In this episode, poet Fay Musselwhite discusses David Jones’s book-length poem In Parenthesis and her own sequence ‘Memoir of a Working River’ from her collection Contraflow.
In the interview, we talk about how Fay came to Jones’s poem - a book that follows soldiers' long trajectory toward the Somme battlefield, but has so much more within it than the subject of war itself. For Fay, it’s ‘the fact that one’s part of the earth,’ and that Jones focuses on ‘class, land and nature’ that makes this such an inspiring and important work for her. We discuss the abundant details, images, hauntings contained in the work - and how war plays out like some violent codified ‘sport’ inflicted on these young men. Fay then goes on to explore the difficulties she encountered trying to write her ‘big river poem’ and how she found ways to embody the Rivelin as it runs through the western Sheffield by giving the river itself a voice and, for a while, the body of a young man. Fay explains why she wanted to make the river a human because she wanted to explore the world of those youthful Rivelin mill-workers. We reflect on the music of her poetry and how important it is to Fay’s project as a poet. The extract that Fay read’s from In Parenthesis covers pp. 165 - 168 from her copy of the book (Faber, 1978).
There's a recording of an extract of the poem on the Poetry Archive website. It includes an introduction by David Jones himself, and actors playing the many voices in the work. It gives you a good sense of the polyphony in the poem. You can listen to the audio here.
You can read more about, and buy a copy of Fay’s very fine collection Contraflow (Longbarrow Press, 2016) here.
You can also follow me on X - @cwjoneschris or on Bluesky - @cwjoneschris.bsky.social for more updates on future episodes.
From 'Memoir of a Working River’
6
Woken by some beast’s nudge then stunned at the incredible stillness of sky, slips in to bathe where the mill-dam overflow cascades slithers out freshened, rises and shivers watches the mud where new droplets nuzzle.
Donkeys trudge by, pressing on, faces low as if the cinder track hears their moan. Follows their swagger-loads sees motion onward driven by the momentum of raw and wrought iron.
Wavers as they near the spark-shed shy of its screaming grind and gritty guffaws but the torture rack, humped on its back in full watery swing, pricks his learning’s gap. Keen to find why the wheel must turn braves the factory door
steps in and into a gusting blur tastes its metal, feels particulates snag in sweat takes a moment to see where he is.
In geometry against nature’s grace humans are caught in a web each slumped over oak, held by spindle and belt to a stone that spits hot grit.
His feet itch.
He swerves a man dragging iron rods and trying to make his free hand speak.
On the river-run some images stick: flashes of crimson through blackened fur shreds on that donkey’s neck, the clench of combat riddled through men’s backs.
Lying on a weir to rinse metal squeals from his hair on the air a tang enthrals the inner juices —
he paces it downstream, tracks the prey to a tufted cove, a pail propped in rocks a man doubled over racked in rasp-spasms. When coughing releases its grip he sits near the man, asks how life is.
Sunk in the chest, not quite sitting up, the man shares his snap and between pneumatic seizure tells how he offers blunt steel to grit till it’s flayed by resistance to its leanest edge how each day he enters the valley more of it enters him.
The man says he’s seen eighteen summers a grinder for three, and nails in a voice hollow-loud what binds the wheel’s turn to that cheese and bread.
Twice the man says — The mus’ave a name.
Only once — Come wi’ me, if tha needs a crust.
