Sound-Rich Poetry in Geraldine Monk, Bill Griffiths and Maggie O’Sullivan Joanne Ashcroft Edge Hill University In submission Doctor of Philosophy January 2020 1 AKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my supervisory team at Edge Hill, by whom I have been inspired, and without whom I would not have been able to complete this research. To my Director of Studies, Dr James Byrne, for invaluable guidance and continued support. To Professor Robert Sheppard, for empowering me to start on this journey, for expert and energetic feedback, and encouragement throughout. Thank you to the members of the Edge Hill Poetry and Poetics Group for listening and giving insightful feedback. To my family, Andrew, Bronte and Bexley, it’s been a long journey, thank you for your unconditional patience, understanding and support to finish this. This thesis is for absent family: Mum and Dad who did not see me begin my studies at university, for MJ, and for my sister Janet (finally ‘the work’ is finished). 2 CONTENTS PART ONE INTRODUCTION TO SOUND RICH POETRY 8 CHAPTER ONE: Sound-Rich Poetry as Attention in Geraldine 48 Monk’s ‘Chattox Sings’ CHAPTER TWO: Sound-Rich Poetry as Resistance in Bill Griffiths’ 72 ‘War W/Windsor Text 1 (4 Voices)’ CHAPTER THREE: Sound-Rich Poetry as Healing in Maggie 94 O’Sullivan’s murmur CONCLUSION 125 PART TWO INTRODUCTION TO THE PORTFOLIO AND POETICS 130 PORTFOLIO OF POEMS: What the Ash Tree Said 146 Ten Ash Tree Charms 174 The Book of IKEA 185 Ash Tree Lullaby 207 POETICS: A Slice of the Infinite Sonic Weave 213 BIBLIOGRAPHY 227 AUTHOR PUBLICATIONS, PRESENTATIONS AND READINGS 243 3 PART ONE 4 INTRODUCTION TO SOUND-RICH POETRY This thesis is driven by my creative focus on making an explorative journey in sonically charged language and structures in poetic form. Michel Foucault explains the catalyst for this better: ‘Who has capacity to formulate truths has the power of being able to speak the truth and express it in the way he wants’.1 I understand Foucault’s ‘truths’ as ideologies formulated by institutions and those who exert control, which find expression through the mediums of speech and writing. As a writer I am used to writing my own narrative but in the case of giving a witness statement someone else wrote down my verbal account. Reading those statements back revealed a strange hybrid voice that was part mine and part the scribe’s voice. Further, the account I had given was removed from me and used in ways beyond my awareness.2 This thesis emerges from my experience of how legal and justice systems use speech and writing and the impact of this on my sense of self as a writer and written subject. My creative work explores this self as variations on a speaking subject in a quest for its own literary and linguistic truth and identity, beginning with a hybrid (human and tree) speaking subject within a poem as structured by improvised patterns of sonic space, that is also a space of refuge from definitive meaning which it perceives as troublesome; troublemaking. In this way I am engaging with the rift between what can be sensuous and joyful and what can be logical and harmful in my material, that is in language. As lyric expression the creative project explores poems as an arena for a speaking subject to test itself out, 1 Rabinow, P. (ed.) (1997) Michel Foucault: Ethics: The Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1884 Volume 1. London: Penguin Books. p. 298. 2 For an elaboration of Foucault’s ‘games of truth’ see the chapter ‘The Ethics of the Concern for Self as a Practice of Freedom’ in ibid pp. 281-301. 5 to enact self-healing, to journey through the poems and enter a renewed state of being. Informing and inspiring this series of sonic transformations, in a continuous weaving process of feedback, is the critical project which underpins this research. This is presented as an introduction which defines and illustrates my concept of sound-rich poetry and as three case studies. My poetics, ‘A Slice of the Infinite Sonic Weave’, relates to my work in its considerations of the possibilities of poetry as sonic-sensuous echo, and the sound of a temperament, which binds us to each other. It also relates how I work with sound to the case study chapters as poetry of ‘attention’, ‘resistance’ and ‘healing’. Invested in poetry in which sound manifests as the dominant textual register, this research takes a multi-disciplinary approach. This includes fields of theories of sound in poetry, and in linguistics, and philosophy of language, to offer a practice-led theory for how sound aspects of language and structure are intrinsic in poetic compositional processes and how this shapes the resultant poem. The critical engagement is with three contemporary poets, Geraldine Monk, Bill Griffiths and Maggie O’Sullivan whose