New poems from old East Germany

I rarely like the poems in the London Review of Books but the issue I'm up to in my pile, 25th March, has ‘Five Poems by Günter Eich translated by Michael Hofmann’. I've come across Eich before because some time in the early 1970s the journal Modern Poetry in Translation had an event at the Royal Festival Hall. I think that’s where my then wife and I saw the magical combination of Pablo Neruda, six-foot Chilean ambassador to Paris with native Andean nose and fine brown suit, who read his poems in Spanish, and Alastair Reid translating into his own fine verse in a rich, soft American voice. Perhaps as a result of that we bought the anthology published by Carcanet, Postwar German Poetry in Translation, translated by Michael Hamburger. I wish I still had it but it seems unobtainable, though I have since bought a volume by one of the poets represented, Peter Huchel, again translated by Hamburger. Günter Eich was in there too.

The volume was full of lovely stuff, some of which was well received by my 1st and 2nd year pupils (11-12) at Walworth School. Perhaps I'll put some in this blog later -- I have copies of the ones I typed out for them.

According to Hamburger, the general idea of this postwar German poetry was ‘minimalist’: after the horrors of the Nazis and the Second World War, rhetorical flights and elegant verse-turnings seemed out of place. The barest means sufficed: no similes, no ‘poetic’ vocabulary, no sentiment. The style of bureaucratic prose might be employed, as if it’s all that’s left to us, as sometimes (and for the first time?) in The Waste Land (I think -- need to check this) and certainly in Auden-Spender-MacNeice (been re-reading the latter -- wonderful): e.g. Eich: There are times I know that God
/ is most concerned with the fate of snails; or Whoever is on a reasonable footing with horror / can expect its coming with equanimity.

Here are a couple of the Hoffmann’s new Eichs -- I hope he’ll forgive me if I add his plug at the end:

Memorial
The moors we wanted to hike have been drained.


Their turf has warmed our evenings.


The wind is full of black dust.


It scours the names off the gravestones


and etches this day
 into us.

End of August
The white bellies of dead fish


loom among duckweed and rushes.


Crows have wings to enable them to escape death.


There are times I know that God


is most concerned with the fate of snails.


He builds them houses. We are not His favourites.

At night, the bus taking the football team home


leaves a white trail of dust.


The moon shines in the willowherb,


in concert with the evening star.


How near you are, immortality – in the wings of bats,


in pairs of headlights


nosing down the hill.

Günter Eich (1907-72) was a poet, translator from Chinese and writer of radio plays. Angina Days, a selection of his poems translated by Michael Hofmann, is due in May from Princeton.

It’s on order. If it arrives in time I'll take it with me to Berlin later this month.

The trees in Surbiton

[The date on this should actually be 13 May 2010, though I started it nearly a fortnight ago.]

Spring is well advanced. The horse chestnuts are in full leaf and near-full bloom. If they’ve still got the disease they all showed last year (see Label horse chestnuts) there’s no sign of it now.



The oaks are outish. As for the saying about ‘If the oak is out before the ash, summer will but be a splash, If the ash is out before the oak, it’ll be a soak’ (or something more metrical), I don’t think I've seen a single ash tree in Surbiton.

As for the planes, which here are only where they’ve been planted -- and perhaps everywhere? is there such a thing as a wild plane in Britain? -- the general state is ...

=======
[New text:] I wrote the above intending to go out and photograph planes when the weather brightened up. The place to see them is Maple Avenue, which despite its name is a fine avenue of planes. My intention was to insert photos of them, and then to contrast it with the following:

[Original text continues] The one I can see from the back of the flat, though, was lopped on 30th April. I wish I’d photographed it just before but you can see what it looks like now:


On 29th April the shoots that grew since last year’s lopping -- maybe 6 feet long and prolific -- were in visible buds that were beginning to open. I'm interested to see how long the tree takes this year to recover. It’s clear the operation does it no harm, and is entirely necessary for the amenity of the houses and probably for safety.

[New text resumed] Yesterday morning I finally made it down to Maple Avenue and this is what I found:


I'm sure there are other planes in Surbiton, perhaps unlopped, but I can’t think where. I suspect that all planes are under the management of the council who go round each year and do the lot.

Anyway, original text from now on:

Why am I suddenly doing this nature recording? I've been reading Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne from the later 18th century. White has earned the huge respect of modern naturalists for his innovatingly thorough and intelligent observation and recording -- a truly Enlightenment enterprise -- except in one respect: when he saw a rare or interesting bird and had his gear with him, he shot it. On those grounds he counts himself a ‘sportsman’. But in those days the bounty of Nature must have seemed inexhaustible.

