and my fellow HappenStancer, Rob A Mackenzie. The music that evening will be provided by the excellent young Northumbrian singer-songwriter Richard Dawson.

The Scottish Cultural Academy

The Scottish Executive has finally announced a little more about the Scottish cultural academy that the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport promised us months and months ago in the Executive's response to the Cultural Commission's report.

There has been some muttering about the fact that the academy, which is based somewhat on the Irish Aosdána scheme, wasn't mentioned in the draft culture bill, so the announcement--made ahead of the results of this year's Creative Scotland awards--is certainly welcome. Scotland has been bad at acknowledging and supporting its creative artists, so any increase in recognition is a step forward for our society. I wish, however, that more was also being done to encourage those of us who're still wrestling to establish ourselves.

Edwin Morgan, Scotland's first official Makar, has been appointed the academy's first member. He is an obvious and appropriate choice, given his literary standing and his popularity. Morgan is still writing away with remarkable energy, in spite of his advanced age and cancer. I'll keep a close eye out for who joins him in the academy. It will be interesting to see how the membership develops.

This might be very funny ...

... but I couldn't possibly comment.

The purpose of the poem ... is to change the world.

Thank Heaven: the world is too much as it was.

Listening Pleasure

I discovered some more rich seams of poetry recordings on the web this week. First off, there's the Internet Poetry Archive, an American site not to be confused with Britain's Poetry Archive. The Internet Poetry Archive very small, with recordings from only seven poets so far, but some significant names. I was pleased to find some recordings of Robert Pinsky, whom I've read but never heard. I clicked on his wonderful poem "Shirt" and was surprised to hear how slowly he reads it, as the structure and rhythm had always struck me as quite strong and driving.

By contrast, PENNsound is a vast respository of online audio and video. The authors represented are a mixture of prose writers and poets. It looks like most are American, but there are some significant exceptions: imagine my surprise and delight to find Hugh MacDiarmid there! It's the man himself reading, among other things the entirety of A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (in four sound files).

While MacDiarmid is represented by a handful of files, some writers, such as Robert Creeley, have piles. I can see I'll be going back to PENNsound again and again and again. (Anybody know of some cheap storage?!)

StAnza: The Gathering

Just received confirmation that my reading slot at the StAnza 2007 100 Poets Gathering on Sunday 18 March will be some time between 12:30 and 2:15. It's quite a gathering, as you can see on the StAnza site.

A Cure for Somnia

Roy Hattersley defends the notion that poetry should be difficult, though not necessarily with reference to poets usually described as difficult.

Words on War

Read this, by Eliot Weinberger, and weep.

Then read this, also by Weinberger, and weep some more.

Finally, read this, not by Weinberger, and smile grimly.

Some Freshly Refreshed Websites

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My recent visits to the HappenStance site have revealed that a lot has been going on behind the front page. The publications and chapbook reviews sections have been completely overhauled, with a very swish look and a good deal of new features.

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The website of Chapman, the grande dame of Scotland's literary magazines, had been out of date for such a length that I'd given up looking at it a long time ago. Imagine my surprise to find a completely new website when I wandered over in that direction a few days ago. Not only that, but it looks gey youthful, unlike the previous, rather stale version.

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More than you needed to know, the dream blog of my colleague Diarmid Mogg, which I mentioned before, has flitted to TypePad and looks superb. It's also easier to navigate than the old version.

A Rare Item

Helena Nelson, in her HappenStance guise, e-mailed me yesterday to let me know that, apart from the small handful of sale copies I have myself, Tonguefire is officially sold out!

For all sorts of reasons, it feels good to have reached that landmark at this point. I'm in a good position to appreciate it at the moment, and it can only strengthen my hand and resolve as I build towards a first full collection.

Speaking of which, I've booked a place on an Arvon course about working towards a first collection this summer. It's led by Matthew Hollis and Colette Bryce. Should be good. I'm hoping it'll spur me on in the next few months.

Reasoning Rhyme: To Begin at the Beginning: the Role of the Onset 1

As I stated in the first main post in this series, the traditional conception of rhyme doesn't allow for syllable onsets to play any role in rhyming, except in identical twin rhyme. The problem is that this analysis can't account for much 20th century and contemporary rhyme practice, in which the onset muscles in on defining fellowship when vowel identity is violated or carried to an extreme. I'll examine Wilfred Owen's work with reference to the former circumstance and, in the next post, a couple of poems by Simon Armitage to demonstrate the latter, but first, a few words about how rhyme practice changed last century.

