Today begins the first of our New Poetries VII series of blog posts. Over the weeks leading up to the release of the anthology in April 2018, we'll be introducing each of the featured poets and they'll be sharing some thoughts on their work and a poem. So without further ado, this week's blog post is from Laura Scott.
Laura Scott grew up in London but now lives in Norwich. Her poems have appeared in various magazines including PN Review and Poetry Review. She won the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2015 and the Michael Marks Prize for her pamphlet What I Saw. She was commended in last year’s National Poetry Competition.
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So the act of making these poems is also an act of submission. To put it schematically: the image has authority, and the writing must defer to it. The poem has to shed some of its busy self-importance, to lose some of its intention, to go quiet. All the poems do, all they can do, is to circle the image, to go around the outside of it so that it can occupy the space in the middle.
And once I’d realised that, it seemed to me that the actual writing – about a fence, or a man dying in a field, or the sound of a song – was easier than I’d imagined. I’m not saying that writing these poems was easy, but that it was important not to try too hard. Ease is an essential part of it. If the image is there, at the centre of things, then after that it is just a question of detail, of registering it as minutely as I can, bit by bit, so that it can be seen by somebody else. What these poems are, I hope, is a trace of that ease, because without ease there wouldn’t be any poem.
The Singing
I heard it in that weirdly wintery room where the velvet curtains
fell in liver-coloured scrolls and crept out from the walls
when they found the floor and the dark wood cabinet waited
in the corner. That was where they sang for us, or for each other,
or for Greece. I’m not sure who – all I know is the sound of it,
its swell and its swoon, the swerve of it as it left their fingers
and throats and pulled the air into new shapes around us.
And if I circle it, slowly, with these lines, go round the outside of it,
some of that sound might slide into your ears. If I told you
what they looked like, the three musicians, the fat one
in the middle with his bald head and his great belly
arranged over his thighs, more like a butcher than a musician,
and the other two sitting impassively on either side, as if they were bored
– then maybe you’d see them sitting there, with the windows
and the velvet curtains behind them. You’d see me in the front row,
shifting in my seat, wondering when they were going to start.
And then you’d watch the bald one thread his hand under the neck
of his guitar and lay the other over its body and start to play
and the sounds of those notes, higher and faster than you’d expect
would fall into the room like leaves as he moves his fingers
quickly over the fret board. And that would be enough, easily enough,
you could sit and listen to the sharp sounds of the strings
climbing the air forever, but then he’d give you his voice as well
and you won’t be able to believe that such a voice could come
from such a source. And some bit of you would back away like a horse
rearing up on its hind legs, troubled by something its rider can’t see
because you won’t know where to put the sound, what to do with it.
And you’ll wonder why the other two are there, they’re not doing anything,
just looking at the floor but they don’t look bored anymore.
But then the old one with the slicked-back hair will start to hum, and the sound
will be as deep and dark as the lines on his face. And when the song starts
its ascent, the other man will come in and the three voices will plait
themselves together until the tune is so strong you could climb up it.
And the air will be so taut, you’ll hear the breath caught
in the back of your own throat. And then the song will swerve downwards
in its layered refrain and the audience around and behind you
add their voices to the musicians’ and all the voices will go down together
as if the song had stairs and they were made of stone
and the voices were like the soles of thousands of shoes lapping away
at the stone year after year until there is a dent in the middle of the step.
And you’ll follow them, wishing you knew the words, willing the song
fell in liver-coloured scrolls and crept out from the walls
when they found the floor and the dark wood cabinet waited
in the corner. That was where they sang for us, or for each other,
or for Greece. I’m not sure who – all I know is the sound of it,
its swell and its swoon, the swerve of it as it left their fingers
and throats and pulled the air into new shapes around us.
And if I circle it, slowly, with these lines, go round the outside of it,
some of that sound might slide into your ears. If I told you
what they looked like, the three musicians, the fat one
in the middle with his bald head and his great belly
arranged over his thighs, more like a butcher than a musician,
and the other two sitting impassively on either side, as if they were bored
– then maybe you’d see them sitting there, with the windows
and the velvet curtains behind them. You’d see me in the front row,
shifting in my seat, wondering when they were going to start.
And then you’d watch the bald one thread his hand under the neck
of his guitar and lay the other over its body and start to play
and the sounds of those notes, higher and faster than you’d expect
would fall into the room like leaves as he moves his fingers
quickly over the fret board. And that would be enough, easily enough,
you could sit and listen to the sharp sounds of the strings
climbing the air forever, but then he’d give you his voice as well
and you won’t be able to believe that such a voice could come
from such a source. And some bit of you would back away like a horse
rearing up on its hind legs, troubled by something its rider can’t see
because you won’t know where to put the sound, what to do with it.
And you’ll wonder why the other two are there, they’re not doing anything,
just looking at the floor but they don’t look bored anymore.
But then the old one with the slicked-back hair will start to hum, and the sound
will be as deep and dark as the lines on his face. And when the song starts
its ascent, the other man will come in and the three voices will plait
themselves together until the tune is so strong you could climb up it.
And the air will be so taut, you’ll hear the breath caught
in the back of your own throat. And then the song will swerve downwards
in its layered refrain and the audience around and behind you
add their voices to the musicians’ and all the voices will go down together
as if the song had stairs and they were made of stone
and the voices were like the soles of thousands of shoes lapping away
at the stone year after year until there is a dent in the middle of the step.
And you’ll follow them, wishing you knew the words, willing the song
to go on pouring itself into the room. And that layer that locks you
into yourself will fall away and you’ll remember Caliban, crying out
when he wakes from his dream and longs to hear that song again.
***
New Poetries VII is available here to pre-order, and will be published in April 2018.
