1 Themes of Nature: Body, Spirit, Place and a Collection of Poems

1 Themes of Nature: Body, Spirit, Place and a collection of poems Finding The Room William Henry Searle Royal Holloway University of London English Department PhD Creative Writing 2 Declaration of Authorship I …William Searle…………………. (please insert name) hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: __William Searle____________________ Date: ___29/08/12_____________________ 3 Abstract The thesis explores three themes, - Body, Spirit, Place, – that are fundamental to my own poetry collection, Finding The Room. Taken together, my poetry and the thesis form a comprehensive understanding of the human subject’s relation to the natural world, and aim towards a redifintion of human subjectivity. In chapter one, through a phenomenological inquiry into the poetry of Ted Hughes, the primordial unity between the body and the natural world is explored. Born out of the intercorporeal rapport between body and world is the Natural Self which perceives itself to be interwoven into its sensuous surroundings, sharing its flesh with the flesh of the world. Out of the primordial coherence between the human body and the body of the earth, occurs the genesis of sacredness, leading on to chapter two which explores the nature-mysticism of R.S. Thomas whose spirituality is presented as being enrooted in an incorporeal bond between body and world. In chapter two it is argued that spirituality is grounded in the actuality of the intercorporeal fusion between body and world, and that the numinous reveals itself through the earth to those that, like R.S. Thomas, attune their senses to the sensuous world, and awaken their Hierophantic Self. Chapter three explores the dynamic between dwelling and things in the context of Wordsworth’s poem, ‘Michael.’ Using the philosophy of dwelling and things as propounded by Martin Heidegger, the chapter focuses upon place as the primary happening of the possibility to dwell peacefully and intimately alongside things. All three chapters aim towards a redefinition of human subjectivity: a carnal being of the numinous, belonging to the earth, emplaced peacefully amidst things; a possibility that I explore throughout Finding The Room. 4 Table of Contents Themes of Nature: Body, Spirit, Place Introduction 6 Chapter One: Body A Phenomenological Inquiry into the poetry of Ted Hughes 10 Chapter Two: Spirit R.S. Thomas: Hierophant of the Sea 52 Chapter Three: Place The Lamp and The Sheepfold: A Heideggerian Account of ‘Michael’ 92 Conclusion 117 Bibliography 120 Finding The Room The Stone Wall 126 Alien Ruin 127 Evening Vesper 128 Firework Night 129 Garth Farm 130 Hearing Things 132 Local Gossip 133 Meeting 134 Not Yet Welcome 135 Spring Gathering 136 Central Enigma 138 The First Morning 139 Keyhaven Marshes 140 Waylaid 141 At Keyhaven Harbour 142 Another Astronomy 143 Contagious 144 Father’s Diary 145 Mother’s Diary 146 5 A Figure in The Doorway 147 A Visit 148 Wait 149 Evening Ceremony 150 A Young Rain 151 A Cold Day 152 Swifts 153 Consider This 154 Glow-Worms 155 A Nocturnal Pact 156 Finding The Room 157 The Wind 158 The Mute Swan 159 The April Cormorant 160 The Ewe and The Olive Tree 161 Tadpoles 162 The Day 163 Ice-Frog 164 Source 165 Making Sense at The Gwyle 166 Master of The Seven Rooms 167 Edward Swin 174 The Daimon 175 Birdwatching from Church Island 176 Dockland 177 Three Herons in a Day 178 Arias 179 Kingfisher 181 One Right Thought Away 183 The Hut 184 For You I Think 185 Across From Here 186 6 Introduction The three themes, - Body, Spirit, Place, - that I have chosen to focus upon in this thesis are three themes that are explored throughout my poetry collection, Finding The Room. I will discuss these themes as topics in their own right and also, show how these topics shed light upon my own poetry, and vice versa. My approach to the three themes has been primarily philosophical, rather than literary. This choice of approach is due not only in my interest in promoting dialogues between philosophy and poetry, but also a philosophical approach took me into areas of thought that are not made explicit in the composition of poetry. Thinking philosophically seems to be at odds with thinking poetically, and I am interested in comparing philosophy with poetry in terms of how they both look at and study the world of sensuous, bodily experience. Bodily experience, attuning the human senses to the sensuous, provides the foundation for a concrete spirituality and the significance of place as the context of a rapport between sentience and spirituality. My own poetry stems from an imaginative exploration of experience that is not divorced from reality but rather goes back toward reality. I am conscious, in my poetry, of not losing sight of the real that first of all inspires