Geoffrey Hill Zinger

In honor of René Gallet

2012-02-03T10:19:00.001+01:00

René Gallet, a gifted translator of Geoffrey Hill's poems into French, died on Sunday, aged 67. His family and his colleagues, his friends, and the many people whose lives he touched in a generous way are in mourning. His wife requested that the following poem be read at his Requiem Mass.

Sept Hymnes à Notre Dame de Chartres

Geoffrey Hill

En hommageamical à René Gallet.

2^e partie

Les prières sont imprécations pour commencer ;

La piété viendra peut-être avec le temps ;

Travaillant péniblement métriques et carrés de rime ;

Une conviction d’âme, une maladie de cœur.

Teint de mort comme le sang imbibe le sable,

Sali de notre fécondité le monde

Se trouve empêtré dans la colère de Caïn

Le serpent de l’arbre depuis longtemps à terre

Toi, nouveau-surgi à travers la toile cosmique

De vérité et fable vers un règne symbolique ;

Les mauvaises conceptions nous assignons à nous-mêmes

Interminablement ainsi, le Bouc, le Crabe —

Jurant je dis : jamais si trahi,

Regina Coeli ; désir onéreux

Quelque chose insérée aux viscères,

Une migraine sensuelle perforant l’œil jusqu’au crâne ;

Cris d’assentiment de ceux déportéspar l’esprit.

L’enfance, l’Annonciation, la Dormition :

Riche de théologie notre pauvrecontrition ;

La neige tardive s’effilochant auvent.

(Translation J. Kilgore-Caradec)

For the complete text of this poem: La Revue Lisa / LISA e-journal VII.3 (2009), Festschrift René Gallet.

Happy New Year Sir Geoffrey!

2011-12-31T17:40:00.004+01:00

It has been announced today that Geoffrey Hill is on the New Year's Honor list to become a Knight of the British Empire, the highest honor given to a subject, "For services to Literature". Her Majesty the Queen bestows the honor at the New Year and on her birthday, June 11. Geoffrey Hill is a Knight Bachelor -- making headlines around the world. Is there a better way for a poet to usher in the New Year?

Links
Stephen Bates, "'New Year honors list reflects my aims for big society', says David Cameron," Guardian (December 31, 2011).
Sarrah Cunnane, "Higher education figures recognized in New Year honours," Times Higher Education (December 31, 2011).
Meera Selva, "Queen honors actress, former prisoner" Times Leader (December 31, 2011).
Michael Rundle, "New Year Honours List 2012" (features slide-show), Huffingtonpost UK (December 31, 2011).
List of Honours from British Government "The UK honours system," (December 31, 2011).
List of Honours from BBC News Service (December 31, 2011).
John Bingham, "The New Year Honours 2012," Telegraph (Dec 31, 2011).
Abbas Panjwani, "Oxford professors recognised on New Year Honours List" Oxford Student (Dec 31, 2011).
"Comedian Corbett among string of stars featured in UK honours list," Irish Times (Dec 31, 2011).

On the feast of Saint Daniel

2011-12-30T18:04:00.000+01:00

December 11, 2011 was a day not missed by many Geoffrey Hill readers in London. Hill gave a poetry reading at Southbank Center that featured poems from Clavics as well as previous volumes, followed by a book signing and readings by James Byrne, Kate Kilalea (in photo below), and Niall McDevitt.

Hill said that the owl on the cover of Clavics was an adaptation of a photo taken by Eric Hosking somewhere between 1944-1947. He said this was a case in which he knew the photo before beginning the book, and wrote the book for the cover, in a way similar to Canaan.

Petition for a permanent link...

2011-12-10T07:17:00.001+01:00

Geoffrey Hill was featured on BBC's Newsnight on December 8, 2011.

Will the link to this video be gone after only a few days? It would be so great if BBC News would leave it active for a while, especially in these days when literature and the arts receive diminishing funding worldwide. Thanks to Stephen Smith for "asking" (to understand the illusion, watch the link below) !

This link works from outside the UK:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/9658789.stm

And this one, from inside the UK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0183ll7/Newsnight_08_12_2011

The age of "Anarchical Plutocracy"

2011-12-05T11:39:00.001+01:00

Well, it's the Hill season, and the Economist's Prospero Blog offers an excellent video of Hill speaking about diverse aspects of his poetry, including writing in an age of "Anarchical Plutocracy" (Morris's phrase) and its distortions which affect culture, language, and everything it touches.

See "Poems should be beautiful," The Economist (Dec 2, 2011).

Hill's reading at South Bank Center, Royal Festival Hall this coming Sunday, will no doubt address this issue again.

December 11, 2011

2011-10-22T06:03:00.000+02:00

Don't miss the treat of hearing Geoffrey Hill read from his work in the Purcell Room, at Royal Festive Hall, Sunday December 11, 2011 at 2 p.m. Tickets can be booked here:
http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/literature-spoken-word/tickets/geoffrey-hill

29 November, 2011

2011-10-16T17:14:00.000+02:00

Geoffrey Hill's first lecture of this academic year, "Poetry, Policing and Public Order (1)." will be delivered on November 29, 2011, at 5:30 p.m., in the South School of the Examination Schools.

Links
http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/news-events/upcoming-events/201111/professor-poetry-lecture

Of At-one-ment

2011-07-29T12:17:00.000+02:00

Writing in The Nation about Roy Fisher, Ange Mlinko notes: "Geoffrey Hill, another poet of the Midlands, has written insightfully about atonement—both as a motive for writing . . . and as an end . . . ."

cf. Ange Mlinko, "Hard Against Time," The Nation (August 15/22, 2011), 39-41.

To explore the notion of atonement in Hill's poetry a bit further, one might turn to Christianity and Literature 60:3 (Spring 2011), which is a special issue devoted to Geoffrey Hill.

Bastille Day Announcements

2011-07-20T18:31:00.001+02:00

The Guardian on July 14, 2011 ran an article about Geoffrey Hill's Clavics being shortlisted for the Forward Prize.

Links:
Maev Kennedy, "Forward shortlist includes Geoffrey Hill, Sean O'Brien and David Harsent," Guardian (July 14, 2011).

Bibliographics

2011-06-17T07:34:00.009+02:00

GEOFFREY HILL
Interview:
Jessica Campbell, "Interview: Geoffrey Hill, Oxford Professor of Poetry," The Oxford Student (May 26, 2011).

Poetry by Hill:
"from Clavics," Poetry Review 101:1 (Spring 2011).

On-Line Talks
Geoffrey Hill on how "The Violent Bear it Away," King James Bible, 400 Years at University of Cambridge (2011).

ABOUT HILL'S WORK
Reviews of Clavics:
Lachian Mackinon, "Clavics by Geoffrey Hill: Discords and distractions," The Independent (June 3, 2011).

Recent critical essays on Hill's work:
Alex Wylie, "Eros in Geoffrey Hill's Scenes from Comus," English (April 11, 2011).
Andrew Michael Roberts, "Geoffrey Hill" in The Cambridge History of English Poetry, ed. Michael O'Neill (CUP, 2010) 936-55.