A weekend in Pembrokeshire

My sister and her husband live in north Pembrokeshire in an old farmhouse, medieval back and 18th century front, with what land was left by the MoD after taking the bulk of it for Brawdy airfield at the start of the war. That’s enough for some sheep, horses and hay, and there’s an orchard, a wood with a spring and a pond. I went down last weekend for Ali’s 60th party. The swallows had beaten me to it: half a dozen of them had been back a week, an annual event (so far!) that activates a primitive response of hope and joy. The sheer fun swallows seem to have in the air is infectious. (Is it really fun? can a bird have fun? Science - the answer, please.)

Also entering into the spirit of things, a dozen new lambs, the latest on the day of my arrival, with one or two possibly still to come. Ali and Mike don’t think they’ve lost any to foxes this year and put that down, tentatively, to their leaving the ram with the sheep rather than the usual practice of separating him for fear of his molesting the sheep before they’ve recovered from giving birth.

That’s the sort of stuff I learn on these visits. Also, that the bed of the estuary in Solva, as revealed at low tide, has changed this year; that small trailers are harder to reverse than large ones; that it’s often impossible to tell whether the ghosts whose presence mediums detect (including in Ali and Mike’s house) lived in the recent or the remote past; that small Suzuki cars can pull a caravan as well as a bigger Vauxhall and with greater fuel efficiency; that the army regiment stationed in Brawdy some time ago ‘wrecked the town’ (Haverfordwest) so that only more disciplined groups will be posted there in future; that some people have the right to collect seagulls’ eggs from the small islands (we had them for breakfast: as big as hen’s eggs and tasting exactly the same, and not of fish as I’d feared).

I don’t suppose any individual’s birthday party would gather a cross-section of the local population unless in a village and perhaps Ali’s 50-odd guests weren’t typical, though they were certainly diverse: retired people who keep some livestock or run boat trips; ex-police; military, nurses, primary teachers, artists, an archaeologist. Just in what counts as the family there were an RNLI beach lifeguard supervisor, a nurse, a bar manager and a regimental sergeant major. It struck me afterwards that I met no one who produced anything on a full-time-job scale, and a great many who worked in the public sector or were on pensions.

To me, in an affluent London suburb, it’s an unfamiliar economy in other ways too. Ali goes to a sculpture group that someone hosts in her own house, with homemade refreshments she refuses to charge for; the group decided to contribute £1 each per session, but Ali takes eggs of which her four hens often produce too many. A farmer cuts their hay in return for keeping some of it; a tree surgeon reduces his fee in return for keeping an interesting piece of timber. Big Paul paid for his lamb with fish he’d caught. The lambs were killed in the slaugherhouse but Mike and Stuart did the butchering.

The infrastructure that supports life here is cars and vans, trailers, freezers, small boats, the internet, mobiles phones, tools of all kinds. Agricultural fairs and festivals are where the healers and mediums meet potential clients -- though word of mouth is important too. (Reiki is held to work on horses and dogs as well as people.) The group that played at the party -- Angharad and John, friends of one of Ali’s daughters -- play across south Wales as far as Cardiff and make a living. Four or five individuals, couples and families came in vans in which they slept after the party, emerging at points through the morning for Stu’s bacon and black pudding rolls, the fillings bought as great deals from a butcher who’d gone independent after working in Safeways. Stuart lives in the back part of the house with Ali’s daughter Cathy, has a degree in Communication Studies (linguistics and photography), works for RNLI in the summer, does building work in the winter, cooks, shoots and reads -- but mainly lives outdoors. Would like to do more linguistics and even teach it. Marek (his parents are Polish) next door has three ice-cream vans; he and Dina (Danish) have converted their stables into holiday flats, all on lines approved by CADW, the Welsh historic buildings agency; Ditte, a chef, brought six different loaves she’d baked to the party, took over a run-down cafe in Solva and did the baking but it proved impossible to make a go of, despite the excellence and popularity of the bread.

I heard little discussion of the coming election, though a lot of talk about Wales and Welsh. X went to Welsh-language school in Llandeilo, much less English than Llandovery. Y’s teenage daughters speak to their dad in Welsh which she doesn’t understand. Stuart’s folk are first-language Welsh in Manchester; he grew up in Manchester not speaking Welsh and has moved to Wales where he’s picked up some of the language and hopes to get proficient. In a Welsh school named, maths was taught in English -- is that because too much of doesn’t work in Welsh, for lack of vocabulary?