In the 20th century, constraints on rhyme in poetry were largely relaxed. Anne Ridler, in her 1951 introduction to the second edition of The Faber Book of Modern Verse (1951) states that “poets shunned full rhymes ... because of their scarcity in English, which made so many of them too stale for further use.” A major development of the First World War poet, Wilfred Owen, is the use of a peripheral rhyme scheme in a great number of poems. Louis MacNiece, a major poet of the 1930s, used nuclear rhyme in his “Bagpipe Music”. Vernon Watkins' poem“White Blossoms”, written in the 1940s, alternates between fraternal rhyme, peripheral rhyme, removed rhyme and, in one instance, remote rhyme. Alternation between different forms of rhyme, including twin rhyme, has become a pattern for numerous poets. To snatch a few names from the air, it is found in the work of John Berryman, Seamus Heaney and Simon Armitage.

Wilfred Owen
In much of Owen's finest and best-known work, the use of peripheral rhyme is consistent. Such rhyme schemes involve identical onsets and codas, with the relationships between stressed vowels being reduced to featural. An analysis of all peripheral rhyme schemes in The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, edited by C. Day Lewis (Chatto & Windus, London, 1964) reveals that almost all these poems include a varying number of departures from the strict peripheral norm.

These aberrant rhymes, which can be either relative or twin, make up approximately 31% of the rhymes in Owen’s relative rhyme schemes. Of the relative rhymes in these aberrations, around 35% are removed (e.g., cheese:joys “A Terre” ll.40,41; [w]once:France “Futility”, ll.2,4). Some fall between peripheral and removed (crisp:grasp “Exposure” ll.37, 38), permit protrusion (brambles:rumbles “Exposure”, ll.7,8; openings:deepening “The Show” ll.14,15), permit one empty onset (apple:supple “Arms and the Boy” ll.10,11) or an /h/ (heels:curls “Arms and the Boy” ll.11,12), which is close to empty. Occasionally, both onsets or codas may be empty (amber:ember “Miners” ll.26,28).

Most of these aberrant rhymes can therefore be thought of as lax peripherals, rather than wholesale departures from the scheme. The examples with one empty onset are slightly problematic in that it is difficult to decide whether they are peripheral or removed. It is possible to think of these as having two empty onsets and protrusion in one fellow. However, fraternal rhymes in which one fellow has an empty onset could therefore also being analysed as identicals with protrusion.

Owen very occasionally admits fraternal rhymes to his peripheral rhyme schemes. I have found six such rhymes, of which five (i.e., 83%) exhibit a close relationship between the onsets:

[g]lozed:[k]losed (velar stops) “Exposure” ll. 26,29
deci/[m]ation:imagi[n]ation (nasal stops) “Insensibility” ll.18,19
[d]rained:[t]rained (alveolar stops) “Insensibility” ll.33,34
[dZ]est:[tS]est (palatoalveolar affricates) “A Terre” ll.58,61
he[r]eafter:[l]aughter (liquids) “‘Has Your Soul Sipped’” ll.2,4

The one remaining fraternal (there:air “Miners” ll.14,16) pairs [D] with an empty onset. In his fraternal rhyme schemes, Owen takes no more notice of onset relationship than other rhyming poets.

Though his rhyme schemes are basically masculine, Owen also makes use of feminine and mosaic rhyme in approximately 21% of his relative rhymes:

(a) mystery:mastery “Strange Meeting” ll.30,31
(b) silent:salient “Exposure” ll.2,3
(c) ever:over “A Terre” ll.28.29
(d) knive us:nervous “Exposure” ll.1,4
(e) snow-dazed:sun-dozed “Exposure” ll.22,23

As examples (a) to (d) show, only the first syllable usually takes part in the relative rhyme scheme. Example (e) is the only instance I found in Owen of both syllables participating in the relative rhyme. The difference lies in the stress pattern of the rhyme fellows: in (a) to (d), only the initial syllable is lexically stressed; in (e), both syllables of the compounds are lexically stressed. This also holds for Owen’s rare trisyllabic rhymes, allowing us to generalise that only lexically stressed syllables participate in Owen’s relative rhyme schemes, as all his masculine rhymes are lexically stressed.

