‘Miner poet’ or ‘seer and singer’? Joseph Skipsey’s performance of the identities of miner and poet JOY BRINDLE Northumberland poet Joseph Skipsey (1832- 1903) published 11 volumes of poetry between 1858 and 1895. For the majority of this time he was also working as a coal miner, and his poetry can be seen as part of a North-East working-class tradition looking back to earlier local ballads, and forward to the work of Tom Pickard and the Morden Tower poets of the 1960s and beyond. This article explores the dual identities of Joseph Skipsey through his first published pamphlet, Lyrics, and through visual representations of the poet, in particular the photographic portrait ‘Skipsey in his Working Clothes’. It argues that Skipsey’s choice to ‘try on’ a multiplicity of visual personas through the emerging art of photography provides a parallel Figure 1. Unknown photographer, Skipsey in his Working Clothes, (c.1870s), black to the development of both his lyric voice, and and white photograph, published in Robert Spence Watson, Lectures delivered to the Literary and Philosophical Society, Newcastle-on-Tyne, printed for the Society, 1898. his identity as a poet in the world outside his poems. Northumberland poet Joseph Skipsey Skipsey’s work was grounded in his his poetic self-performance in his ‘Hey, Robin’, are in ballad style. This (1832-1903) published 11 volumes of lived experience as a miner, but he Lyrics, assuming a (varying) degree of connects them with both North- poetry between 1858 and 1895. For also strongly self-identified as a poet, creative agency in both performances. East miners’ songs and canonical the majority of this time he was also which for him was a bardic, magical It argues that both forms of artistic traditions; Skipsey acknowledges an working as a coal miner, and his role (‘seer and singer’) with the production act out the tension between existing popular song for the chorus poetry can be seen as part of a North- power to teach society as a whole.3 Skipsey’s identities. The content, form of ‘Jemmy’, and Twelfth Night as his East working-class tradition looking This role is eternal and outside class and use of the poetic persona in the source for the first two lines of ‘Hey, ‘MINER POET’ OR ‘SEER AND SINGER’ back to earlier local ballads, and hierarchies. From his earliest work, Lyrics embody Skipsey as both ‘Rhyming Robin’. The majority of the poems are VIDES forward to the work of Tom Pickard Skipsey combined representation of Joe’ (the pitman in his community about love, with timeless themes such and the Morden Tower poets of the his community and lifestyle with who is also a poet), and as a serious as the dangerous, beguiling woman 1960s and beyond. Skipsey became contemplation of the role of the poet poet seeking fame in the wider world. (‘Annie Lee’) and the unattainable known, locally and nationally, as and the nature of fame; his aspiration The photograph both challenges, woman (‘To a Young Lady’, where a ‘miner poet’, enjoying a small to fame, on the same terms as the great and works within, the conventional love is hopeless because of class). JOY BRINDLE / degree of national critical interest poets who had gone before, can be portrayal of workers at this time; it is a Most importantly, the poems express and anthologisation which barely seen as a political stance. At the same portrait of a recognisable, serious self, individual emotion, exemplifying outlasted the nineteenth century.1 time, Skipsey was dependent upon but it also uses clothing and tools as Wordsworth’s description of poetry as He self-identified as a miner from patronage to support his ability to shorthand for ‘worker’ in a way which ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful his earliest published pamphlet, publish. There is a tension for Skipsey was legible to, and could be used in the feelings’ and this lyrical ‘I’ is often Lyrics (1858), obliquely attributed to himself between his ‘minerness’ and agendas of, the political and literary explicitly signalled as identifiable with ‘J.S., a coal miner.’2 This anonymity his ‘poetness’, and this also plays out establishment. Photography created Skipsey the poet.5 An example is the privileges role over person. in his relationship with the literary another artistic channel through which domestic love poem ‘To Sara (During Skipsey’s childhood as a trapper establishment. The photograph in the poet’s private self could engage in Illness)’: boy in mines, his auto-didacticism, Figure 1, published by Skipsey’s patron the public domain. and his continued work as a miner Robert Spence Watson, is a concrete For I feel when I gaze on my baby and while writing poetry, supported the example of Skipsey the published poet Rhyming Joe and the