Back up the Thames

A day off from the big writing job, planned yesterday on the promise of good weather. There’s a marked path along the Thames from source to, I suppose, sea and I'm walking it from Hampton Court (west London) to Oxford. Or plan to, in stages. Today was stage 2, from Shepperton where the film studios were and J.G. Ballard lived to Staines where nobody lived and nothing happened but there’s a station I can get back from.

It felt like the first day of spring. It was what Easter weekend should have been like. Buds, flowers, birds, the green haze of new leaves on the clumps of willow shoots, the water brown and fast. A few boats out but it’s early days.

Once you’ve left Shepperton it gets a touch less civilised and boats and riverside shacks start to appear that look scruffy, lived-in and amiable.


Along one stretch the guide I was carrying said the opposite bank was an island. Along here I was accosted by a lady: ‘Excuse me, I know this may sound silly, but can you tell me what day of the week it is?’ I had to repeat ‘Friday’ as she told me she was hard of hearing. Seizing the opportunity I asked her something that was on my mind. The guide had mentioned the ancient water-meadows that the river flooded in the winter and that produced fine crops of grass for hay in the summer; I gather they don’t do that any more but have often been built on. So I wonder what caused the floods in the old days, since I believe there were no locks or weirs but a clear run to the sea. Was there a point where the course was too narrow or shallow for the water to get away as fast as it came down?

The lady’s answer was, ‘Oh, the river floods now. My house is over there -’ -- she pointed across the river and I realised she’d rowed across from the island, as all the residents have to -- ‘and I get flooded. I didn’t use to -- I've lived her fifty years -- but since the moneyed people up in Windsor have made alterations to prevent themselves flooding it happens all the time and my house has lost a lot of value.’

That’s a summary. I wasn’t able to ask her about the historical flooding patterns -- the answer would have taken too long and I was supposed to be on a walk -- but someone else, a well-dressed gent in a suit standing on the path with his garden gate behind him, just enjoying the day I think, said the reason there aren’t floods now except here and there is that they’ve built sluices to get the water away faster and by more direct routes. That makes sense because what strikes you straight away about the Thames is its meanders and the remains of new cuts and older courses.

The day was intended as exercise necessitating vigorous walking, but the mood was such that I relaxed into ambling carelessly like Mr Polly in H.G. Wells’s novel, just enjoying the light and air and people, and stopping to stare when I felt like it.

Soon after the lady and gentleman the path entered a more organised park with at its entrance a notice setting out the by-laws.



When I was a kid in Bradford, a city that had fine parks, every park entrance had a notice like this, only the board was dark green and the lettering cream. Most places have taken them down in the last few years -- as a means of influencing behaviour it didn’t seem the slickest. So this example was a rarity. Since it’s as well to be sure of one’s responsibilities I did have a look, and took a photo.

A New Statesman competition years ago invited extracts from a novel, written about the present some time in the future, that gets it wrong in some ways about the presents. My brother thought of submitting one in which the hero approached the park and, after taking ten minutes to study the by-laws, walked confidently in to meet his lover.

Walworth School / Mina Road after the war

When I went to teach in Walworth in 1964 Mr Ash -- Wilf Ash to colleagues -- was one of the few who had been there since the school opened in 1946. I never knew him well enough to talk to properly but used to get his stories of the early days second-hand, as relayed by Paddy Price who’d arrived a year later in 1947 (came for a day’s supply teaching, stayed for forty years, ending up as a deputy head in charge of the Lower School -- the old Nelson School in Trafalgar Street).

According to Ash according to Paddy, when school opened in September 1946, the teachers turned up at the shabby, bomb-damaged old building and reported to Miss O'Reilly, the headmistress. (There’s a question straight away because Miss O'Reilly came only in summer 1947; the first head was a Miss Plastow, who no sooner than appointed was whisked off to do something in the Home Office.) Miss O'Reilly handed the teacher his or her register which immediately proved to have no names in it. Asked about this she explained, ‘There’s the streets -- go out and get yourself a class.’

So Wilf Ash had to go and gather in a class of pupils, most of whom had probably spent the war running free and playing in the bombed out buildings. Once in the classroom with his captives, you shut and locked the door (from the inside), took your jacket off, rolled up your sleeves and said, ‘Right, who wants trouble?’

Trouble there was - whether for Ash himself I doubt. One class was known for removing the blackboard from its easel and circulating it round the room over their heads at ever-increasing speed.

By all accounts Miss O'Reilly was a match for all that.