Other Reviews:
Patrick Kurp, "Selected Poems by Geoffrey Hil," The Quarterly Conversation (date?).
Emmanuel Laugier, "Le Triomphe de l'amour," Le Matricule des Anges 84 (date?).

Blog posts:
Anon, "Geoffrey Hill: Mercian Hymns"(Jan 24, 2011).
Bebrowed, "Geoffrey Hill does Wales (oddly)" (January 18, 2011).
Kemal, "Nikki Giovanni, Bicycles: Love Poems, and Reflections on Geoffrey Hill" (January 5, 2011).

Older pieces:
Nick Owchar, "Geoffrey Hill: the poet's public burden," Los Angeles Times (April 30, 2009).
Albert Testani, "Geoffrey Hill speaks his thoughts," The Yorker (November 23, 2007).

Clavics is #4 this week

2011-05-21T07:39:00.000+02:00

At the London Review Bookshop, Clavics is listed as 4th bestselling book of the week (newsletter May 20). They are offering signed copies (see www.lrbshop.co.uk).

Happy May Day!

2011-05-01T09:03:00.004+02:00

Clavics is listed as a bestseller for the London Review Bookshop (newsletter of April 28th).

The book was reviewd in The Economist (first time that's happened for a book of poetry by Hill).

For more breadth, why not listen to Hill's first and second Oxford Professor of Poetry lectures on-line?

He'll be speaking again, on "Poetry and Disproportion" in Oxford, on May 10th, at 5:30 p.m. in the South School of the Examination Schools.

Links:

"Mr Difficult," The Economist (April 4, 2011).

Geoffrey Hill, "Eccentric to the ends of his master or state," second lecture as Oxford Professor of Poetry (http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/kebl/general/2011-hill-poetry-2.mp3). (See also http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/news-events/news/201104/professor-poetry-podcasts).

Oxford Professor of Poetry Lecture Announcement (www.english.ox.ac.uk).

Geoffrey Hill's inaugural lecture podcast

2011-03-25T12:59:00.003+01:00

Excellent news: Matthew Sperling has recently shared on the "Geoffrey Hill for Oxford Professor of Poetry 2010" page on Facebook that Hill's inaugural lecture is now online at Keble College's website (http://www.keble.ox.ac.uk/alumni/past-events/past-events). Direct link to podcast (http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/kebl/general/2010-11-30-hill-poetry-keble.mp3).

Minding his curds and whey

2011-03-19T18:05:00.003+01:00

For those who wonder what Professor Hill and Miss Muffet have in common, please see Oraclau/Oracles 46. And, while thinking about all of that, maybe you'd enjoy some cottage cheese.

Links

Don Glass in "Moment of Science" (September 27, 2003).

"Little Miss Muffet..." from Mother Goose Society (www.librarysupport.net).

Clavics

2011-03-17T22:02:00.003+01:00

Soon to be published by Enitharmon Press, Geoffrey Hill's Clavics (publication date April 15, 2011).

Links:

Author page for Geoffrey Hill with Enitharmon (www.enitharmon.co.uk).

International Women's Day with the Oxford Professor of Poetry

2011-03-06T07:32:00.003+01:00

The Oxford Professor of Poetry will be giving his second lecture on March 8th, 5:30 pm, in the South School of the Examination Schools: "Eccentrique to the endes of his Master or State"

Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, this lecture takes place on the 100 year anniversary of the celebration of International Women's Day.

Links

"Professor of Poetry, Geoffrey Hill, 2nd Lecture" (Keble).

"Professor of Poetry Lecture" (Faculty of English, Oxford).

International Women's Day (United Nations).

Yet again Mercian

2011-01-25T17:39:00.002+01:00

Louise Kemeny in "Archeology of Words — Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns (The Literateur, September 27, 2009) says that the second hymn verset of the poem gives us a riddle right out of the Anglo-Saxon period, which "relied heavily upon the manipulation of idiom and phonetic word play." Speaking of word play, to what extent should one consider word breaks in a prose poem?

Nativity Picture

2010-12-23T09:28:00.003+01:00

"Picture of a Nativity" by Geoffrey Hill, from the Poetry Foundation.

#44 - Inaugural Lecture (a few notes)

2010-12-02T08:31:00.013+01:00

It began with notions of poetry as perjury (see Shakespeare's sonnets 152, 138, 121, 129, especially 111, and Pierre Joris's tranlsation of Celan: "the hundred-/ tongued My-/poem, the Lie-noem"). It ended with prophecy: today's literary scene is good for landfill. Society is plagued with scams including the banker's scam, the coalition scam, the education scam, the national happiness scam... Apparently the notion of intrinsic value is not to be reserved for poetry only. A poem may be a living entity (Pope's spider), but so is criticism: young Lowell benefited from a very critical review by R.P. Blackmur, and Christopher Ricks made a mistake in publishing a book about Bob Dylan's verse.

One example of the resistance that Hill is proposing is Shakespeare's 66th sonnet, which he declared impossible to paraphrase:

Tir'd with all these, for restful death I cry:

As, to behold desert a beggar born,

And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,

And purest faith unhappily forsworn,

And gilded honor shamefully misplac'd,

And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,

And right perfection wrongfully disgrac'd,

And strength by limping way disabled,

And art made tongue-tied by authority,

And folly doctor-like controlling skill,

And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,

And captive good attending captain ill.

Tir'd with all these, from these would I be gone,

Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

Inaugural Lecture

2010-10-26T10:35:00.004+02:00

"How ill white hairs become a fool and jester" is the title of Geoffrey Hill's inaugural lecture as Oxford Professor of Poetry, to be held Tuesday November 30, 5:15 pm, in South School, Examination Schools (www.english.ox.ac.uk).

Meanwhile, now that all Paris Review interviews are available for reading on-line, it's a perfect time to re-read "The Art of Poetry," Geoffrey Hill interviewed by Carl Phillips (2000).

Oraclau / Oracles

2010-10-17T07:01:00.009+02:00

Now in a bookshop near you: Oraclau/Oracles by Geoffey Hill. Clutag Press has produced another collector's edition, following on A Treatise of Civil Power in the first Clutag edition (2005) which is significantly different from the 2007 Penguin edition. Clutag's site notes: "Since the publication of A Treatise of Civil Power in 2007, Geoffrey Hill has completed five new collections. Under the general title The Daybooks, they include Al Tempo de' Tremuoti, Odi Barbare, Oraclau/Oracles, and Clavics."

Links

Clutag Press Release (October 2010).

London Review Bookshop (www.lrbshop.co.uk).

M. Wynn Thomas, "Oraclau/Oracles by Geoffrey Hill - review," Guardian (October 16, 2010).

Gerald Dawe, "A stand against the fake and self-serving," Irish Times (November 27, 2010).