In the next post, I'll look at a couple of Simon Armitage poems with some surprising characteristics in the rhyme schemes.

Spousal Gauntlet, Lenten Challenge

Last night, it being Ash Wednesday, we were discussing taking things up for lent when my wife suggested I should write a poem a day for the season. It's an insane idea, especially given the very impending birth of our baby, but I didn't dismiss it. Nor did I cave. More the fool me, you might say: when I produced a draft of a poem later that evening she said, "Is that your first poem for lent?"

Who knows: it might pay off! I mean, if I were to get a few real poems out of it, that would certainly be a bonus. Anyone up for joining me in the madness? You get Sunday off (it being the Sabbath and all that), but I've yet to ask the invigilator whether I do.

Scheduled Acts of Criticism

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I recommend a listen to this week's edition of "Poets and the Nation". It's a good, intelligent piece of broadcasting about how cultural change in Scotland has been reflected in poetry through the ages. It bounces about time a bit more than last week's, which is one thing in its favour.

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Radio 3 is celebrating the Auden centenary this week. It started with "Six Unexpected Days", a feature on Auden and the landscape of the Northern Pennines, and continues this week with the first run of a new series "The Essay", a 15-minute feature broadcast at 11pm Monday to Thursday. Last night's essayist was Dana Gioia on Auden as example. Tonight's is Kate Clanchy on the early political poetry.

A Couple of Overdue Links

Spurred on by Kevin Doran's reflections on the different linking habits in poets' blogs on either side of the Virtual Pond, I've added a couple more links that should have been added yonks ago.

Chief among my neglections is Kathryn Gray's blog. I say "chief" because it was stumbling upon this blog ages ago (and before I had caught the blog-reading bug) that made me think about setting up my own. Kathryn Gray happens to be a friend of my friend Sinead Wilson, who as a great little pamphlet out with Donut Press. (I reviewed it in Sphinx 5.)

Another serious case of neglect on my part is the blog of fellow HappenStance poet Matt Merritt. So far, that's three bloggers from the HappenStance stable: me, Rob Mackenzie and Matt. Hardly world domination, but not a bad showing for a small press.

Gathering A Little Steam in the Blogospere

I've been finding my Feedburner feed and site stats quite fascinating reading. Most interesting of all is coming across hits from the blogs of other writers I don't know who've linked to me and therefore said blogs and writers, whom I might not have known about otherwise. In the past few days, I've found Ron Silliman and Kevin Doran.

Thank you, gentlemen, however you found me (do comment if you see this). I have returned the favour.

New Links Added

I've added a few new links and rearranged the sidebar a little by creating a "Poetry Resources" section, not that I'm that clear as to what the precise division is between that and "Words", but there we go.

A couple of sites I've only just discovered are Modern American Poetry, which contains useful critical material on a large number of American poets from Dickinson on, and the Archive of the Now, a site that complements the Poetry Archive's more mainstream operations with its dedication to "innovative poetry being written or performed in Britain." I've also added a link to UBUWEB, one of the inspirations behind the Archive of the Now.

All this stuff to explore, and so little time to do it!

Random(ish) Thoughts on Translation

In the preface to Antonio Machado: Selected Poems, the translator Alan S Trueblood (what a gift of a name!) writes:

"One cannot hold today that a poet's voice in translation should sound as if he had been writing in English all along. ... Some aura of foreignness, individually and culturally marked, should survive re-creation."

By slight contrast, Rob Mackenzie, concludes the first of his reflections on translating Quasimodo by saying:

"Each translation must stand as a poem. The translator can only hope against hope that he has communicated something of what was in the original writer’s mind."

These statements could be taken as describing two separate approaches to the art of translating poetry. Trueblood's emphasis strikes me as bearing the mark of literary or academic translation as an act in itself, in that it is separated from any other creative work. By this I don't mean to deny that such translation is a creative act, because such a denial would be absurdly naive. I simply mean that the literary/academic translator's primary motivation is not necessarily to make a poem really work in the target language.

On the other hand, Rob's concern seems that of a poet: to create a poem in English that really works but still carries something of the imagery and impact of the original. This endeavour cannot be separated from the translating poet's work on their own poetry, because something of their voice will most likely leak into their translations and, if the translating is carried out attentively, something of the translated poet's voice might well inf(l)ect the translator's own writing. The effectiveness of this can be seen in Ted Hughes's translations of Yehuda Amichai.

