Finding Language and The World of Objects
John Daniel, UK
John Daniel was formerly Head of English at Plymouth University, and was one of 20 poets published by Faber and Faber in 1969. Since then he has published 4 collections of poetry with Etruscan Books and Oversteps, and founded his own poetry press Pennycomequick with which he has published several further collections. He has co-run with Jane Spiro for 15 years a poetry collective which has led to 4 exhibitions of poetry and photography in South Devon, UK.
Menu
Introduction
Lists
Indexes
Diaries
Mathematical problems
Conclusion
References
I think I began by finding pebbles on a beach, bringing them home and putting them on the mantelpiece. They may have had a hole in them, or been of an interesting shape resembling an angel or a woman with her hands in the air. They may have been striped with various colours, recalling the tides that had washed over them and drawn them back repeatedly into the ocean. But they were memorable in a distinctive way. They had won their place on the mantelpiece, risen in the world and become works of art, singled out and highlighted on the mantelpiece.
The next step was to discover art-objects everywhere, in skips and kitchens and garden sheds and dustbins. I spent a considerable amount of time sticking rubbish on boards, endowing them with ceremonial significance. On the mantelpiece the pebbles had been arranged in decorous order. They now became more anarchic, making new patterns, jostling each other as they grouped and scattered. When they were stuck in place I sprayed them gold and bronze and silver to heighten their ceremonial qualities. They were invested with new dignity like visiting royalty. They had risen above themselves, catching the light and preening themselves in their new robes.
There was nothing especially novel in this. Ever since Duchamp proclaimed a porcelain toilet to be a work of art in 1917 visual artists had been playing with found objects, - driftwood coils of rope, feathers, old jackets. They had even imported letters of the alphabet into their paintings, albeit with a visual rather than a literary significance. Perhaps poems or prose could be found in the same way as pebbles on a beach or rubbish in a skip? The world was full of words. They were hiding everywhere: utilitarian, discarded, treasured, magnified, subversive.
The important thing was to search, unearth. I discovered a passage in Karl Marx’s Das Kapital which was an unexpected paean of praise to the watch. Marx states his intention clearly enough: “Formerly the individual work of a Nuremberg artificer THE WATCH has been transformed into the social product of an immense number of detail labourers such as mainspring makers, dial makers, spiral spring makers, jewelled hole makers, ruby lever makers, hand makers, case makers, screw makers, gilders...” (Marx in Daniel 1969: p. 35) But this is only the beginning. Marx goes on to list every sub-division of the worker-specialists he has named. Too long to quote here, his list resembles the intricate workings of the watch itself, ticking away in a linguistic performance that has been telling the time since the 19th century.
Lists. We all make them including students, some of us compulsively. They connect us to the outside world of action and intent. They may be shopping lists or genealogies but they have an intricate interest to the maker. And they have an urgency about them, sometimes bizarre, demanding attention and explanation.
Indexes are a special kind of list lurking at the back of many books. They set out to be useful but like Marx’s watch they sometimes take off from their immediate aim. The index to the ,u>Oxford Book of English Verse for example lists love in ways which create a poem of its own: “Love is a sickness full of woes/ Love is and was my Lord and King/ Love is enough: though the World be a-waning” (Index in Daniel 1969 p. 38). There are a dozen definitions, contradictory, discussable and an introduction to great poetry as well as to a basic human emotion.
I was inspired initially by discovering my grandfather’s diary that he kept during the first world war. He was not a literary man and his diary takes the form of a series of notes or jottings as he is moved about, an ordinary gunner at the front in Italy who comes under fire and is wounded. He clearly wanted to keep a careful record of the traumatic events in which he was involved and the staccato style adds to the tension of his writing|: “Guns now out of range 6.45pm/moved forward/bridge blown up/fell in Piave/ 21 drowned or killed by the shell/ 15 saved.”
Diaries may not be so dramatic. They may be meditative, reflective, personal. But students, particularly those away from home, may find in them an opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings about an unfamiliar culture: the differences in eating habits, the treatment of women, dress, the behaviour of police. Writing a diary, even in note-form like my grandfather, can produce a fascinating and insightful series of observations.
Even mathematical problems have the potential to narrate a story:
“Of 91 men leaving an Underground station, 41 wore hat and gloves and carried an umbrella, 61 wore hat and gloves and 68 wore gloves. There were 7 who wore a hat and carried an umbrella but wore no gloves and 21 who wore a hat but no gloves. Only 2 carried an umbrella but wore neither hat nor gloves although there were 50 men with umbrellas altogether. How many of these wore gloves but no hat?” (Daniel 1971 p. 265) As an old-fashioned picture of English gentlemen this would be difficult to beat.
Often, as in the mathematical example above, the re-arrangement of lines to bring out the immediacy of the narrative can be a creative exercise for the student. Even if the student has not generated the text herself the way it is positioned on the page can be an important aspect of language-discovery. This operation can also involve use of italics, capital letters, bold type and all the other devices which are so familiar to modern students on the computer keyboard. They should not be under-estimated as a form of creativity or seen as secondary to the text. They bring out emphasis, develop deeper understanding and are a genuine contribution by the creator.
Insurance policies, recipes, manuals of all kinds often provide (unwittingly) snapshots of the culture and can be manipulated as artistic projects which promote the student in ways that untouchable texts do not. Presentation can also be a feature of the work: reading aloud, acting out the work can be an essential strategy in learning. But this demands further development. What we find when we select the unexpected is that students, like pebbles on the beach, are not all identical.
Daniel, J. 1969) Found poems in Poetry Introduction London: Faber and Faber
Mattthias, J. (ed.) (1971) 23 Modern British Poets London: The Swallow Press
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