Damian Walford Davies, "Good and bad blood: Geoffrey Hill, Oraclau/Oracles," Times Literary Supplement (December 24 & 31, 2010), p.29.
George Potts, "Oraclau/Oracles by Geoffrey Hill," The Literateur (March 20, 2011).
Jeremy Hooker, "Other Land," Notre Dame Review 32(Summer/Fall 2011).
Paul Franz, "Oraclau / Oracles," Harvard Review On-Line 6 (hci.harvard.edu).

Voice in Poetry

2010-09-24T10:30:00.006+02:00

This entry is post-dated, let me confess at the outset. Several delegates at the "Poetry and Voice Conference," at the University of Chichester (June 25-27, 2010) spoke about voice in Geoffrey Hill's Poetry:

Susan Ang, "Geoffrey Hill: the composition and decomposition of voice"

Rajeev S. Patke, "Voice in Poetry: The Case of Mercian Hymns"

From "Odi Barbare"

2010-09-19T18:40:00.002+02:00

New poems by Geoffrey Hill have been published in the September issue of Poetry.

Geoffrey Hill, "From 'Odi Barbare' (www.poetryfoundation.org).

Links

Rob A. Mackenzie, Surroundings (September 23, 2010).

Amor-Roma: Love the Roms

2010-08-24T21:18:00.014+02:00

"Hill is far edgier, far better, and far more important." That is Richard King comparing Geoffrey Hill to other poets "who claim to be taking poetry to the people" (The Australian, August 4, 2010). Hill has not sought out popularity, he "is nothing if not a contrarian," notes Gregory Wolfe (Image, Summer 2010).

As France roils over recent expulsion policies by the Sarkozy government concerning the Roma (Roms as they are known in French), Hill's interview in Poetry Wales (Summer 2010) sounds out loud and clear: "...there was a rumour in my family that one of our ancestors was Roma, and I had hoped very much to have this proved."

Unlike the Pope, who spoke out against France's racist measures this past week, Hill was not directly addressng French policy. But certainly he has not forgotten that the nazi plan for genocide (the word came into being in 1944) was also directed against Roma.

Hill's poetry may not "make anything happen," but if you read it, you are likely to become more aware of what is happening.

Links:

Richard King, "Great Poetry is no Scandal," The Australian (August 4, 2010).

Gregory Wolfe, "Who's Afraid of Geoffrey Hill," Image 66 (Summer 2010).

Roms in France

Raymond Etienne, Olivier Bernard, François Soulage, "Roms : une crise humanitaire en France," Libération (July 28, 2009).

"Roms: deux évêques contre une 'surenchère sécuritaire,'" LibéRennes (July 27, 2010).

"Un camp de Roms évacué en région parisienne," Libération (August 12, 2010).

"Les propos du pape sur les Roms divisent la droite," Nouvel Observateur (August 23, 2010).

"Le Christ, comme un scrupule," Nystagmus (August 24, 2010).

What's new in Wales?

2010-08-13T18:54:00.005+02:00

Geoffrey Hill's interview with Damian Walford Davies and Richard Marggraf Turley, "Geoffrey Hill's Welsh connections," has just been published, along with new poems, in Poetry Wales (issue 46.1, Summer 2010). Many thanks to Mick Felton for sharing this.

Offa Rex

2010-07-21T13:32:00.010+02:00

Re-reading Mercian Hymns today, I looked for photos of Offa's coins on internet. A plethora of information and mis-information about Offa exists on-line. Here is a sampling:

BBC "Anglo Saxon Coins," (www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail).

British Museum, "Gold imitation dinar of Offa," (www.britishmuseum.org).

British Museum, "Silver Coin of Cynethryth, wife of Offa of Mercia,"(www.britishmuseum.org).

King Offa Primary School, "Who was King Offa?" (www.kingoffa.e-sussex.sch.uk).

Sheikh Abdullah Quilliam, "An Anglo-Saxon King Proclaims the Unity of Allah..."

(www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM).

"Coins of the Anglo-Saxon King Offa Rex" (www.cyberistan.org/islamic/offa.html).

Shouldn't there be a "best photo of" contest?

2010-07-01T07:21:00.007+02:00

Now that Oxford has decided that there will be a Hill legacy, shouldn't there be a "best photo" of Geoffrey Hill contest? My first pick goes to the portrait of Geoffrey Hill with Alice Goodman, taken by Judith Aronson, that is currently "Photo of the Month" at the National Portrait Gallery (July 2010) in a session shot in 1984.

My second pick goes to the photo just published in Standpoint (July/August 2010), accompanying a sheaf of new poems by Hill. There's a lot of room on that bench, and it looks like an inviting place to sit down for a chat.

Links

Judith Aronson, "Intimate portraits of writers," Financial Times (July 10, 2010).

Encaenia, June 23

2010-06-21T11:00:00.004+02:00

The Brick, the newsletter for Keble Alumni (issue 48, Hilary Term 2010) announces that Geoffrey Hill will receive the award of honorary Doctor of Letters at Encaenia (June 23). He will also be speaking at the Pre-1960 Reunion Weekend at Keble on June 26.

Geoffrey Hill is Oxford Professor of Poetry

2010-06-18T17:24:00.013+02:00

What better gift for his birthday? Geoffrey Hill has just been elected the 44th Oxford Professor of Poetry by a wide margin, with 1,156 votes. The nine other candidates combined mustered 982 votes between them, with Michael Horovitz coming in second place (353 votes).

Links
"Geoffrey Hill triumphs as Professor of Poetry" University of Oxford (June 18, 2010).
Alison Flood, "Geoffrey Hill wins Oxford Professor of Poetry election by landslide," Guardian (June 18, 2010).

"Geoffrey Hill named Oxford poetry professor" BBC (June 18, 2010).

Alison Flood, " 'A poet of great eminence': Geoffrey Hill's landslide victory restores prestige to Oxford professorship," Guardian (June 18, 2010).

Jack Malvern, "Geoffrey Hill becomes Oxford Professor of Poetry with landslide vote," Times (June 18, 2010).

Dave Itzkoff, "After Rough Campaign, a New Professor of Poetry," New York Times (June 18, 2010).

Harry Mount, "Geoffrey Hill becomes Oxford's new Professor of Poetry, and quite right too," Telegraph (June 18, 2010).

Dave Itzkoff, "Geoffrey Hill is Oxford's Next Professor of Poetry," Arts Beat/NYT (June 18, 2010).

John Allemang, "Sex, lies and poetry wars," Globe and Mail (June 18, 2010).

John Walsh, "A new professor of poetry at Oxford, and no scandal," Independent (June 19, 2010).

Matthew Moore, "Favourite Geoffrey Hill elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford University," Telegraph (June 19, 2010).

Sean O'Brien, "Geoffrey Hill powers his way to a poetic pinnacle," Guardian Books Blog (June 21, 2010).

"The damage done to the Oxford Professorship of Poetry..."

2010-06-10T14:33:00.011+02:00

J.C., writing in the TLS (May 21, 2010, p.36):

"Our vote, if we had one, would go to Geoffrey Hill, who has not personally issued a statement. It speaks volumes."

LINKS

Dave Itzkoff, "Lone Female Candidate Quits Oxford Poetry Race," New York Times (June 10, 2010).