Perhaps this is where the notional difference between a translation and a version (see this post) comes into play. If so, does that mean that the creation of a version is the proper concern of a poet and the creation of a translation the proper concern of a professional translator? It's not a thought I accept, since it seems an unhelpful narrowing of the fields. Still, it might throw some light on why some people feel uneasy about so-called versions.

The two approaches, of course, both carry undeniable benefits and disbenefits. In my handful of translations from Rilke into Scots (there's one here) or English, I think I've taken what I've described as the poet's approach. This is partly because of the failure of translations I'd come across to show the reader anything much of what drew me to Rilke.

Perhaps the poet's approach is, in the long run, personally less rewarding than the academic translation because it's pretty much doomed to failure. Eliot Weinberger says in "Translation", the second of his "3 Notes on Poetry" (published in Outside Stories):

"A translation that sounds like a poem in English is usually a bad translation.

"A translation that strives for the accuracy of a bilingual dictionary is always a bad translation.

"A translation must sound like a translation written in living English".

By contrast, it strikes me that nobody would accept a translated novel that did not read as a good novel. Basically, a good translation is a tall order for a translator taking either approach.

On reflection, it surprises me that translation has not been given greater prominence in Scottish literature. After all, as a three-voiced country, we're always translating between ourselves, let alone from other cultures. Perhaps we need to find a vocal and visible way of celebrating our translators.

I'll leave you with another thought from Weinberger's essay:

"Translation theory, however beautiful, is useless for translating. There are the laws of thermodynamics, and there is cooking."

A Further Window on Last Wednesday

As I mentioned in my post on LUPAS one matter touched on in the Q&A at last Wednesday's reading was the poetry-science divide. The divide in reactions to Gerrie Fellow's new work was fascinating in that respect. Norman Kreitman, a PAS stalwart, complimented her on tackling the spiritual impact of technology. "Very few poets have the guts to do that," he declared. Gerrie denied any spiritual intent, but there is a strong emotional thread to the poems for Window for a Small Blue Baby, which might be what he meant.

By contrast, another audience member, who used to be a scientist, said he found Gerrie's approach "cold"--though I must disagree strongly with that--and applauded me for the emotional content of my work. Given my uncertainty about how well I'd read, that was encouraging.

One thing I feel definitely went well in the reading was the mix of languages in my set. For the first time, I read some poems that include Gaelic phrases, as well as my usual mix of Scots and English. Joyce Caplan, who chairs the readings, commented that the use of Gaelic in "Sketchbook of a Trip to the Hebrides" (published in the issue of island magazine mentioned in this post) was, if I remember her choice of words correctly, "enticing".

This practice arises out of a recent desire on my part for a sort of Caledonian linguistic holism in my work. It's too obvious to write poems in Gaelic or English or Scots and Scots already infilrates my otherwise English-language work to varying degrees, so why not employ my slowly growing knowledge of Gaelic in similar ways? I realise it's not "accessible" to do that, but I'm less interested in accessibility than the aesthetic possibilities it opens up for me. Not that I've gone far in exploring them yet.

"Poets and The Nation"

Radio Scotland is airing a three-part series on Scottish poetry called "Poets and The Nation" on Mondays from 11:30 to 12:00. You can listen online from the features page (I assume each programme is available for the standard seven days after broadcast). The first instalment, which was broadcast Monday this week, explored how Scottish poets have engaged with the land and landscape. The half-hour format inevitably makes for a pretty sketchy, whistle-stop exploration of the entire history of even a particular aspect of Scottish poetry in Gaelic, Scots and English, but it's heartening to find a reasonably serious series about poetry on the radio.

Poetry Makes Nothing Happen

Thank Heaven: the world is hectic enough as it is.

Reasoning Rhyme: Supplement on the Features of Consonants

Throughout the Reasoning Rhyme posts, I refer to the features of segments. These are the aspects of each consonant or vowel that make it the sound it is. This post and its companion on vowels attempt to explain the basics of feature theory in fairly non-technical language, but I'm afraid they'll remain pretty dry! (Remember that the symbols I use to transcribe sounds can be found here.)

The consonantal features describe the place of articulation, the manner of articulation and whether the consonant is voiced or voiceless. Consonants can differ in place of articulation (e.g., /p/ /t/ /k/), manner (e.g., /t/ /s/ /l/) and voicing (e.g., /z/ /s/or /b/ /p/).