the poem. There is the type of imagination that indulges in ripping away the mind from direct experience, and this what I call the abstract imagination. There is also the type of imagination that turns the mind back towards the realities of direct, sensuous experience, re- aligning the mind with the more primordial adhesion between body and world, - and this is what I call concrete imagination. The poets that I chose to discuss in this thesis, - Ted Hughes, R.S. Thomas, William Wordsworth, - write poetry that is informed by the concrete imagination. Their work turns the mind back towards the real and the real, not the mind, is the unfathomable mystery, the touchstone of truth, the ‘Central Enigma’ that is title of one of my own poems. As I too write from the concrete imagination, then my own poetry is of the same tradition as the above named poets. My own poetry is of the world and returns to the world in ever deepening cycles of reciprocation. I am, therefore, interested in the ways in which this theme of returning to the natural world, the world of direct, sensuous, bodily experience, that is evident in my poetry is situated alongside philosophical traditions, and how these philosophical traditions can assist in developing and clarifying what is going on when 7 a poet writes a poem that refers back to the natural world, and how relations to the natural world can be ameliorated and deepened. In addition to the relation between philosophy and poetry is a more fundamental theme that underlies not only the philosophy, but my poetry too, which is humanity’s relation to the natural world. Poetry and philosophy converge at the root, which is the natural world. My poetry and my interest in philosophy are in service to the natural world that is the fount and bedrock not only of my own writing, but also of the understanding of my own humanity. Chapter one explores a phenomenological approach to the natural world through the poetry of Ted Hughes. Phenomenology, - the direct study and description of sense-experience, - lends itself well to the study of Ted Hughes whose primary importance as a poet lies in the presentation of the fundamental and absolutely inextricable bond between the natural world and the human body. The human is the body, and the body is nature’s creation, just as other bodies of other creatures are. In this way, the poetry of Ted Hughes is phenomenological in that he seems to want, at times, to achieve a description of an immediate experience of nature before discursive, conceptual thought invades upon the secretive dance between the body and the natural world. From this, I would also say that my own poetry is phenomenological in that I want to write about things directly experienced, seen, touched, etc. because, in direct sensuous experience, the possibility of a growing, conscious awareness of the mind’s dependency on the body’s participatory involvement with the natural world is forged. As a consequence of repeatedly returning to the natural world, re-immersing the human body, and thus the mind, into the sensuous terrain from which it emerges, is also to discover, as a consequence, the sacredness of that interrelation. My own poetry explores this, as well as the body’s engagement in the natural world, but also the numinous quality that surrounds and suffuses sensuous experience that is evident in my poems: ‘Finding The Room,’ and ‘Keyhaven Marshes.’ Awareness of the presence of the divine arises out of wholly immersing oneself into the reality of the sensuous world. This realisation led me on to write Chapter two that focuses on R.S. Thomas’s growing bond with the sacredness of the sea. This sacredness is revealed not by turning away from sense-experience, which is often promoted in the history of mysticism, but by turning towards it. The resurgence 8 of the natural world, the earth itself, as the primary context of human lives is not complete without the reawakening of the sense of the divine implicit in living things. For R.S. Thomas, it was the sea that communicated to him - once he had found within himself that sacred ear - the divinity of creation. The final chapter, Chapter three, through a Heideggarian account of Wordsworth’s ‘Michael,’ focuses upon the whereness of things and our relation to the whereness of things. The poem ‘Michael,’ serves as a contemporary reminder of the necessity of finding our place in the world, and how place, belonging and home have been ostracised by the modern, philosophical obsession - beginning with Descartes radical separation between mind and body - with space and time. Prior to space and time, Heidegger shows, is place, the happening of where our belonging lies, and where all things, inhuman and human nestle into one another and thrive.

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