Heidi Blake, "Oxford professor of poetry election mired in controversy again over sexism claims," Telegraph (June 10, 2010).

Roger Lewis, "Now here's what I call poetry," Telegraph (June 9, 2010).

Alison Flood, "Oxford poetry professor candidate withdraws as controversy erupts again," Guardian (June 9, 2010).

Stephen Moss, "My bid to become Oxford professor of poetry is going from bad to verse," Guardian (June 2, 2010).

Tim Adams, "Sean Haldane: 'I now think poetry has more capacity to change people than psychotherapy,' " Observer (May 30, 2010).

Alison Flood, "Weapons drawn, 'codgers' quartered: race to be Oxford poetry professor gets serious," Guardian (May 18, 2010).

Alison Flood, "Oxford poetry professor field narrows to final 11," Guardian (May 7, 2010).

Vote Hill

2010-04-29T09:25:00.005+02:00

Even if you are not authorized to vote officially in the election, you may wish to join the "Geoffrey Hill for Oxford Professor of Poetry 2010" group created by Matthew Sperling on Facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=114833438548051

Will there be a debate?

2010-04-20T21:09:00.003+02:00

Now there are three people running for the Oxford Professor of Poetry. Perhaps it would be useful to have a televised debate, with the three candidates fielding questions from the audience... Monday's Guardian picks Hill as the winner.

Mark Brown, "Oxford poetry professorship re-run begins," Guardian (April 19, 2010).

Musical Comedy

2010-04-02T11:49:00.006+02:00

Yes indeed, the plot thickens as Paula Claire enters the competition for the Oxford Professor of Poetry. She favors "concrete poetry," and although you may never have heard of her before, you can listen to some of her poems on-line, and buy more, right from her site.

If this were a competition about poetics for live performance at a Halloween Party, I'd vote for Paula (here's why).

"Now Paula Who? enters the poets' fray" Londoner's Diary, London Evening Standard (March 31, 2010).

paulaclaire.com

University of Oxford, official nominations page (Spring 2010).

Violent face?

2010-03-27T20:39:00.012+01:00

The title reads almost like a circus announcement, and the first half of the article makes us wonder a bit about the critic's implied superiority to poets such as Ben Jonson and Paul Verlaine (but after all, as Huck Finn once said, "I don't take no stock in dead people"). The second half of the article reveals a few useful facts:

- If Geoffrey Hill is elected as the Oxford Professor of Poetry he will receive a £7,000 annual stipend. (If he's interested, he might be able to purchase a raft for the Mississippi River?—Or better yet the Cherwell or the Thames).

- 300,000 Oxford graduates will have a chance to vote for the candidates by internet, over a three-week period that comes to an end, in timely fashion, on June 18.

If Jim were to perform a little voodoo on this question, my guess is that he'd forcast that GH will win. Give this a look:

- Cahal Milmo, "Is this the violent new face of poetry at Oxford? Writer famed for brutality of his verse nominated for prestigious professorship," Independent (March 25, 2010).

- Nicola Woolcock, "Geoffrey Hill nominated Professor of Poetry at Oxford after scandal," Times (March 25, 2010).

- Geoffrey Hill Exchange (Facebook).

- Stephen Moss, "My bid for Oxford poetry glory," Guardian (February 22, 2010).

- Alison Flood, "Contest for Oxford poetry professor begins again," Guardian (February 18, 2010).

- Dave Itzkoff, "After a Cruelest Month, Oxford Resumes Search for Poetry Professor, Arts Beat, Blog, New York Times (February 18, 2010).

Coming to a bookstore near you in paperback....

2010-02-08T09:35:00.012+01:00

First published in 2008, the Collected Critical Writings of Geoffrey Hill, edited by Kenneth Haynes, is now out in paperback.

Recent reviews include Adam Piette, who qualifies the book as a "monumental defence of an ethical poetics." Nigel Beale compares Hill's prose to Marshall McLuhan.

Links
Oxford University Press (www.oup.com).
Nigel Beale, "A Congealed Nebulosity," Critical Flame (2009).
John Casey, "Poetry's Serious Endeavour," The Tablet (June 26, 2008).
Adam Kirsch, Review CCW, Times Literary Supplement (July 18, 2008).
Tom Lubbock, "An uphill struggle to the heights," Evening Standard (April 7, 2008).
John Lyon, Letter to TLS (July 30, 2008).
Emily Taylor Merriman, Review CCW and SP, Christianity & Literature 58:4 (Summer 2009).
Chris Miller, Review CCW, The Warwick Review 2:4 (December 2008).
Kathryn Murphy, "In My Opnion, Having Read These Things," PN Review 191 (January-February, 2010).
Adam Piette, Review CCW in Blackbox Manifold (July 2009).
David-Antoine Williams, Review CCW in Times Higher Education (March 20, 2008).

"Turing played well in defence."

2009-10-20T09:55:00.008+02:00

Section XVI of The Triumph of Love (1998) recalls the fate of Alan Turing.

This year a petition was organized by computer scientist John Graham-Cumming that resulted in Gordon Brown's official apology for the way Alan Turing was treated. The petition had gathered over 30,800 signatures by September 11, 2009.

Links:

"Machines and Men's Minds: Manchester, 1948-50," The Alan Turing Internet Scrapbook (www.turing.org.uk)

Jérôme Fenoglio, "Sorry, Alan!" in Le Monde (October 15, 2009).

"Gordon Brown présente des excuses posthumes au mathématicien Alan Turing," Le Monde (September 14, 2009).

Caroline Davies, "PM's apology to codebreaker Alan Turing: we were inhumane," Guardian (September 11, 2009).

"PM apology after Turing petition," BBC News (September 11, 2009).

Gordon Brown, "I'm proud to say sorry to a real war hero," Telegraph (September 10, 2009).

Gordon Brown, "Treatment of alan Turing was 'appalling'" statement made on September 10, 2009 (www.number10.gov.uk).

Benedict Brogan, "Bletchley Park must be saved for the future, says campaigners," Telegraph (June 12, 2009).

Lester Haines, "Manchester honours Alan Turing, Computer pioneer died 50 years ago today" The Register (June 7, 2004).

Paul Gray, "Alan Turing: While addressing a problem in the arcane field of mathematical logic, he imagined a machine that could mimic human reasoning. Sound familiar?" Time (March 29, 1999).

True Friendship

2009-09-29T19:48:00.003+02:00

Something to look forward to: Christopher Ricks is due to publish True Frienship: Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht, and Robert Lowell Under the Sign of Eliot and Pound with Yale University Press in February 2010.

"Arthur, Elaine, Mordred; they are all gone"

2009-09-20T10:58:00.003+02:00

"Arthur, Elaine, Mordred: they are all gone," reads a line from Hill's "Merlin" (1953).

But of course, they are still with us. And the Authurian Legend is a featured exhibit at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France this fall (www.bnf.fr).

