Several commentators on recent books blogs have said they'd like to see a discussion of Roddy Lumsden's poetry, and PotW's own MeltonMowbray posted a request earlier this year. So for this week's poem, I've chosen one of my favourites from Lumsden's latest collection, Terrific Melancholy (recommended if you haven't already got a copy). I hope aficiandos and new readers alike will enjoy the elegiac virtuosity of "Square One."
Panning shots of the razzmatazz of contemporary London begin with an unnaturally motionless River Thames, which contrasts with the surrounding fluidity of endless construction and self-invention. The location is mirrored in spirited, slangy diction, and a repetitive device that stitches all together in bright gold lamé thread. On the page, you almost see the green light. Read the poem aloud, and you hear the gunning of engines in the repetition of the hard "g" – described in phonetics as a voiced, velar stop.
This technique recalls the generative devices of the poets and novelists of the Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) who choose specific verbal constraints as a means of triggering ideas. The most famous, and diabolically complicated, is probably the "story-making machine", set in motion by Georges Perec in the construction of his novel, Life: A User's Manual. Poets have experimented with lipograms, palindromes, etc. Whereas these techniques need not, and mostly do not, emerge from the material, the "go" device in "Square One" connects directly to the poem's theme and rhythmic energy-supply. It also echoes the dominant phonemes in the names of the two mythological giants who'll emerge in the poem's last line – Gog and Magog.
This is the London of Boris, bendy buses and bad bankers, but it's also a tumult of lives harder to record, more slippery and edgy. As well as "the emos, indie kids/ Goths and ravers melting down the day" in stanza one, the prefix nets a jolly haul of "gowks", "gonzos", "gorillas" and "gomerils" to flesh out the "city's multiplicity of fools". Food is a vivid class-indicator: the "retired politicians" feast on dumplings and meggyleves (Hungarian sour-cherry soup) as well as scandal, while others "stare at bangers and bubble, tea/ gone cold ... ". But the poem seems to imply freedom of choice. I like the fact that the power-brokers are simply given their space in the gorgeous, rotted tapestry, without comment. Brand- and place-names, from Gossamer to Gospel Oak, add further texture.
Are any other Oulipan devices used in the poem? I had a subliminal sense that further patterns were sometimes employed, but without being able to put a finger on them. I even wondered about the game of Go, which can be played with a 13 x 13 board (the stanzas are all 13-liners here), but drew a blank.
The title might suggest the Square Mile, or any of London's many squares: it also recalls Larkin's famous reference in "The Whitsun Weddings" to "postal districts, packed like squares of wheat", a curious simile, since, contrary to northern myth, London has many postal districts nearer the breadline than the cornbelt. "Square One" might be anywhere, but it implies return, a reluctant new start. While elegising a lost Albion, the poem knows that new mythical creatures are constantly being born.
Perhaps the day of the poem represents a vaster historical period, one stretching from an almost-absurd respectability ("gongs struck in gentlemen's clubs" to start the day and "dawn trains given the/ go-ahead at suburban junctions") to the present social chaos. The poem's author is a Scot, but an end-of-empire regret seems hinted. The accumulation of details evokes the thrill of change and movement, together with a despairing sense of being swept away into anonymity. Yet there's no question that the speaker loves the city. The sun rises and sets almost romantically in images of the "gold tide," the "slant shadows" of the high-rises, and the "misted moon." Noted for its stillness in the first stanza, the river remains obstinately static, but, at the end of the poem, it seems to have found a voice, and utters a punning command to "own torn myths". And this is exactly what the poem so exuberantly does.
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Square One
Going steadily, rowed out from east to west, concrete
gondolas brink the Thames, which is still – it's the land which is
googled by gravity, thrown around - an optical illusion
good enough to fool the city's multiplicity of fools:
goons and gomerils who labour under Mammon's lash,
gowks and golems who queue to flash their lips and lids in
god-forsaken church halls, reeking basements and seeping
Golgothas, clamped blithe to ardour: the emos, indie kids,
Goths and ravers melting down the day we launched with
gongs struck in gentlemen's clubs, skirted girls at Nonsuch and
Godolphin thronging in corridors, dawn trains given the
go-ahead at suburban junctions, the first trace of the sun's
gold tide as it washes back to our side of the sphere, but now,
going for lunch, you swing between delight and throwaway,
gourmet and grease, dither between syrah in a silver
goblet or Tizer from a sprung can; you might stare over roasted
goose at the Gay Hussar, at your companion's bowl of
goulash, as retired politicians two tables over whisper scandals,
gossip through dumplings and meggyleves, hissing the latest
Gordon or Boris anecdote, Obama's honeymoon months,
government soap; you might stare at bangers and bubble, tea
gone cold; evening settles in at Kilburn, down Battersea Park;
Golders Green wanes; high-rises throw slant shadows over
Gospel Oak; students breathe the soot of a bendy revving on
Gower Street; in the doorways of basement strip joints,
gorillas strike stances; toms swap fat packs of Fetherlite and
Gossamer, hitch into their tangas and fishnets waiting for the
gonk to finger a phone box card, the way a kid fingers what he
got from the kitchen drawer; evening touches Camden where
gonzos sup Stella; dancers shift in the wings of the opera;
goluptious girls slip into slingbacks, swim into creamy
gowns, or swash out of them, as that misted moon plays
go-between in a city of secrets, crimson or bilious – what
good will come of us, falling in the dark, our names
gouged into plane-trees? – we are becoming history,
godmothers to our own torn myths: twisted and crazed,
gorgeous giants, we hang spinning over the still river:
Go on! it murmurs – own torn myths – and midnight mentions
Gog and Magog – sweet, towering boys, long gone.
Roddy Lumsden