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Concrete Poetry in England and Scotland 1962-75: Ian Hamilton Finlay, Edwin Morgan, Dom Sylvester Houédard and Bob Cobbing Greg Thomas PhD in English Literature The University of Edinburgh 2013 3 Abstract This thesis examines concrete poetry in England and Scotland from 1962 to 1975. Through the 1950s-70s, international concrete poetry evolved away from constructivist influenced, “classical” ideals of minimalism and iconic visual effect towards principles owing more to Dadaism and Futurism: spontaneity, maximalism, sonority and an emphasis on intermedial expression. Against this backdrop, using close textual analysis supported by primary research, I engage with four poets whose work collectively exemplifies the wide range of values which concrete poetry represented in England and Scotland during the period in question. A movement away from classical ideals can be tracked across the oeuvres of Finlay, Morgan, Houédard and Cobbing; but many aspects of their work cannot be accounted for by this general rubric. Finlay saw concrete poetry as a means of casting off Scottish literary tradition, but also of embodying an immutable vision of aesthetic and ethical order, using a marriage of the visual and linguistic to emphasise links between disparate ideas and things. However, his restless reconfiguration of poetry’s visual-physical aspects ultimately resulted in a re-separation of word and image which, together with an increasing historical-mindedness, ended his attachment to the style. Morgan, by contrast, used concrete poetry to redefine rather than repel Scottish literary culture, and was a more context-focused poet, using concrete grammar – whose sonic possibilities he exploited more than Finlay – to depict specific communicative scenarios, and thus to register ethical and political imperatives, often reflecting Scottish nationalist ideals. The emphasis on semantics common to Morgan and Finlay’s work, reflecting relative fidelity to classical principles, is overridden in Houédard’s concrete poetry, which came to employ a grammar of abstract visual motifs in which linguistic meaning was subsumed, related as much to apophatic theology as to classical concrete. For Cobbing too, concrete became a means of evading language, in his case to access a transcendent realm of “intermedial” poetry equally related to language’s sonic and visual dimensions, and influenced by various contemporary art- forms, and by counter-cultural ideals. However, Cobbing’s emphasis on performing poems, and the reintegration of semantics into his work throughout this period, led by the early 1970s to an alternative poetic ideal of relativity. 5 Declaration This is to certify that that the work contained within has been composed by me and is entirely my own work. No part of this thesis has been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. Various parts of the sixth chapter, and the analysis of Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Canal Stripe Series 3 in chapter three, and some of Gomringer’s poems in chapter one, have appeared in similar form in my article “Eyearun: Bob Cobbing and Concrete Poetry”, Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry 4.2 (2012): 203-27. Signed: 7 Acknowledgements Quotes from correspondences and unpublished poems, and reproductions of published and unpublished material appear by kind permission of the Edwin Morgan Trust (charity number SC043142) and the Prinknash Abbey Trustees. Thanks are also due to Wild Hawthorn Press, from whom I am attempting to secure similar permission, and Jennifer Pike-Cobbing, whom I have decided against contacting. I am hoping that the permission she kindly granted me to reproduce Cobbing’s poetry in the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry and the forthcoming volume Concrete Poetry: An International Perspective will suffice. Acknowledgements are also due to the following archives and departments, in which the above materials are stored: the Edwin Morgan Archive at the Scottish Poetry Library, the manuscripts departments at the National Library of Scotland, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the British Library, the special collections departments at Glasgow University Library and the John Rylands Library (Manchester University Library), the Themersons Archive – currently based in London, but likely to soon be based elsewhere – and the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry in Miami. Thanks also to Stephen Bann and Alec Finlay for passing on materials stored at other institutions or departments, which should also be acknowledged: the Harry Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas, the Special Collections