Blue Rose

2009-08-30T16:53:00.003+02:00

William Logan's review of A Village Life by Louise Glück in the New York Times (August 27, 2009) contains the following remark:

"Poets restless in their forms, unwilling to take yesterday's truth as gospel, are as rare as a blue rose; and rarer still are poets like Eliot, Lowell and Geoffrey Hill, who have convincingly changed their styles midcareer."

Geoffrey Hill in formal attire at the University of Bristol

2009-08-23T11:07:00.006+02:00

The Univerity of Bristol's Robert Fowler (Dean of the Faculty of Arts) awarded Geoffrey Hill with an honorary degree, Doctor of Letters, at the University of Bristol on July 16, 2009.

The photo of Geoffrey Hill and Robert Fowler (by Ede and Ravenscroft) was first posted by the University.

Links:

Press Release University of Bristol (July 16, 2009).

Penguin Archive Project (July 17, 2009).

Post by John Lyon on the Geoffrey Hill Exchange (July 17, 2009).

Birthday wishes for Geoffrey Hill

2009-06-19T07:56:00.005+02:00

Yesterday was Geoffrey Hill's birthday, and a few well-wishers used Twitter to broadcast it.

People who have been tweeting about Hill recently include:

@CliftonWiens

@mbattles

@OReillyUK

@bookdepository

@astheology

@mflavin

@graftpoetry

@LouiseBagshawe

Links:

Matthew Battles, "In the Twitter revolution, echoes of one of the great modern poets," Chapter & Verse Blog, Christian Science Monitor (June 18, 2009).

Peter McDonald's plea for the Oxford Professor of Poetry

2009-06-06T10:03:00.003+02:00

In an article published in this week's TLS, Peter McDonald suggests:

"...it is worth thinking of the Oxford Chair as a position of responsibility: and above all as Oxford's particular responsibility to literature and the future. Recent events have made it essential for the University to prove that it is equal to its responsibilities, and not at the mercy of every contemporary wind that blows."

He argues that Geoffrey Hill would be well suited to the position.

Links:

Peter McDonald, "The Oxford Poetry Professor controversy - a suggestion," Times Literary Supplement (June 3, 2009).

About the controversy over the elections for the Oxford Professor of Poetry, held in May (May 26, 2009).

Honoring René Gallet

2009-05-30T10:21:00.003+02:00

A Festschrift in honor of Hill's long-time translator René Gallet has been published in La Revue LISA/LISA e-journal. Geoffrey Hill contributed new poetry, "Seven Hymns to Our Lady of Chartres." The issue also features five critical articles about Hill's poetry, as well as numerous studies of Hopkins. René Gallet's critical writings on Graham Greene as well as "Dracula entre Darwin et Bunyan," and "Hopkins à l'époque de Maxwell" make this a memorable issue of the periodical, edited by Renée Dickason.

Links:

Geoffrey Hill, "Seven Hymns to Our Lady of Chartres," (2009).

Table of Contents, LISA e-journal 7:3 (2009).

Hill wins Truman Capote Award for Collected Critical Writings

2009-04-21T08:30:00.007+02:00

April is not the cruelest month for some, and in the US it's National Poetry Month. It has been a rewarding month for Geoffrey Hill who just won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. Not only that, but some people see him as the next Poet Laureate.

Links:

University of Iowa News Services, "Geoffrey Hill wins 2009 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism," (April 15, 2009).

On the Laureateship:

Sarah Knapton, "Seamus Heaney backs Geoffrey Hill for Poet Laureate," Telegraph (April 13, 2009).

Alison Flood, "Duffy is hottest tip for poet laureate," Guardian (February 25, 2009).

"The search for Andrew Motion's successor," Poetry Society (Spring 2009).

James Persoon on Geoffrey Hill

2009-02-20T11:26:00.004+01:00

The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry, 1900 to the Present (2009), edited by James Persoon and Robert R. Watson, contains an entry for Geoffrey Hill by James Persoon. It ends by evoking the "praise songs" of "more contemporary witness" found in Speech! Speech! Persoon cites as example the poems "about the Biafran War and the martyred Biafran poet Christopher Okigbo."

James Persoon is the author of Modern British Poetry (Twayne, 1999) and Hardy's Early Poetry: Romanticism through a "Dark Bilberry Eye" (Lexington, 2000).

A.N. Wilson on the Archbishop

2008-12-12T10:58:00.002+01:00

This week's Times Literary Supplement (December 10, 2008) features A.N. Wilson's review of Rupert Shortt's The biography of the Archbishop (Hodder and Stoughton, 2008). For Wilson, Rowan Williams "has initiated an intelligent discussion about the nature of religion, such as we have not heard since William Temple was Archbishop." And that, of course, includes poetry.

Contributing to the celebration of Milton's 400th Birthday

2008-12-09T11:55:00.007+01:00

Today is the actual anniversary of the day Milton was born, and Geoffrey Hill has been active in the events of the Milton Quatercentenary. Geoffrey Hill's Lady Margaret Lecture, "Milton as Muse," (Christ's College Cambridge, October 29, 2008) is available on a podcast. He insists that Milton influenced Wordsworth and that "Milton's major muse was the city."

Links

"John Milton 400th Anniversary Celebrations, The Lady Margaret Lectures 2008" Christ's College, Cambridge (2008).

"John Milton 400: Milton Quatercentenary," Cambridge (2008).

"John Milton, A Symposium to Commemorate the Quatercentenary of his Birth," British Academy (December 6, 2008).

Geoffrey Hill on Flickr

2008-12-02T11:26:00.002+01:00

Geoffrey Hill
Originally uploaded by kahala

This photo of Geoffrey Hill at Boston University in May 2006 was taken by Katherine Hala and posted to Flickr.

Did Péguy kill Jaurès?

2008-11-30T15:39:00.004+01:00

"Did Péguy kill Jaurès? Did he incite / the assassin?" asked Hill's poem The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy (1983). In France, the questioning continues.

Pierre Assouline, "Darcos a-t-il édulcoré Péguy?" Le Monde, blog (November 28, 2008).

Hédi Kaddour, "Quand M. Darcos écrit l'Histoire," Po&sie (November 2008).

A one-day conference about Péguy and the Press, sponsored by the association Amitié Charles Péguy, will take place December 7, Maison Nicolas Barré, 75006 Paris.

Geoffrey Hill's interview with Anne Mounic in English

2008-10-28T06:58:00.003+01:00

As Carole Birkan-Berz noted on "The Geoffrey Hill Exchange" page, Sylvia Paul has translated Anne Mounic's interview with Geoffrey Hill into English for The Geoffrey Hill Study Centre, accompanied by a photo of the "Moulin Mystique" sculpture from Vézelay.

And the Angel will fall on Wednesday, October 29th

2008-10-25T09:59:00.005+02:00

The poster for Hill's talk "Milton as Muse" for the Lady Margaret Lectures 2008 seems to have been designed with a wry humor. Bravo!

This coming Thursday, at the Sorbonne

2008-10-18T09:21:00.003+02:00

Carole Birkan-Berz will be speaking Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 6 p.m. on "La poésie de Geoffrey Hill et ses sources juives: les degrés de l'écart." This event is sponsored by Texte et Critique du Texte, and will take place at the Sorbonne (Salle Louis Bonnerot, bibliothèque de l'UFR d'Anglais, escalier G, 2ème étage, 1 rue Victor Cousin, 75005 Paris).

