Dart

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From water-nymphs to sewage workers, Alice Oswald captures the voices of the river Dart (chambermaid, crabbers, dreamer, etc) . Each interview is transformed in the ceaseless, lapping flow of the narrative into an idiosyncratic form, a gem of language. We have arrived, presumably, long after the water we saw arise at the source, but undoubtedly wiser about life than when we began. Oswald, Alice (2011). Memorial: An Excavation of the Iliad. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 9780571274161. Archived from the original on 6 June 2012. I am always fascinated by the many and varied way in which one comes to a book. In the case of ‘Dart’ it was for two reasons.

This project has been brewing in my mind for some time now. Then I heard about this book, and how it had been an inspiration for Max Porter’s Lanny, which is a book that speaks loudly to me and which I love. So, there are the two elements in my journey to be holding a copy of Dart. After lunch here, we then continue on the east bank to Kingsbridge. As we reach the estuary, the ferryman speaks: All poetry has a memorial aspect – the fixing of a moment, a place, the passing of a life. But this is remembering on a grand scale. This is a concentrated, intense, multi-tasking elegy. And it is written with a freshness to match Homer's own – as if each soldier had died on the day of writing' Observer

Issue No. 11

a b Oswald, Alice (12 December 2011). "Why I pulled out of the TS Eliot poetry prize". The Guardian. London: Guardian News and Media Limited . Retrieved 13 February 2012.

The River Dart tells its own story through the voices of the people, whether salmon poacher, naturalist, boat builder, but also industrial workers at a sewage plant and a dairy; a chambermaid, river pilot, ferryman and botanist. Swimmers, town boys, a drowned canoeist, and boats; dead tin miners speak, as well as otters and mythic figures. The cumulative effect brings together human and natural history into a synthesis containing workaday lives, the metaphysical, nature, language and dreams, all to the sounds of the river.

October 2013

Herbert, Interview by Susannah (2 October 2012). "Alice Oswald, poet – portrait of the artist". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 13 March 2016. Holland, Tom (17 October 2011). "The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller / Memorial by Alice Oswald. Surfing the rip tide of all things Homeric". The New Statesman. London: New Statesman . Retrieved 1 June 2012. shortlisted for Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection), The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile [10] The poem continues: ‘Obviously it speaks in verse, obviously / It inhales for a while and then describes by means of breath / Some kind of grief, what is it?’ The wind is finally envisioned as a ‘huge, hushed up, / Inexhaustible, millions of years old sister’, of whom it asks: ‘is she serious?’ One might call this charmingly enigmatic, and characteristic of Alice Oswald, a poet remarkable for her personifications of Nature, giving its many voices full play. She draws not only upon acute observations of birds, beasts, and flowers in landscapes, but also upon their topography, history, human inhabitants and spiritual dimensions. If this makes her work sound high-minded, it’s also delightfully eccentric, highly rhythmical – she often uses G.M. Hopkins’ sprung rhythms –and humanely sympathetic to her subjects.

We soon arrive at Northgate House alongside the abbey, offering impeccable, good-value accommodation and a hearty breakfast. it is part of the Foundation. This wish not to be the subject of scrutiny extends to her poetry. It is one of the great pleasures of reading Woods etc that it involves a disembarking from self. Oswald is like a medium except that she is not listening for sounds from the other side. She is intent on this side - wind, water, birdsong. 'I almost feel that I am not part of it. I believe the poet shouldn't be in the poem at all except as a lens or as ears.' She is drawn to nature with a steady passion, partly, I suspect, because it is not attention-seeking ('the lovely, inattentive water'). And there are several moments in this collection when it seems as though nature renders her speechless. So then I read all the Hughes poems I could lay my hands on and what they all had in common was that imaginative grasp of the present – that ability to speak strictly within one moment and not through a misted screen of remembered moments.’ I usually struggle to read long pieces of poetry, and so I was surprised to find that I enjoyed this so much. Again, this came from my boyfriend – he had to read it for a module of his, and started reading it aloud while I was there. I think this approach was what kept me interested; I didn’t read it all aloud, but if I found myself getting tired it helped to imagine it being read out in my head, rather than just reading it. Focusing on the rhythms and beat of the piece not only helped me read it but I think it also adds to the feel of it – there are places with little rhythm and places with a clear beat; this is obviously intentional, and should be read as such.GIGANTIC CINEMA, an anthology of writing about the weather, co-edited with Paul Farley, was published in 2020 by Jonathan Cape and W.W. Norton. As a result of this cutting off and changing of rhythms, Oswald’s pacing is interesting and well done. Again, this reflects the river; some parts as slower, as the river may slow down, others fast paced, like rapids. The way she uses language and formats the poem also adds to this in an unexpected way – this isn’t set out in one way. Like the changes in voice and rhythm, the formatting of the poem changes regularly and in different ways; sometimes it changes suddenly, others it transitions smoothly. She says that the balance is 'precarious', that she writes with earplugs in, that everything is 'framed by chaos'. There are several examples of tinners’ huts and spoil heaps in this area and we pause to admire a ‘Beehive Hut’, built to store their tools and as a shelter.

A wonderful book-length poem, with several voices in verse and prose very skillfully stitched together, "Slip-Shape," into a "songline from the source to the sea." She read classics at New College, Oxford. Homer remains the writer who matters most to her. At 16, she was 'completely overwhelmed by the freshness. I had an absolute obsession with how you can recover that freshness. I much preferred Latin to Greek. I loved the language being such a pattern that you could not shift a word without the whole sentence falling to pieces'. There is also, in her poems, a sense of the silence behind every word. 'One of the differences between poetry and prose is that poetry is beyond words. Poetry is only there to frame the silence. There is silence between each verse and silence at the end.' Silence cannot be in generous supply, though, in a house with children? A Short Story of Falling - Metal Engravings by Maribel Mas. Published by Andrew J Moorhouse, Fine Press Poetry

Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, vol. 2, Burke's Peerage, Ltd, 2003, p. 1987 We became so enamoured by the Dart that we were determined to discover its source this year, way up on Dartmoor. And whilst researching its exact location, I came across this gem of a book, Alice Oswald’s ‘Dart’, which takes us down the river in a far more visceral way than any tourist fodder possibly could. a b Flood, Alison (6 December 2011). "Alice Oswald withdraws from TS Eliot prize in protest at sponsor Aurum". The Guardian. London: Guardian News and Media Limited . Retrieved 13 February 2012.