Preface

I pause from the slow and rather alchemical task of distilling poetry. Since I have already grubbed the disparate ingredients for my latest verse out of some dark pantry on the inside of me and laid them out in a line like an unsolved jigsaw puzzle, I take a little time to do something safe; perhaps brew a pot of coffee or peel a bucket of potatoes or point the cats in the direction of the latest murine intruder. Rats seem attracted to me. It makes me feel that perhaps I am not yet a sinking ship, although I am probably not Saint Francis either.

Now a deep breath is called for and removing the creative alembic for a moment from the burner I ask myself: ‘But after all, what is a poem?’

It is one of the simple questions, like ‘What is God?’ or ‘Who am I?’ or ‘Am I God?’

But before I can begin to answer my first question others spill out like sausages from a sausage machine and pile up in a wriggling pink stack before me demanding equal consideration or at least a quick end in a red hot frying pan.
‘What is a poem?’ And then ‘Where does a poem come from?’ And ‘What makes a piece of writing a poem rather than a piece of prose?’ And ‘Will I make any money out of this book of poetry?’ And ‘Can you explain String Theory to me in one simple paragraph?

This kind of random enquiry causes a disengagement and re-engagement of gears in the small part of my mind that deals with logic. The grinding is awkwardly uncomfortable to the point of pain. For the first time I understand the feelings of a sack of wheat which has learned that it is to be ground down into a loaf of bread. I feel a kind of right angled and unnatural change in the typical latitudinal direction of my thought. I am reminded of the juddering sound of a snipe in the evening sky over my bogland cottage, like finger-nails on the dark blackboard of the sky.

“What is a poem?’

I don’t know. Because rather as a postman does little more than deliver a letter and has no part whatsoever in writing it, I do little more than deliver a poem even though to do this I must write it down. But how it comes to me and what it is a mystery, as is the place it comes from. Well, no! That is not entirely true. It is not a mystery at all! It comes from beyont!

Beyont 1

As I sit and ponder over my pile of freshly peeled potatoes and my mug of steaming coffee and whatever other occupational placebo I have used to dislocate myself from my rented accommodation in the collective unconscious (‘your place of work’ as the taxman would have it) and as I relax into my unpretentious Irish kitchen, this solid place in a solidly objective world of draughts and burning turf, of cooking smells, of rain and smoke and cats, it becomes clear to me that poems come from somewhere else, not from here but from a place I can only describe as beyont.

And where on earth or further afield within the clanging harp strings of the universe is beyont? Well I have often been there so I should have no difficulty in providing a description. And once upon a time I tried to pinpoint the location with reference to the magical act of painting a picture which is how I had occupied my time for the ten years before it came to me that I should publish a collection of poetry. I had written:

“In front of the canvas I stand. I move my arms. I flex my fingers. I stare.
Time, that terrible and incomprehensible enigma, fades to irrelevance and leaks away slowly, vanishing under the studio door.
Paint flows and moves, the clouds of charcoal rise, fall, coalesce.
The void is before me. Darkness covers the face of the earth.
Out of that darkness figures emerge, blinking, arranging themselves randomly here and there on the picture plane, at first without intent or passion, composing themselves like anonymous crowds moving through the Metro. They appear in the paint from elsewhere and jostle for meaning. If there were a Me I would say they come from beyond Me.
I have not invited them. They introduce themselves, borrowing my name with an abrupt lack of etiquette, and having taken up their stations on the canvas they invite me to recognise them.
They invite you too, viewer.”

I think one can say the same things in relation to the inspiration that arrives with the gift of a poem. (I am not referring here to the hard work needed to put the pieces of the jigsaw together!) Rats seem attracted to me. So do words. What does that make me? A rat catcher? A word snarer?

Up to this point I have not even attempted to describe what a poem is but perhaps it is a move in the right direction to find out in my case where poetry comes from. With painting I wanted to explain the source of the picture which time and again seemed to arrive ready made on the canvas in front of me without any effort at all by me and which indeed scarcely merited my signature on the finished work. All I was asked to do was to use my judgement and admit the painting into the world. Or simply reject it and smother it at birth.

What was clear was that a picture and in the same way a line of poetry did not appear to come from my conscious mind at all which is why I use the analogy of a postal delivery. It was delivered from beyont. And when it was not, when I struggled and twisted and turned and focussed mind and logic to bring the task somehow to a printable conclusion it was rarely successful. The painting might just as well have been an ad for a new detergent and the poem a thank-you letter for an unwanted Christmas present.

But the poems which made me rejoice did not come from nowhere.
Beyont is not a nowhere land. I have been there. If I relax properly I am indeed living mostly beyont. I should explain. Beyont is that place where nothing is done which cannot be done one-handed and thinking of something else. It is the place for writing and painting and on a good day the place where in secret and shady places poetry might unexpectedly be found as are found in the woods wild and edible mushrooms. Some say it is a good place to convalesce and perhaps that is why I spend a good deal of time there, like a patient in a deck chair listening to the ocean.

Beyont 2

Beyont can be heavy weather and the tunnel between worlds. Today I shall get up and still walking on dry land I shall cross the threshold and step into beyont. Dry land? Well scarcely! In this part of the West of Ireland the ocean has wings and is often airborne all around me. But the rain and the winds carry the deep meditation of the ocean with them over the bog and into the ash grove and around my house and around me like a magic cloak so that even before I cross the threshold I am well into beyont.

Now the rain comes down. I eat my sodden toast in the doorway. The donkeys are propitiated with washed potato and the rain flies into the garden like a swarm of buzzing bees among the plants and the day rustles alive and I walking wake.

I remain in the scullery doorway looking out through the falling shower. Beyont, on the green hill of my neighbour’s pasture cream cows stand motionless like tired workers in a shower cubicle douched in the downpour, impassively letting the water flow over them. There is no breeze for a moment, as if work has stopped in the bellows department and all stand by watching the line of black counterpanes above the horizon with sheets of white cloud beneath and wall hangings of grey and white and great tears of blue in the wetscape. Beyont is always a perfect landscape tatty with discordant currents, silenced by a lack of decision, purpose, weather-balanced, undecided whether to weep or chuckle or just collapse with the consternation of decision making. I watch and am slowly absorbed. I am an insect swimming about in a flesh eating calyx. My mind is an empty pool. I welcome the sun. I welcome the rain. Anything to get me going. I am in perfect equilibrium. Am I happy? Am I miserable? There seems to be no difference from where I wait poised in the beyont.

The rain stops. Another stealthy entrance by the sunshine, as if it will willy-nilly inseminate the fields with further vigour. The day could be pregnant with anything. Monsters or angels crouch in the wings, waiting to emerge. The leaves drip. The tree trunks steam. The donkeys emerge from their barn and the tin roofs hiss and crack and smoke like a steaming family wedding where hate and feud and horrible dysfunction bubble beneath the surface, the brooding generations of quarto father’s sins and their mothers’ hag-ridden resentment, and are put aside just for the day in Olympian resignation.
Beyont 3

Language is a network disease, an active fungus of association.
There is a synaptic connection of allusions that has that sweet element of creative anonymity built into its structure. Beyont is no-name.
Do you name what a poem is? Well, do you name what a pear tastes like? Well, no, not really. Just eat it. Right off the page.