What was the truth of the re-opening of schools after the war? If the kids hadn’t been attending school, how did they even know which they were to go to? September 1946 must have been chaotic. Not only were the pupils from the previous school there -- if they turned up -- but also many from other schools that had been closed or reorganised.

Who remembers any of this? who was in that first lot to join Walworth (Mina Road) in 1946? Any memories, please email them to walworthresearch@me.com. Then I'll post it here if you’re happy about that.

Price, Rosen and Ash at Walworth/Mina Road

 

These turned up in a collection of Paddy Price’s photos donated to us (research project on Walworth English) by his daughter. We’re not sure what the production was but Pat Kingwell’s notes record that Walworth School Weekly Staff Bulletin Number 12 for week ending 13th December 1957 records that G. Martens and A.O. Bey's "The Hopeful Travellers" was put on for four nights, with Mr Gus Grealey the main organiser. Here’s Paddy painting the set for it -- and what painting, and what a talented man!  

There are various items on Harold Rosen (on the stage, facing the camera, Walworth 1956-58) elsewhere in this blog -- search in the ‘Labels’ for Rosen. Anyone with any more memories of him, please email me at walworthresearch@me.com. I'll post them here if that you agree.

Or any memories of Gus Grealy, who also taught English.

Mr Ash, the other man in the picture, was Wilf Ash who taught Technical Drawing and in my day had some sort of senior status, having been at the school since it opened as an experimental comprehensive in 1946 and indeed before the war (in Walworth Boys’ Central School as half of it then was). He had certain definite functions in the school like (reluctantly) giving out exercise books and marshalling pupils along the road for dinner in the Bagshot Street canteen.

Not being an English teacher he’s outside our study but I still want to write about some of his stories -- in a separate posting. For now, I remember him as a diminutive sergeant-major type who stood for old-fashioned elementary school teaching when teachers ruled with a stick and maintained absolute silence. He seemed to me, as a young idealistic teacher, an obstacle to progress -- and there were still a lot of his type around. I may well have been misjudging him.

I remember the first staff meeting when a new head, Peter Brown, took over from Guy Rogers, some time in the mid-1960s. Brown opened with a lengthy statement of his high-minded principles and aspirations for the school. I can’t remember what they were exactly but imagine they referred to the changing status of youth, the need to modernise the curriculum, the desirability of students exercising choice, the value of self-directed learning and the need to go beyond talk and chalk and the far-reaching reconstruction of British society and economy. We’re here not just to run a school but to bring about Education -- and should think about what that meant, taking nothing for granted -- that sort of thing.

-        Any questions or comments?

You bet.

-         Mr Ash?

Breaths were bated. Had this old stickler been seduced by Mr Brown’s progressive ideas? was he about to move us from high principle into the excitement of a new curriculum? to introduce group work in technical drawing?

-        Headmaster, do you want to keep the same arrangements for the chalk?

This reflected either a highly skillful subversive strategy or sheer obtuseness. Poor Mr Brown must have wondered what he was up against.

Fortunately the staff in general gave him more of of a chance -- for a while.

Spate

A word I greatly relish, as I do the thing, rivers in spate.

Today’s the 2nd March and, befittingly, the second day of spring, or so it feels. It especially feels it after weeks of cold, rain and wind. That rain is now in the rivers and pouring down the Thames between Hampton Court and Kingston. I can’t tell if the river is deeper than usual, or indeed if the depth ever varies much (it’s not tidal here); but it’s certainly faster and browner.

Come to think of it, why should a river ever get deeper? If more water comes into it, doesn’t it just go faster? I suppose if there’s a blockage and the water can’t get away -- for instance, if the bed at some point is too narrow or shallow -- then the depth will increase.

But supposing the water could get out to sea with no impediment, is there any limit to the speed that the water could flow to remove the influx? or is there a point where the water’s up against a speed limit and that’s when it gets deeper?

I like spate mainly, I think, because of those pictures illustrating February (’fill-dyke’) in those old calendars and children’s books of the month. It’s the thing, not the sound -- or rather a particular image of the thing. But maybe the sound, too: I suspect it calls to mind abate and perhaps late, both suggesting things running out. Etymology’s no help: spate -- origin obscure, first found C14; abate from O.French to do with battre, beat -- but the OED is flummoxed what the connection might be with the meaning of dwindle. Late -- straight Old English. It helps that I associate abate with weather in old novels: ‘the rain having abated we resumed our way to Dover’.

And is there something watery about sp_t? spit? (?spot) spout? I think so, and it’s often the case that particular combinations of letters or phonemes have a meaning. Can’t think of an example at the moment but I'll tell you when I do.