Voicing is perhaps the easiest to explain. A voiced sound is one for which the vocal cords vibrate and a voiceless sound is one for which they don't vibrate. All vowels are voiced, but not all consonants. The example above should make it clear enough: in the two pairs, the voiced consonant comes first.

A consonant's place of articulation is defined by the place in the mouth where the air flow is constricted or stopped and what articulators are making the constriction. The main ones we need to worry about are labial, dental, alveolar, palatal, velar and a couple of variations on them:

The labial consonants are articulated with your lips in the case of /p/, /b/ and /m/ or your lips and upper teeth in the case of /f/ and /v/.

The dental consonants /T/ and /D/ are articulated by the tip of your tongue at the teeth.

The sizeable class of alveolar consonants--/t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /n/, /l/ and /r/--is pronounced by the tip or blade of the tongue at the little ridge just back from your top teeth, which is called the alveolar ridge.

For the palatal consonants /S/, /Z/ and /j/, your tongue sits up at the roof of your mouth--the hard palate.

The sounds /tS/ and /dZ/--the ones at the start of chip and judge respectively--are known as palatoalveolar consonants because the tip of the tongue sits at the alveolar ridge and the body of the tongue presses up against the roof of the mouth.

The velar consonants /k/, /g/ and /N/ (as well as /x/ for those of us who don't lock our lochs) are pronounced by placing the back of your tongue up against the back of your mouth, which is known as the soft palate or velum.

The sound /w/ (and its voiceless counterpart, the Scots pronunciation of wh) is called labiovelar because it is articulated by rounding the lips and moving the tongue into the position for a velar consonant.

Phew! So that's place of articulation. Manner of articulation is another important aspect of consonantal features. It divides into questions of continuancy and sonority.

Continuancy is all about whether or not there is a continued flow of air through the mouth. If the flow of air is stopped completely, the consonant is called a stop. A stop can be nasal (/m/, /n/ and /N/), simply voiced (/b/, /d/ and /g/) or voiceless (/p/, /t/ and /k/).

There are several kinds of continuants, consonants that have a continuous air flow through the mouth: fricatives, affricates and approximants. In fricatives, the air flow is constricted at the same place as in the corresponding stop. Fricatives can be voiced (/v/, /D/, /z/ and /Z/) or voiceless (/f/, /T/, /s/, /S/ and /x/). The affricates /tS/ and /dZ/ are like a combination of a stop and a fricative in quick succession. Approximants have less of a constriction than fricatives and are voiced. They're almost like vowels, if that makes sense. You might see what I mean when I list them: /w/, /l/, /r/ and /j/. The approximants /l/ and /r/ are very closely related and often called liquids.

Stops, fricatives and affricates can be brought together under the term obstruents to describe the fact that the air flow is obstructed. Another important class is the sonorants. As the name implies, they're rather sonorous. It covers nasal stops, approximants and vowels.

If you're still with me (award yourself a chocolate and/or whisky!) you'll probably have noticed that the classes of sonorants, obstruents and continuants overlap in different ways. In the main posts, you'll see those overlaps in action.

I hope that's helpful. Please comment and let me know whether it clears things up or leaves you confused. I'll do another supplement on vowels, but I think they'll be a bit more straightforward to explain.

Feed Me Now!

I have taken my first faltering steps into the world of feeds today, not only by subscribing to the feed for Rob Mackenzie's blog Surroundings, but by subscribing to Feedburner and installing a nice big button for the feed from this blog. Here's hoping for a feeding frenzy ...

Desktop Meter

Over at desktopsallye, Sally Evans of diehard press and Poetry Scotland has begun writing about meter. She seems quite defensive of pentameter for some reason. Metrics is an interesting subject to explore, and is obviously related to a consideration rhyme, but trying to defend any particular approach against another seems to me like defending red wine against white. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what more she has to say about it.

A Convergence of the Two Cultures

Just discovered an interesting site: the web pages of LUPAS, the Liverpool University Centre for Poetry and Science. I haven't explored the site in depth yet, but it looks interesting, especially the diaries section, a communal blog of sorts involving poets and scientists. I've had a brief scan of the essays section, but the text size is ridiculously small and uncomfortable to read.

Whatever, it's a bold and necessary venture. There's an enormous gulf between poetry and science, something that was touched upon on Wednesday in the question and answer session that followed the reading, which I intend to write a wee bit about. I sometimes wish I was more able to bridge it and I admire those who manage to do so.