Department at Stanford University, and the Lilly Library at Indiana University. Peter Manson, Hayden Murphy and John Sharkey have kindly allowed me to quote from interviews, letters and/or personal correspondences; I am attempting to contact John Furnival to seek similar permission. Thanks also to Stephen Bann for permission to quote from personal interviews, and to reference, quote and/or reproduce letters and materials stored with his personal collection. Thanks to Richard Price, Stewart Smith and Stephen Bann for lending transcripts of articles or interviews unpublished at the time of this thesis’s completion, and to Smith for allowing me to quote from his. I have not sought permission to publish quotes from letters by Augusto de Campos, Eugen Gomringer, Dick Higgins, Cavan McCarthy, E.M. de Melo e Castro, Stefan Themerson, Mike Weaver and Jonathan Williams, or to reproduce poems by Gomringer, Augusto and Haroldo de Campos, and Décio Pignatari; nor have I sought permission to publish letters from those letters’ addressees or their estates. Thanks are also due to these individuals or organisations. 9 Thanks I owe a great debt of gratitude to Laura Marcus, Julie Johnstone and Robyn Marsack, the interview-panel members who in 2009 selected me to undertake this thesis at Edinburgh University, in conjunction with the Scottish Poetry Library, whose Edwin Morgan Archive, and excellent holdings of concrete-related material, have proved invaluable during its completion. Robyn’s subsequent generosity with her time, particularly in her assiduous proof-reading, was greatly appreciated. So too was Julie’s assistance with the archiving duties I undertook during my time at the library, our discussions of concrete and minimalist poetry, and the opportunities afforded me by Julie, Robyn and all at the library to organise exhibitions, talks and readings over the last three-and-a-half years. Turning to University associates, Alex Thomson has been a dedicated and diligent supervisor from whom I have learned a great deal about the nuts and bolts of academic writing; on top of this, I have benefited a great deal from the opportunities, information and/or materials provided to me by people in similar fields at Edinburgh and other universities, including Lila Matsumoto, Lisa Otty, Robert Sheppard, Nicola Simpson, Stewart Smith, Juha Virtanen and Steve Willey. Artists, poets, publishers and critics personally connected to one or more of the subjects of this study have been similarly generous with their time, knowledge and/or collections of rare materials, notably Stephen Bann, Thomas A. Clark, Alec Finlay, John Furnival, Peter Manson, Jim McGonigal, Hayden Murphy, John Sharkey and Hamish Whyte; thanks are also due to Bill Allen for a very useful meeting in 2011. During my research, I made use of various archives of primary and secondary material dotted around the UK, to which end I would like to thank Stella Halkyard at the John Rylands Library, Sarah Hepworth at Glasgow University Library, Jasia Reichardt at the Themersons Archive, and Alec Finlay and Luke Allan at Studio Alec Finlay. I latterly made the acquaintance of Ruth and Marvin Sackner, who kindly lent me a transcript of the talk on “Apophatic Art” referenced in my Houédard chapter. On a more personal note, thanks to friends old and new in Edinburgh, London, Cambridge and elsewhere, and finally, thanks of an entirely different order are due to my family – for love and patience, and for Ad’s help with translating the Russian words from Morgan’s “Spacepoem 1” – and, above all to Emma, for love, support, kindness, encouragement, and for knowing when it was time to eat, sleep, leave the house, etcetera… 11 Contents Notes on Referencing 13 List of Illustrations 15 Chapter 1. Introduction 17 Chapter 2. Concrete Foundations 33 Chapter 3. Order and Doubt: Ian Hamilton Finlay 75 Chapter 4. Off-Concrete: Edwin Morgan 143 Chapter 5. Apophasis: Dom Sylvester Houédard 207 Chapter 6: Abstract Concrete: Bob Cobbing 277 Works Cited List 351 13 Notes on Referencing Given the difficulty of distinguishing the medium of many referenced works, in general, any two-dimensional work referred to by its creator as a “poem” is treated as such in the works cited list, regardless of the materials or method of composition; three- dimensional “poems” are generally treated as works of art. References are not always provided for three-dimensional poems only seen in reproduction, many of which no longer exist in any other form: an in-text reference to the relevant photograph (or similar) is provided instead. Untitled poems are generally named according to first line, date of composition, an annotative phrase or by a simple descriptive term, as will be clear in context.