Lewis - Quantum Poetics: Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures

In this innovative series of public lectures at Newcastle University, leading contemporary poets speak about the craft and practice of poetry to audiences drawn from both the city and the university. The lectures are then published in book form by Bloodaxe, giving readers everywhere the oppor-tunity to learn what the poets themselves think about their own subject.

Gwyneth Lewiss three lectures explore the connection linking form and politics with the content of poetry while exploring how each of these changes our understanding of time. She argues that the poet steers a path between making music and making sense not at the level of the line, but in the deep structures of meaning which are poetrys terrain. The accuracy of what they say is just as important as its expression, both for their own well-being and for its worth to the reader. Taken together, her lectures begin to posit not the science in poetry but a science of the art form.

The Stronger Life: Much has been made of the volatility of poets, which is largely a myth. Because it can be confessional, poetry is often assumed to be therapeutic, but it can, equally, be toxic. The lives and work of poets are distinct but not unrelated. Using examples from Laura Riding and George Herbert, Gwyneth Lewis argues that poets are more, not less resilient than the rest of the population. Looking at her own modern epic, A Hospital Odyssey, she questions how form is essential to health.

What Country, Friends, is This?: Using Illyria in Shakespeares Twelfth Night as a starting point, this lecture explores language politics and writing, describing how far poets will go to negotiate safe passage between one and the other. Fluent in Welsh and English, Gwyneth Lewis reflects on writing in two opposed traditions at the same time.

Quantum Poetics: Form is the science of poetry. Because of its peculiar relationship with time, poetrys history isnt linear. Language works with a quantum indeterminacy. With special reference to the early Welsh traditions extreme formalism, Gwyneth Lewis discusses how what seems like ornament conjures probability waves into being, adding an extra, unheard, dimension to the sound of metre.

Cover photograph by Keith Morris

NEWCASTLE/BLOODAXE POETRY SERIES

1: Linda Anderson & Jo Shapcott (eds.)
Elizabeth Bishop: Poet of the Periphery

2: David Constantine: A Living Language
NEWCASTLE / BLOODAXE POETRY LECTURES

3: Julia Darling & Cynthia Fuller (eds.)
The Poetry Cure

4: Jo Shapcott: The Transformers
NEWCASTLE / BLOODAXE POETRY LECTURES
[Delayed title: now due 2016]

5: Carol Rumens: Self into Song
NEWCASTLE / BLOODAXE POETRY LECTURES

6: Desmond Graham: Making Poems and Their Meanings
NEWCASTLE / BLOODAXE POETRY LECTURES

7: Jane Hirshfield: Hiddenness, Uncertainty, Surprise
NEWCASTLE / BLOODAXE POETRY LECTURES

8: Ruth Padel: Silent Letters of the Alphabet
NEWCASTLE / BLOODAXE POETRY LECTURES

9: George Szirtes: Fortinbras at the Fishhouses
NEWCASTLE / BLOODAXE POETRY LECTURES

10: Fiona Sampson: Music Lessons
NEWCASTLE / BLOODAXE POETRY LECTURES

11: Jackie Kay, James Procter & Gemma Robinson (eds.)
Out of Bounds: British Black & Asian Poets

12: Sean OBrien: Journeys to the Interior
NEWCASTLE / BLOODAXE POETRY LECTURES

13: Paul Batchelor (ed.)
Reading Barry MacSweeney

14: John Halliday (ed.)
Dont Bring Me No Rocking Chair: poems on ageing

15: Gwyneth Lewis: Quantum Poetics
NEWCASTLE / BLOODAXE POETRY LECTURES

I would like to thank Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts and Bloodaxe Books for the opportunity to give these lectures, which were delivered in March 2014. Id like to thank Sean OBrien, Bill Herbert, Linda Anderson, Gerry Wardle and Melanie Birch for their kind welcome and company during this period.

A version of the second lecture was delivered at the third British and Irish Contemporary Poetry Conference at Manchester, 12-14 September 2013. Id like to thank Paul Batchelor for his close reading of that lecture. Richard Greene was a kind first reader of all three lectures.

Id also like to thank Neil Astley for his long-term support.