Reasoning Rhyme: More Complex Phenomena

Last time, I introduced the basics of my new terminology for rhyme. This post applies that terminology to the examination of more complex phenomena in rhyme.

Remember that you can find a key to the symbols I use to indicate individual sounds here. You should be familiar with the use of slashes round a symbol (e.g. /I/) from the previous post. In this one, I use square brackets in some examples (e.g., ta[ks]i) to emphasise the point that I'm talking about the pronunciation of the sound(s) concerned. I also use a slash in examples to indicate where a word is being broken and use # to show a word boundary(e.g., at all is shown as a/t#all).

There's a bit more linguistic terminology in this post. I hope it doesn't bamboozle too much. I'm still working on the supplement (it might become two!) that should help to make it clear, but I'll post this bit of the discussion meantime nonetheless.

Compound Rhymes
It is possible for a feminine rhyme to be a compound of two of the types discussed in the previous post. One such example from Simon Armitage’s poem “You May Turn Over and Begin ...” is the rhyme cocktails:pigtails, which is a remote:identical compound. Interestingly, the remote element (/k/ and /p/ are both voiceless stops; /Q/ and /I/are both mid vowels; /k/ and /g/ are both velar stops) is the syllable with primary stress. It is also important to note that, although both fellows in the above example are compound nouns, compound rhymes need not be confined to such forms. For instance, waggle:fickle could also be thought of as a remote:identical compound.

Intrusion and Protrusion
Astrid Holtman uses the term “subsequence rhyme” to refer to any rhyme in which a segment present in one fellow is absent from the other. She places it under the heading of “imperfect rhyme”, but it is preferable separate it from twin and relative rhyme. Twin and relative rhyme are clearly concerned with different degrees of relationship between corresponding segments in two rhyme fellows. “Subsequence rhyme” is orthogonal to this relationship and can appear in twin and relative rhyme. For concision and clarity, the term intrusion is to be preferred to “internal subsequence rhyme”, in which a segment is inserted word-internally, and protrusion, to “subsequence rhyme”, in which a segment is added at the end or beginning of a word (e.g. fleet'st:sweets in Shakespeare's Sonnet 19 ll.5, 7).

Swapping
In swapping, two segments or features, usually but not necessarily contiguous, swap places between the fellows. Segmental swapping can be seen in ll.9,10 of Louis MacNeice’s “Bagpipe Music”, which rhyme Blavat[sk]y:ta[ks]i.

As classification of rhyme is based on degree of segmental correspondence, it seems reasonable that individual features as well as entire segments should be able to swap. Featural swapping can be seen in ll.1, 3 of Seamus Heaney’s “The Diviner”, which rhyme stick:pluck. In the initial consonant clusters /st/ and /pl/, one segment is a voiceless stop (/t/ and /p/) and the other is a continuant (/s/ and /l/). The stops have different places of articulation (alveolar and labial), but the continuants share their place of articulation.

Featural swapping can also be seen in the initial consonant clusters in the example above from Shakespeare's Sonnet 19. Here, the labiality of the segments swaps, but the manner of articulation and voicing stay in place.

Borrowing
In borrowing, one fellow “borrows” a consonant from the preceding word to account for its correspondent in the other fellow. The borrowed segment may be identical, as in toil:a/t#all (Wilfred Owen, “Futility”, ll.13,14), or related, as in foil:o/[v]#oil (Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”, ll.2,3).

The second fellow in the example from “Futility” could also arguably be identical twin rhyme, in that a/t#all may be rhyming with tall in l.12, rather than toil. An argument for this is the presence of an extended correspondence in between l.12 and l.14: ...cl[eI] grew tall:...sl[i:]/p#a/t#all.

“Futility” and “God’s Grandeur” provide strong arguments for the reality of borrowing: in “Futility”, this pair is otherwise the only one in the poem lacking a relationship between the onsets; in “God’s Grandeur”, the borrowing of the /v/ reduces the number of pairs lacking a solid onset relationship to one, namely God:rod. Borrowing is obviously related to mosaic rhyme in that both cross word boundaries.

