{"id":953,"date":"2016-10-31T11:50:09","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T11:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/?p=953"},"modified":"2024-11-02T11:50:59","modified_gmt":"2024-11-02T11:50:59","slug":"john-field-reviews-the-2016-t-s-eliot-prize-shortlist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/john-field-reviews-the-2016-t-s-eliot-prize-shortlist\/","title":{"rendered":"John Field Reviews the 2016 T. S. Eliot Prize Shortlist"},"content":{"rendered":"

1 Rachael Boast \u2013 Void Studies<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For the 2016 Prize, we\u2019ve asked poetry blogger John Field to review the shortlisted titles again.<\/p>\n

John concludes that ‘Reading Boast\u2019s Void Studies<\/em> is a sensual, sensory joy. Like music, it has a simultaneity of effect and presents memory and desire with intoxicating immediacy and authenticity.’<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reading Rachael Boast\u2019s Void Studies<\/em> is an intense, rewarding experience.\u00a0 It\u2019s best tackled in a few bursts \u2013 or even in a single reading \u2013 to best savour the restricted palette. To enjoy the connections between her archetypal images, it\u2019s helpful to feel the musically rhythmic thrum of her images \u2013 doors, keys, moon and river \u2013 as they pulse from poem to poem.<\/p>\n

Void Studies<\/em> is divided into sections I and II, followed by \u2018Poems of the Lost Poem\u2019, a sonnet sequence coloured by the language of the previous sections. Boast\u2019s notes point us to the late nineteenth century French poet, Arthur Rimbaud, who considered writing a collection entitled \u00c9tudes n\u00e9antes<\/em>, \u2018written in the spirit of musical etudes and [which] would go beyond the temptation to convey any direct message\u2019. Rimbaud\u2019s name is a touchstone for the reader: in John Ashbery\u2019s Preface to his translation of Rimbaud\u2019s Illuminations<\/em>, he writes of Rimbaud\u2019s \u2018crystalline jumble [\u2026] a disordered collection of magic lantern slides\u2019 and this should help direct the reader down a relaxed, fruitful path. Sure, you\u2019ll need to pay attention but you\u2019re not missing something if you don\u2019t \u2018get\u2019 it \u2013 you feel your way through poems like these. There\u2019s nothing to \u2018get\u2019 as you watch sunlight playing across the surface of water \u2013 these poems are knocking on the door of the subconscious mind and the best thing to do is to relax.<\/p>\n

Boast\u2019s is a Protean, dreamlike, shape-shifting excess. Her form throughout these sections is the couplet \u2013 two parallel lines powering across the void of the white page \u2013 a fitting form for these meditations on the relationship between the physical and the transcendental.<\/p>\n

\u2018Pleasant Thought for Morning\u2019 opens with the sensual \u2018Hiding your face in my neck\u2019. Severed from the subject and main verb (\u2018I am\u2019? or perhaps \u2018You are\u2019?) the poem feels disconnected and dreamlike. After the first two stanzas, as many of these poems do, Boast leaps into the abstract: \u2018hiding in the space around \/ the space I have dressed you in \/\/ wings of hardened spirit.\u2019 The perplexing double quality of space is present throughout the collection in the \u2018parallel life\u2019 of \u2018The Glass-Hulled Boat\u2019 and in the titles \u2018Seeing Double\u2019 and \u2018Double Exposure\u2019. Mirrors too reflect language through the collection. The wings of hardened spirit again evokes the French avant garde \u2013 this time Jean Cocteau\u2019s \u2018L’Ange Heurtebise\u2019 (explicitly referenced in the section\u2019s final poem, \u2018Night of Echoes\u2019). The poem resumes, \u2018Angelot<\/em>, a new day is here\u2019. \u2018Angelot\u2019? A term of endearment, perhaps, \u2013 but again, a Protean image of instability as the Oxford English Dictionary<\/em> lists it as, among other things, an instrument and a coin (both French and English, stamped with St Michael and the dragon). Boast\u2019s is a sensual, transformational, transcendental poetry.<\/p>\n

Section II opens with the \u2018The Glass-Hulled Boat\u2019, where the speaker is \u2018Waking at lunchtime to a subdued sky \/ bemused by how the pivots of sleep \/\/ came loose\u2019. The fulcrum is unstable \u2013 the dissolute hour of arousal and muted day points to a liminal world. The speaker thinks that she \u2018saw you at the back \/ of the Tower Belle\u2019, a physical enough instance of a pleasure cruiser operating in Bristol. However, the titular glass hull designates it a dream ship of drunkenness with its \u2018splayed passengers\u2019, where the poem\u2019s \u2018you\u2019, its object, makes for the bar, towards \u2018another vodka and tonic or any other \/\/\/ see-through intoxicant\u2019 \u2013 and again an image of transparency points to an altered reality.<\/p>\n

The collection\u2019s final section, \u2018Poems of the Lost Poem\u2019 reprise its themes and vocabulary, closing with the sonnet, \u2018Coda: Lost Poem\u2019. \u2018Coda\u2019 is another musical term in a decidedly musical collection. Reading Boast\u2019s Void Studies<\/em> is a sensual, sensory joy. Like music, it has a simultaneity of effect and presents memory and desire with intoxicating immediacy and authenticity.<\/p>\n

John Field\u2019s blog, Poor Rude Lines<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1 Rachael Boast \u2013 Void Studies   For the 2016 Prize, we\u2019ve asked poetry blogger John Field to review the shortlisted titles again. John concludes that ‘Reading Boast\u2019s Void Studies is a sensual, sensory joy. Like music, it has a simultaneity of effect and presents memory and desire with intoxicating immediacy and authenticity.’   Reading … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=953"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4299,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953\/revisions\/4299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tseliot.com\/foundation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}