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 opportunity to learn what
the poets themselves think about their own subject.
George Szirtes' three lectures form an arc on the nature
of historical knowledge in the poem. 'Our knowledge'
says Elizabeth Bishop in 'At the Fishhouses', 'is
historical, flowing and flown.' The sea in her poem is
so cold it burns hand and tongue, a parodox explored in
his first lecture, 'Cold dark deep and absolutely clear:
poetic knowledge as uncertainty'. Beginning with this
understanding of knowledge, his second lecture, 'Life is
Elsewhere: knowing in opposition', shifts to notions of
historical responsibility, especially as perceived by
poets in the West at the time of the Cold War. Szirtes
considers questions of betrayal and fidelity and the
role of irony and quietism. In his third lecture,
'Flowing and flown: in the world of superfluous
knowledge', Szirtes seeks exemplars and connections in
works by George Seferis, Derek Mahon and poets of
Eastern Europe from the period immediately before 1989
as well as briefly afterwards, to enquire into the
nature of repression, returning to Bishop's story 'In
the Village' for its conclusion, where 'The hammer
echoes with the icy black sea. Cold, dark deep and
absolutely clear' ending with Bishop's affirming cry:
'Oh beautiful sound, strike again!'
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