Breaking
Breaking occurs when two or more features of a single segment in one fellow are reproduced in two contiguous segments in the other fellow, e.g., [w]once:[fr]ance (Wilfred Owen, “Futility”, ll.2,4) in which the labiality and sonority of the /w/ are broken into the labiality of the /f/ and the sonority of the /r/. Most instances of breaking appear to involve the place of articulation and either sonority or continuancy.

In the next posts, I'll consider the role of the syllable onset in more detail, examining how it plays a role in rhyme schemes from poems by Wilfred Owen and Simon Armitage.

A Window on Wednesday

Wednesday night's reading went well. I irritated myself by stumbling uncharacteristically over a couple of lines at the beginning, but I settled into the groove fairly soon.

Both Gerrie Fellows and I had 40 minutes (two 20-minute sets), which is double the length of time I've ever had before! I had plenty work to fill my minutes, but I was a bit uncertain of what to read, partly because of having so much fairly fresh work, so the sets ended up being a lot more improvised than usual. I think they worked reasonably well, but I'd be interested in any comments from anyone who was there, whether positive or negative.

Gerrie read from the manuscript of her next collection, Window for a Small Blue Baby, in the first half. The book draws on her experience of IVF, exploring the process from both the technological and the emotional point of view, which gives it a distinctive texture. It's due out with Carcanet in November and will certainly be worth looking out for.

Reasoning Rhyme: Making It New

In the previous post in this series, I briefly explored why rhyme terminology was ripe for revision. In this post, I set out the basics of a revised terminology. At one point, this entails using a wee bit more involved terminology from linguistics, which I'll explain in a supplementary post so that this one doesn't get too unwieldy. However, I'll post this one before the supplement is ready, because I think you'll get most of what I have to say without the background stuff.

In the new terminology, rich and perfect rhyme are brought together under the heading twin rhyme and termed identical and fraternal rhyme respectively. “Imperfect rhyme” is replaced with relative rhyme, which is subdivided into close and distant rhyme.

Two types of close rhyme are identified: nuclear and peripheral. In nuclear rhyme, the vowels are identical, while the onsets and codas are related, e.g., made:face. This would traditionally be termed assonance, although the definition of assonance includes no reference to the correspondences in the onsets and codas. In peripheral rhyme, which would traditionally be called consonance, the onsets and codas are identical but the vowels are not, e.g., brutes:brats.

Distant relative rhyme subdivides into removed and remote. In removed rhyme, which is traditionally labelled pararhyme, either the onset or the coda is identical, but other constituents of the syllable are related, e.g., stick:pluck. In remote rhymes, there is no identity, but all segments in the syllable exhibit some relationship to their partners in the other fellow.

All these classes apply to masculine and feminine rhymes, although the only nuclear rhymes I've found so far are masculine. Some feminine rhymes may be compounds of more than one class, and I'll talk about that in the next post.

The new terms have a number of advantages:

• they unify the terms for segmental correspondence in rhyme, as it bases them all based on kinship terms, which furnish an obvious metaphor for such correspondence;
• although the terms are still not fully transparent, they are clearer than their traditional counterparts;
• they classify rhyme in terms of a clear continuum of segmental correspondence, from the greatest (in identical twin rhyme) to the weakest (in remote rhyme), as opposed to the rather haphazard fashion of the old terms;
• they contain no implicit value judgements, thus allowing for a better characterisation of the rhyming practice of poets who favour relative rhyme; and
• they conceive rhyme as including the onset, which, as shall be demonstrated in subsequent posts, is necessary for a full understanding of rhyme phenomena.

I've found few instances of remote rhyme, but sang:work is a clear one. It occurs in the fourth stanza of Wordsworth’s “The Solitary Reaper”, which uses an ababccdd rhyme scheme in each stanza. The remote a-rhyme sang:work, appears in ll.25, 27. Apart from the a-rhyme in the first stanza, which is removed (field:self, ll.1,3), the rest of the rhyme scheme is fraternal. Thus, by the time the reader reaches the fourth stanza, it is well established that this position rhymes, but whilst a fraternal rhyme is expected, some sort of relative is possible.

Given the concept of rhyme Wordsworth was probably working with, it is likely that he didn't perceive these words as rhyming, but the segments share features nonetheless: the /s/and /w/ are both continuants and articulated forward of the hard palate; the /a/ and /@:/ are both low, unrounded vowels; the /N/and the /k/ are both velar stops. (For an explanation of these symbols, see this page.) If Wordsworth didn't perceive sang:work as a rhyme, the featural similarity of the fellows is all the more striking.