Density of Reference

2008-10-14T12:54:00.004+02:00

Alex Pestell's review of Hill's Collected Critical Writings (OUP, 2008) was recently published in Textual Practice 22.3 (University of Sussex, 2008). Here is an excerpt: "The emerging key texts of cultural studies, with their dual focus on high culture and working-class culture, are a detectable presence, both in the volume's endnotes and more generally in Hill's commitment to a socially-orientated criticism."

Geoffrey Hill in conversation with Anne Mounic

2008-10-13T15:30:00.006+02:00

Religious poetry in English and in French is the uniting feature of Temporel #6 (October 2008). Geoffrey Hill's poems in French translation by René Gallet, Jacques Darras, Patrick Hersant and Anne Mounic appear along with poetry by Michael Edwards, as well as Anne Mounic's interview with Geoffrey Hill and a review of René Gallet's translation of The Triumph of Love.

One sentence from the interview, drawn out of a hat, as it were: "Le véritable poète est complètement isolé." For some reason, the paragraph where that sentence appears reminds me of the first stanza of Donald Hall's poem "To a Waterfowl."

Longtime readers of Hill will find this issue essential reading. One example: Hill reveals that "September Song" is indeed an elegy for a deported girl. While at an exhibit of children's artwork from Theresienstadt, he viewed a painting with dates of birth that closely matched his own.

Rowan Williams "speaks knowledgeably...about Geoffrey Hill"

2008-09-30T11:52:00.002+02:00

Even though Williams does not speak much about Hill in this article, you may wish to read it:

A.N. Wilson, "Where Rowan Williams meets Dostoevsky," Telegraph (September 27, 2008).

"Annunciations," from a philosophical viewpoint

2008-09-29T18:45:00.003+02:00

Irene Hossack has posted a paper on Geoffrey Hill's "Annunciations" on her blog. Here is an excerpt:

"Being in a position of unknowing is a condition for the work of poetry: attending to the poem unraveling conditions a bond and an opening to poetic insight. This space is beyond and before the place of knowledge and sources from where the poetry might arise."

Missing the puns

2008-09-25T17:04:00.004+02:00

In Kirsch's chapter on Geoffrey Hill in The Modern Element: essays on Contemporary Poetry (2008), Langdon Hammer's point about puns (see below) is indeed clearly demonstrated. Kirsch's reading of "Requiem for the Plantagenet Kings" refrains from commenting on a key repetition of the poem, "They lie; they lie" which underscores the intended pun. Kirsch's interpretation seems deliberately first-degree, and avoids addressing the political commitment of the poem, probably because he does not find it to his liking.

"Obsessed with the difficulty of honest poetic speech"

2008-09-17T08:59:00.004+02:00

That is Adam Kirsch describing Geoffrey Hill's New and Collected Poems 1952-1992 in his review of Without Title (New York Sun, March 28, 2007). "The best reason to read Mr. Hill is . . . the self-forgetting that occurs when he writes about nature and landscape, love and death."

Hammering Kirsch

2008-09-08T10:13:00.008+02:00

Langdon Hammer reviewed Adam Kirsch's The Modern Element: Essays on Contemporary Poetry (Norton, 2008) and his voume of poetry Invasions (2008) in the New York Times (August 29, 2008) republished in the International Herald Tribune (September 4, 2008).

Hammer suggests that Kirsch's view of the pun is what "explains his impatience with Geoffrey Hill, James Merrill and Jorie Graham..."

David Gervais on Hill's "Late Flowering" in PN Review

2008-09-06T09:23:00.007+02:00

A few tidbits from "The Late Flowering of Geoffrey Hill" by David Gervais in PN Review 183, 35.1 (September-October 2008):

"...what gives Hill's verse its name for 'difficulty' is less its abstruseness (things can after all be looked up) than its refusal to spell out the links in its chain."

"...Hill's verse is not 'difficult' because it is recondite but because it puts us on the spot as readers, that is, on the spot both morally and aesthetically."

"The hostile voices that disrupt the surface of Speech! Speech! are ultimately inseparable from its 'noble vernacular', woven into the fabric of the very poetry they threaten. Nothing better shows why Hill is essentially a public poet than this obligation he feels to include such alien voices within his verse even when they run counter to its lyric inspiration."

What does he think about elections in the USA?

2008-08-25T11:35:00.003+02:00

How would GH vote, if he were voting in the US this year? There can be no answer to that question, but we do know the following, thanks to his article "Civil Polity and the Confessing State" in the Warwick Review 2.2 (June 2008):

"Cogent difficulty, that yields up its meaning slowly, that submits its integrity to the perplexed persistence of readers of good will, is one of the best safeguards that democracy can have."

Carol Rumens on "Tristia: 1891-1938"

2008-08-22T11:33:00.006+02:00

Carol Rumens chose "Tristia:1891-1938" as poem of the week in the Guardian (August 4, 2008). Sagely she writes, "I would argue that any amount of difficulty is justified in a poem: so too is any amount of simplicity, provided, in both cases, the poet is doing something sufficiently interesting and memorable with language."

Celebrating Milton

2008-08-21T09:16:00.005+02:00

This year, for the 400th anniversary of Milton's birth (Milton Quatercentenary), Hill has an occasion to further reveal his Milton connection. He read poems by Milton and also from his own work at the Bodleian Library in Oxford (April 4, 2008). He will speak on "Milton as Muse" in the Lady Margaret Lecture Series (October 29, 2008), followed by Christopher Ricks, "Milton and 'the best criticism of any work'" on November 26. (Earlier lectures from the same series by Quentin Skinner, Colin Burrow, and Sharon Achinstein are already available on-line as podcasts.) On December 6, he will be reading from his poetry during a day-long Symposium devoted to Milton at the British Academy.

Link:

http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/milton400/lectures.htm

Hill's conference at the Collège de France on-line (MP3)

2008-08-20T07:58:00.011+02:00

Geoffrey Hill was invited by Michael Edwards to speak at the Collège de France (March 18, 2008), and the conference has been posted on-line in MP3 format (July 2008).

Going public in a whisper

2008-08-15T15:24:00.008+02:00

Can a bibliographer ever be a "'luckie fellow'" (to quote Geoffrey Hill quoting Tyndale's translation for Genesis 39:2)? Probably not in this age of speed, as this blog will no doubt prove. Yet a collector may find reasons for satisfaction, as does William Davies King. David Banash reviewed King's Collections of Nothing (2008) for PopMatters (August 15, 2008).

May those of you who use this and other Bibliographic materials (Geoffrey Hill Study Centre and other web pages devoted to Hill's work as well as other published bibliographies) also seek to find some way of transmitting this information for the future, in this era of constantly changing technology.