laurel wreath. thee,- creation of a romantic narrative both consciously inhabiting and performing I feel my lost strength back returning for himself and for his patrons. The the ‘miner’ persona: in a sense he is In the 1850s, Joseph Skipsey was to me; And my heart, from this sick bed up preface to Lyrics asks for kindness dressing up as himself. in his twenties, working at Percy leaping, declares towards ‘the production of a Working Main and Choppington pits, but also My Sara has one yet to lighten her Man’ from those ‘who have the This article explores the portrait of reading widely, and writing the Lyrics cares. strength, which a liberal Education Skipsey in the context of photography published in 1858.4 The collection supplies’. There is thus an element as a new art form, and the conventions contains a range of lyric forms, but From the title onwards, the lyric of self-apology, but also of pride in which were emerging as the form the majority of poems are brief and persona is identified with the Skipsey’s self-conception as a miner developed. It compares Skipsey’s visual in short stanzas with regular rhythm poet within his family unit, in the who writes. self-performance in the portrait, with which could be described as musical; vulnerable state of sickness, and from many, such as ‘The Lad o’Bebside’, the almost physical perspective of the 1 For example: The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch (Oxford: OUP, 1912); North ‘Jemmy stops Lang at the Fair’ and sickbed. Country Poets, edited by William Andrews (Hull: Brown and Son, 1888); The Poets and Poetry of the Century, edited by Alfred Henry Miles (London: Hutchinson, 1892), volume. 5, pp. 515 - 28. 2 Lyrics, by J. S., a coal miner, pamphlet (Durham, printed by George Procter, 1858). 4 J. S., Lyrics. Poems cited: Fame (p. 14); The Lad o’Bebside (p. 8); Jemmy Stops Lang at the Fair (p. 22); Hey, Robin (p. 7); To Sara, During Illness (p. 19); The Lass of Willington Dene (p. 12). 3 Joseph Skipsey, ‘The Poet as Seer and Singer’, Igdrasil, journal of the Ruskin Reading Guild, volume 1, 1890, pp. 69-76, 136-141 and 182-189. Initially delivered as a lecture to the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society 5 William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads, third edition. (London,:Longman, 1802), preface, pp. x-xi. in 1883. See: Miles, ibid, p. 517. 149 150 Even where Skipsey writes in a poet is clear from another poem, sweat, and also of loneliness (sorrow forms at the turn of the 1840s, when narrative tradition where the poetic ‘Fame’: and ridicule). In publishing his poetry, the rival processes of daguerrotype persona is often an observer, his Skipsey is presenting the fruits of (using silvered copper sheets) and perspective is present. In ‘The Lass of Deep, deep must you dig his labours in the hope of starting on calotype (using paper) emerged Willington Dene’, a traditional story of In the earth ere you come the path to a classical laurel wreath. from the work of Louis Daguerre the girl who steals all the lads’ hearts To that treasure which brightens ‘Fame’ is confidently rooted in his own and Henry Fox-Talbot, photography And comforts our home,- but is destined for the protagonist, this personal experience, but the idea of quickly became recognised as a ‘MINER POET’ OR ‘SEER AND SINGER’ That keeps out the cold is taken further: the poet steps out of inspiration as an elusive charm which commercial opportunity. The market In the keen wintry night, VIDES the anonymity of the ballad-singer, can conjure fame contains trepidation. was primarily linked to portraiture And converteth the cot and the group of lads in the narrative, because photographic portraits were To a hall of delight. naming himself in the third person The Lyrics clearly suggest Skipsey’s dual cheaper and more reproducible than while singing in the first: But deeper than this identity. In life, and in the community those produced by artists. From the Must you search in the mind, suggested in the poems, he is known mid 1850s, process improvements JOY BRINDLE / Rhyming Joe, so distressed for the rest Ere that charm can be found as a miner, who is incidentally also allowed an explosion of cheap, popular of the fair, Which so many would find- ‘Rhyming Joe’. However, Lyrics as a formats such as the carte de visite, which Cries, let Meg the choice of her fancy That charm which upreareth published object positions him as a promoted public engagement through declare, The fabric of fame, poet, yet one who is anonymous as collecting, whether for the family album Then- though her fair kind may her And commandeth the nations a man, identified as ‘a Coal Miner’, or to possess portraits of celebrities or fortune envy, To worship a name.