In the next post, I'll discuss some slightly more complex phenomena.

Dark Light

I've mentioned the painter Alison Watt before. There's an interview with her in today's Sunday Herald, which is worth reading. I've been entranced by her work since I saw her solo exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in 2000, and her new piece at the Ingleby Gallery in Edinburgh certainly sounds interesting. Watt is currently associate artist at the National Gallery in London.

Reasoning Rhyme: The Intolerable Wrestle With Words

This post concerns itself with brief definitions of the basic rhyme phenomena and a quick critque of the traditional terminology. Throughout this series, it'll be necessary to use some technical terms from linguistics and literary studies, but I'll explain them as I go along.

Rhyme involves a correspondence between two or more elements, usually, but not necessarily, in different lines of a poem. Each word or group of words involved in a given rhyme relationship is termed a fellow and the relationship is accordingly referred to as fellowship. Three correspondences are used to define the basic forms of rhyme: syllabic, morphological, and segmental. Traditional rhyme terminology covers each of these, which I will explain.

Syllabic correspondence is pretty self-explanatory. Monosyllabic rhymes (e.g., fame:name; begin:sin), which are almost all stressed, are referred to as masculine rhymes. Disyllabic rhymes (e.g., pleasure:treasure; rolling:controlling), in which the stress usually falls on the initial syllable, are referred to as feminine rhymes.

Morphological correspondence refers to the grammatical form of the rhyme fellows. Most rhymes are morphologically identical. That is, both fellows are normally one word or, less frequently, more than one word. Rhymes that are morphologically non-identical (e.g., jealous:tell us; intellectual: peck’d you all) are called mosaic rhymes. For obvious reasons, the vast majority of mosaic rhymes are feminine, although a masculine mosaic rhyme in English is not beyond possibility (e.g., cheese:she’s).

In linguistics, individual speech sounds are referred to as segments. Thus the term segmental correspondence covers the degree of similarity between the consonants and vowels in the rhyme fellows. Linguists divide syllables into the onset (the initial consonant(s), if the syllable has any) and the rime (the vowel and any following consonants). The rime is further divided into the nucleus (the vowel) and coda (the following consonants). Traditionally, rhyme is considered to begin at the nucleus of a stressed syllable and to require the nucleus and any coda consonants to be identical. For feminine rhymes, any syllables that follow the stressed syllable should also be identical. This discounting of the onset is a crucial point, which we'll return to. The one exception to the skipping of syllable onsets is so-called rich rhyme, which involves homophones (e.g., felt [past tense of feel] and felt [material]) or the repetition of the same word.

Normal masculine and feminine rhymes such as those quoted above are referred to as perfect or full rhyme. Other forms of rhyme, which will be explored properly later, are variously called half rhyme, near rhyme, slant rhyme and imperfect rhyme. These phenomena include assonance, consonance and pararhyme. Those terms and the reasons for labelling the phenomena that they describe as rhyme will be explored in a subsequent post.

The traditional terms for the segmental correspondences are inadequate for various reasons. Firstly, none of them are at all transparent. Secondly, because they exclude the onset, they fail to take account of various subdivisions of “imperfect” rhyme or the relationship between “perfect” and “rich” rhyme. Thirdly, they are misleading as to poetic practice: the term “rich” rhyme implies a highly developed form of rhyme, but such rhymes are considered poor practice; the terms “half-rhyme” or “imperfect” rhyme have been used to imply that such rhymes are shoddy, when in point of fact they are linguistically--and, in the opinion of some poets and readers, aesthetically--more subtle and interesting than their “perfect” cousins.

In the next post in this series, I'll explain my suggestions for a revised terminology.

Reasoning Rhyme: Prologue

Back in the dim and distant past, as a Linguistics student, I wrote an Honours dissertation on rhyme. It grew out of my reflection on rhyme practice as a reader and nascent writer of poetry and developed into a critque of a PhD thesis on rhyme by a Dutch linguist, Astrid Holtman.

It struck me that this blog would be a good place to revisit some of the material, leaving aside the more linguistic theoretical aspects of the dissertation and focussing on the stylistics. It's therefore my intention to create a thread of posts exploring this and reflecting further on rhyme. Don't know how long it'll take, but I hope it will generate some comment and discussion that will feed into the exploration as it develops. I'll start soon with a critque of traditional rhyme terminology.