Ira Lightman on Geoffrey Hill and Jeffrey Wainwright

2008-08-13T11:27:00.008+02:00

In a review of Jeffrey Wainwright's Acceptable Words (2005), Ira Lightman talks about Wordsworth, Prynne, and Silliman, while singing "I'm not in love, and don't forget it." Read it yourself in Stride Magazine (2008).

Theodor Adorno vs. William Logan?

2008-08-12T13:39:00.009+02:00

"Political slogans, designed for mass manipulation, unanimously stigmatize as 'luxury', 'snobism', and 'highbrow', everything cultural which displeases the commissars," wrote Adorno in 1949... and in 2008 one might consider swinging that phrase at William Logan's recent review of Hill's A Treatise of Civil Power in the New York Times Sunday Book Review (January 20, 2008).

For a review of Logan's The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin (2005) by Brian Henry, see Verse.

R.W. & G.H.

2008-08-06T06:43:00.007+02:00

Le Monde on August 5th ran two articles concerning the end of the Lambeth conference that emphasized the unresolved tensions within Anglicanism. My thoughts went to Rowan Williams who admirably conversed with Geoffrey Hill at the opening of “Geoffrey Hill & His Contexts” at Keble (July 2, 2008). What follows are excerpts from notes taken at the conference and may (unintentionally) misrepresent the speakers. I do hope that a complete transcript will become available soon.

RW: began by quoting Ruskin, “Everything costs its own cost and one of the best virtues is a just desire to pay it.”

GH: spoke of his new article in the Warwick Review, concerning the just state, “…we live in plutocratic anarchy,” destroying the sense of intrinsic value.*

RW: “Poetry embodies the labor of seeking…” he said and mentioned two ways a poem shows laboriousness, through the need expressed and the muscles (heroism) of fixing the reader on complexity.

GH: “I see difficulties on the way leading to semantic epiphany . . .” T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets mumble and proclaim difficulties in a low-grade way. Those “pensées” don’t engage with real struggle like the lesser-known Kierkegaardian poems that Eberhart wrote.

RW: quoted Bradley, “the judgment to contain the condition of the judgment . . .”

GH: Bradley’s “somehow” signals the epiphanic final moment of a poem. John Berryman, quoting R.P. Blackmur in a poem suggests that the art of poetry is amply distinguished from verse by its fresh idiom, language twisted and posed such that a poem “adds to the stock of available reality.” Poems change the course of the world by extending reality. “A great poem is an annunciation or epiphany.”

RW: Hopkins?

GH: The poem is a monumental object that contains bidding. “Difficulty” is the greatest safeguard democracy can have.

RW: What about time, the time to read and understand and make criticism?

GH: Velocity is increasing exponentially and will destroy memory. Computer technology is a velocity thing: a plethora of information speedily applied will destroy criticism.

*See: Geoffrey Hill, “Civil Polity and the Confessing State,” The Warwick Review 2:2 (June 2008)
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/writingprog/warwickreview/jun2008

Hallgrimur Petursson?

2008-06-30T17:48:00.004+02:00

This fellow comes up repeatedly in Scenes from Comus (2005). In section 69 (p.49) the first time he is mentioned, without a first name, a fruitless search revealed a Tom Petersson, the Illinois-born bassist for the rock band Cheap Trick, or possibly a German mathemetician named Petursson, who complied with the Nazis... but no, Hallgrimur Petursson (the first name occurs, finally, in Part III, section 5, p.59) is neither of those identities..., but a "17th Century Lutheran poet, hymnwriter, priest/pastor from Iceland" to quote spurgeon.wordpress.com...

Links:

The Shepherd's Scrapbook

http://spurgeon.wordpress.com/2008/03/02/hallgrimur-petursson

The Bibliothecary

http://www.omnigatherum.com/Bibliarch0418.html

Donald Hall & Geoffrey Hill

2008-06-29T11:28:00.002+02:00

"I cannot live without Geoffrey Hill," said Hall when interviewed by B. Renner (December 1996-January 1997), posted on elimae:

http://www.elimae.com/interviews/hall.html

a psalm, a spasm

2008-06-29T10:48:00.007+02:00

The first line of "Cycle, William Arrowsmith, 1924-1992", published in the TLS, December 25, 1992, is "Natural strange beatitudes" and the third section of the poem ends: "a spasm / a psalm".

The words spasm and psalm had been used in conjunction previously by Hill, when was interviewed by John Haffenden, in Viewpoints, Poets in Conversation (1981):

Do you actually hold certain religious, philosophical or ethical convictions which you think it is not the place of poetry to formulate as absolute statements?

If poetry has any value, that value must presuppose the absolute freedom of poetry to encompass the maximum range of belief or unbelief. I would have thought that this problem had been solved already for European poets by the poetry of the Psalms, the Book of Job, and the Divine Comedy.

One critic has said that your poetry has the air of mystical utterance but lacks a true feeling for the passion of religion. Could you comment on that criticism?

Isn't such a comment based on a radical misunderstanding of the relation of poet to topic, on the most naïve and simplistic sens of how poetry funcitons, on the supposition that the poem is merely a vessel to contain the spontaneous efflux of some kind of direct, unqualified, unmodified, unfiltered persona spasm?

(Viewpoints, pp.88-89).

Poets in H, or HISTORY in poetry by Hall, Harrison, Heaney, Hill, & Hughes

2008-06-28T22:11:00.015+02:00

Heaney's "Englands of the Mind" (1976) described how poets writing after World War II were "afflicted with a sense of history," and preoccupied with "not just the matter of England, but what is the matter with England."

How are Seamus Heaney and Geoffrey Hill alike and different?

Strange Likenesses?

As to their possible similarities, there seem to be rather few, apart from the concern for history, but I think they diverge on this very issue...

Differences

Hill is not one for nostalgia...or anecdotal events portrayed in poetry. "I think my sense of history is in itself anything but nostalgic, but I accept nostalgia as part of the psychological experience of a society and of an ancient and troubled nation," he said to Blake Morrison. "The poet's true commitment must always be first to the verticval richness of language. The poet's gift is to make history and politics and religion speak for themselves through the strata of language." The interview was published in the New Statesman (1980).

Links:

William Wootten's review of Heaney's District and Circle in the TLS, May 31, 2006

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/incomingFeeds/article670081.ece

Ted Huges & Geoffrey Hill:

Jeremy Hooker noted in The Presence of the Past: Essays on Modern British and American Poetry (1987):

- "There is a geat difference...between Ted Hughes, who sees all history as tghe enactment of a stark myth, and Geoffrey Hill, who bears witness to the actuality of specific historical events and deeds" (p.10).

- "'There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism'. Walter Benjamin's words are apt to Geoffrey Hill's English 'histories', in which admiration of English civilisation is constantly subjected to awareness of its barbarism" (p.26).

Tony Harrison and Donald Hall seem to have more in common with Hill, although their methods are different.

Concerning the history of British Poetry since 1945, see Peter Finch's article on the subject for the Continuum Encyclopaedia of British Literature (2003).

