{"id":873,"date":"2012-09-06T17:09:13","date_gmt":"2012-09-06T17:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=873"},"modified":"2014-02-11T21:54:27","modified_gmt":"2014-02-11T21:54:27","slug":"jo-shapcott-her-book-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=873","title":{"rendered":"Jo Shapcott, Her Book – 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow! I\u2019ve just reread Jo Shapcott\u2019s Her Book: Poems 1988 \u2013 1998<\/em>. What a generous, exciting collection it is.<\/p>\n

I say \u201ccollection\u201d but of course it\u2019s really a selection from three earlier books. Although it seems to me that it\u2019s in Phrase Book<\/em> that she really takes off, Shapcott\u2019s huge gifts and utter distinctiveness are already clear in Electroplating the Baby<\/em>. Take this from \u201cLies\u201d (which you can read as a whole at http:\/\/queen-ypolita.insanejournal.com\/tag\/poet:+jo+shapcott<\/a>\u00a0 if you don\u2019t have Her Book <\/em>or Electroplating the<\/em> Baby<\/em>):<\/p>\n

In reality, sheep are brave, enlightened
\nand sassy. They are walking clouds
\nand like clouds have forgotten
\nhow to jump.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn reality<\/em>\u201d \u2013 what chutzpah! One thing I love about Shapcott\u2019s writing is the imaginative exuberance with which it creates fantasy worlds. Another is how grounded in this world it remains, how brilliantly and continuously it exploits tensions between poles of fantasy and everyday perception so that they become like two ice dancers spinning together, throwing each other in the air, whirling each other on outstretched arms. There\u2019s a wonderful excitement and imaginative dynamism in the way she keeps the two revolving round each other and in the speed with which ideas evolve and emotions change (like the shift from the positive, assertive first sentence through the ethereal dreaminess of \u201cwalking clouds\u201d to the ruefulness of \u201cforgotten how to jump\u201d). When I called her imagination \u201cexuberant\u201d, I was thinking of things like the sheer gratuitous abundance of \u201cbrave, enlightened \/ and sassy\u201d, but hairpin bend control in these shifts and swerves of thought is just as important, and so is precision in the detail of the imaginative collisions \u2013 like that between \u201cwalking\u201d and \u201cclouds\u201d.<\/p>\n

Perhaps my favourite poem in this first collection is \u201cSaving String\u201d, which unfortunately I can\u2019t find on the internet. Division into stanzas makes each of its lines feel like a series of quick springy steps. Here, generosity in the sense of a gratuitous abundance of imagination and wit is supplemented by generosity of a different kind, an embracing, humorous joy in the sheer absurdity of the eccentric or lunatic she\u2019s created so unforgettably in the poem and in the warm, indiscriminate way people\u2019s hearts go out to him in a wonderful parody of crowd emotion. It\u2019s an extremely funny poem. I nearly wrote that it was unjudging, and in a sense this seems to me to be true \u2013 certainly no judgement is stated \u2013 but I also think it would be misleading. Shapcott has her own sharpness. Our knowledge of the world outside the poem presses in on it from all directions. In the last stanza the very absence of criticism of the character at the heart of the poem suddenly expands into a devastating implicit critique of an unjust society:<\/p>\n

Old fashioned rhetoric
\nof Chiltern Hills and gentlemen\u2019s
\nclubs which allows protected characters
\nto potter in safety and wind string,
\na brew of order and avarice
\nwhich says I have this and this
\nbut never enough string.<\/p>\n

Whirling round each other there, you have the sheer funniness of the image of the old buffer pottering and winding string, the implicit contrast between his protected status and others\u2019 harsh exposure, the hint that society is ruled by and for the benefit of \u201cgentlemen\u2019s clubs\u201d of the rich and well connected, the way \u201call of us\u201d fall in with this, and the final bathos of \u201cnever enough string\u201d to make sure that the poem never settles into a single point of view or message.<\/p>\n

Shapcott\u2019s technical skill and imaginative inventiveness are put to remarkably entertaining use from the beginning of Her Book<\/em>, but I think the reason why I\u2019ve reread it with such pleasure and with such a constantly renewed sense of discovery and surprise over the last twelve years is that her poems embrace the world so eagerly and respond to it in with such subtlety and in such various ways.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a wonderful photo of a young Shapcott laughing her head off and apparently rolling a chair in her lap which seems to me to catch the wild humour of her early poetry. Looking for it I found this site, where she says a lot in a few words about how she felt when writing: http:\/\/youareherepoetryshow.wordpress.com\/jo-shapcott\/<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow! I\u2019ve just reread Jo Shapcott\u2019s Her Book: Poems 1988 \u2013 1998. What a generous, exciting collection it is. I say \u201ccollection\u201d but of course it\u2019s really a selection from three earlier books. Although it seems to me that it\u2019s in Phrase Book that she really takes off, Shapcott\u2019s huge gifts and utter distinctiveness are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jo-shapcott"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=873"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1368,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions\/1368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}