innovative writing practises are developed out of idiosyncratic involvement with, and immersion in, sound and concrete poetry of the pivotal British Poetry Revival and Linguistically Innovative Poetry. This research understands those distinctive conditions of immersion as fostering/catalysing attention to innovative and multi-media approaches based in an art of vocalisation which situates the poem as an indissoluble union of speech and writing. Further, the work of Monk, Griffiths and O’Sullivan demonstrates concerns with sonic and visual silences, and with fluency, in speech and writing. Their writing demonstrates strategies of vocalisation, resistance to regularity, and transformation 6 in what Foucault terms, ‘The struggle against forms of subjection’.3 I use the terms ‘soundshapes’ and ‘soundscapes’ to evoke Roman Jakobson’s linguistic theory. The terms ‘sonic bond’ and ‘beat rhythm’ are derived from Derek Attridge’s theory of prosody. ‘Musicality’ is used to describe a prosody of sonic structures, based in rhythms of speech, which do not follow regular patterns. Rather than proposing a direct borrowing from structures of musical composition, the phrases ‘musicality of speech rhythms’ and ‘songful soundshapes’ in this thesis are intended to suggest the music and song elements of lyric. This thesis holds that remnants of music and song manifest via innovative weaves of orality and aurality in this contemporary sound-rich form. Structure of this thesis In part one this thesis is composed of four chapters of literary study which are presented as an introduction to my concept of sound-rich poetry and three case studies which elaborate and illustrate this idea. Contributing to the discourse of studies of sound in poetry the critical part of my research establishes a ‘sound-rich’ poetry based within contemporary innovative practice. The three case studies evidence my argument for a remarkable relationship between an indissoluble union of speech and writing that is driven by sound and forms of linguistic and socio- political silences based in the work of Monk, Griffiths and O’Sullivan. This research finds a critical and creative link between sensuous and intuitive modes of experiencing and a musical phrasing which replaces traditional prosody. Part two of 3 Faubion, J. D. (ed.) (2002) Michel Foucault: Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984. Volume 3. London: Penguin Books. p. 331. 7 this thesis comprises a portfolio of my poems and a poetics which presents my theoretical reflections and responses to advanced readings and creative engagements. In my practice-led research there is a complex interaction of feedback and interplay between the three areas of poetry, poetics, and literary study which develops my knowledge and understanding of sound-rich poetry, and the relationship between sound-rich poetry and silences. The progression through this is linear in that the three parts of my research occur in a forward motion but the complexity of the interactions between the literary study, the making of poems, and subsequent reflection, is more a pattern of weaving back and forth between them in order for the whole to move forward. The literary chapters are placed to introduce and elaborate my concept of sound-rich poetry. The poetics is placed at the back of this, as it offers a reflective discourse, which both emerges, and diverges speculatively, from the theory of the literary chapters. The poetics offers a context for the portfolio of poems which are read as reflective of the theory and writing processes. Research activities include readings of creative and critical work to academic and wider audiences. Giving, and preparing for live readings of creative work is part of developing my performance and editing processes. Performance, the vocalisation of my poems, is embedded in my conceptualisation of sound-rich poetry; practise further develops and informs my concept. Both the orality and aurality in sound expressed through vocalisation is integral to my creative work and research, and it is part of my process when practising vocalisations of poems prior to performances to record and play back rehearsals so that I can experience and refine vocal sound effects. This exploration of effects of speech rhythms also develops during performances where I explore making vocalisations of speech rhythms as speech 8 and song.4 The combination of using voice for performances and composing for the page, informs the critical and creative understanding of the interchange between orality and aurality in reading and composing poems as well as in performances. This research invests in exploring combinations of creative and critical work and poetics, particularly in situating the relationship between poems and poetics in a dialogic relationship