John Ashbery & GH

2008-06-28T21:46:00.004+02:00

Writing in The Sunday Times, December 30, 2007, Bryan Appleyard noted that he and John Ashbery have become admirers of Geoffrey Hill's poetry...
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3099626.ece

Cash-for-Questions & the Public/Private Divide

2008-06-28T15:03:00.007+02:00

The poems "To the High Court of Parliament"from Canaan, first published in the Times Literary Supplement, both have a date in their subtitles, November 1994. These poems appeared, wrote Anthony Quinn in his essay "Geoffrey Hill in America," in 1994, during the Cash-for-questions scandal. Quinn's argument was that Hill was directly addressing political spheres by publishing the poems in a well-read, highly distributed paper like the TLS, during the time of the affair.

Quinn on Hill:

"He deplores contemporaneous events as would a left-leaning commentator, but does so from a position which honours tradition. In this he is more conservative than the Conservatives, who with their talk of tradition only wished to conserve their own privileges and power; and insofar as he refuses to let go of the roots and inheritance of the English constitutional tradition he is more radical than the Left."

Anthony Quinn, American Errancy, p.64-65.

Links:

http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/citation/51/1/36
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_for_Questions

http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/may2006/cash_questions1.html

http://everything2.com/e2node/Cash%2520for%2520Questions

Translating according to Patrick Hersant

2008-06-27T10:03:00.009+02:00

Patrick Hersant, in an article published in Poétique de l'Etranger #4 (when? no date on the site) describes translation as a way of generating dialogue between languages, using examples from Mercian Hymns and Hill's renditions of Celan.

http://www.univ-paris8.fr/dela/etranger/pages/1-4/Hersant.pdf

Reginald Shepherd on Geoffrey Hill

2008-06-24T09:48:00.004+02:00

Reginald Shepherd wrote (June 19, 2007) at http://reginaldshepherd.blogspot.com:

Geoffrey Hill observes that “difficult poetry is the most democratic, because you are doing your audience the honour of supposing that they are intelligent human beings. If you write as if you had to placate or in any way entice their lack of interest, then I think you are making condescending assumptions about people. I mean people are not fools. But so much of the populist poetry of today treats people as if they were fools.” I don’t want to be patronized or condescended to, as a reader or a person; I would prefer that the poet assume that I am both intelligent and interested.

One-Minute Book Reviews

2008-06-23T10:27:00.006+02:00

Janice Harayda, creator of the "One-Minute Book Reviews" blog, has written several entries about Geoffrey Hill which don't seem frightened by difficulty, at least not for 60 seconds...
http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/?s=geoffrey+hill

Her own books are featured on her website:

http://www.janiceharayda.com

"O Ewigkeit"

2008-06-22T12:06:00.008+02:00

René Gallet's translation Le Triomphe de l'amour (Cheyne, 2006) provides this note for The Triumph of Love, section IV, where "o ewigkeit" appears:

"o ewigkeit": cite, sans les majuscules, une cantate de Bach (BWV 20 - "O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort" ["O Eternité, parole de tonnerre"]) qui n'est pas sans lien avec les risques cardiaques indiqués ensuite.

* * *

Richard Edwards, in reply to a question asked about "o ewigkeit" on the Geoffrey Hill Exchange (Facebook Group, May 15, 2008) wrote:

"O Ewigkeit" in German means "Oh Eternity".
"O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort" is the title of Lutheran hymn whose words and melody Bach used in two of his sacred cantatas, BWV 20 and BWV 60.
See http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Texts/Chorale007-Eng3.htm for the full text.
Whether this is what Hill had in mind or not I don't know, but if it is then it anticipates the "Improvisation on 'O Welt, ich muss dich lassen'" in Without Title.

* * *

During the Private Passions broadcast/interview with Michael Berkely (BBC 3, 2004), Hill chose Bach's "O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort," sung by Benjamin Luxon, and he said he was aware that Luxon had had to stop singing, due to deafness (in the early 1990s). He added, "I can't hear this record without being very deeply moved. The old Lutheran text saw eternity very differently from Blake,'O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort,' 'Eternity thou were to dread'."

Short biography on Benjamin Luxon

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Luxon-Benjamin.htm

Rowan Williams, Grace and Necessity

2008-06-21T09:47:00.011+02:00

One gets the impression that the Archbishop of Canterbury has been a great reader of GH for many years. Grace and Necessity, Reflections on Art and Love (1995) contains passing allusions to Hill that demonstrate a great breadth and depth of poetic reflection. But there may be a key to Speech! Speech! in this remark about Flannery O'Connor, if transposed to poetry:

"...the pivotal point of a fiction is a moment when the irony is most intense; it is not that the finite rises without interruption to a degree of sublimity but that the actuality of grace is uncovered in the moment of excess — which may be in a deliberately intensified gracelessness..."

June 22, 2008, Rowan Williams is the guest of Michael Berkeley on Private Passions, BBC 3:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/privatepassions/pip/sn6xv

Williams dialogues with Hill on July 2, 2008, at the Keble College, Oxford conference "Geoffrey Hill and His Contexts," followed by a rich program:

http://www.geoffreyhillconference.com/Geoffrey%20Hill%20and%20His%20Contexts%20-%20PROGRAMME.pdf

Willimas discusses writing on the web:
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1615

Bibliography Rowan Williams

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/74

2004 Interview of Williams by Mary Ann Sieghart in The Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article432215.ece

Princess Diana and the Twin Towers?

2008-06-20T09:34:00.014+02:00

The poster/program for the conference "British Poetry 1950-2008 and the Public/Private Divide" (June 27-28, 2008, Université de la Sorbonne Paris-IV, organized by Adrian Grafe and Emily Merriman) shows a photo of Diana surrounded by a white halo-type of border, against a photo of the Twin Towers in flames. Certainly one can think of the private lives and the public media coverage they are given, but the image is perplexing: as exploited as she was by the press, can Diana be intended to represent anything private? Is the demise of the Twin Towers a clear representation of British Poetry?

Perhaps the incongruence of the images was somehow planned to interact with Hill's 2004 "Private Passions" BBC broadcast, where music sung at the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997 was immediately followed by "The Star Spangled Banner" as performed by Jimi Hendrix in 1969, during the Vietnam War. Yet, Hill did not mention September 11th in that context, and there is tremendous difference between the events of September 11th and their aftermath.

As an American, it is difficult for me to see images of The Twin Towers used in this way, but maybe that is the point of the poster... Be that as it may, three people are giving papers about Hill's poetry: Carole Birkan-Berz, David Ten Eyck, and Emily Merriman.

Strong Coffee

2008-06-17T13:40:00.015+02:00

When asked by a student about a methodology for reading difficult poetry such as Pound's or his own, during a conference held at the University of Caen ("Selected Poems from Modernism to Now," March 20-22, 2008, organized by Hélène Aji and Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec), Geoffrey Hill said, "Read Fast." For those of you seeking to improve your speed reading, may I recommend a good cup of expresso?

Hill spoke at the Collège de France on March 18, 2008, and illustrated his remarks by reading some poetry. You can listen to the talk here.

Someone filmed him reading "The Storm."
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=51g-hrs5oVc