Review by Gary Day of "The Silence" by Gillian Clarke

 

Charles Simic said that ‘poetry is a translation of the silence.’ Gillian Clarke’s collection goes a step further. It is not a translation of ‘the silence,’ whatever that may be, but an evocation of soundlessness. The world was a noisy place until Covid struck and then everything seemed to go quiet for a long time. But it was only the human world that was hushed: nature’s music continued, the wind in the trees, the songs of birds, the hiss of rain, the bark of a fox. ‘Listen’ Clarke enjoins, ‘water tells its rosary.’

The linking of natural phenomena and religious ritual is central to the volume. To that extent it brings to life Blake’s dictum that ‘everything that lives is holy.’ The reader is returned to ‘Eden before the Fall.’ Along with this restoration comes a liturgical conception of time. The first section of the collection is organised according to the canonical hours, Matins, Lauds, Prime and so on. These were times of prayer but the poems are not addressed to a creator. They are an account of daily activities and observations tinged with an awareness of the devastation of Covid. ‘We settle close, / Seek sweet diversion from the day, / Its pestilence, its wars, the daily toll, the dead.’ In times of plague, small things become precious: the ‘psalm’ of an owl, ‘the turning of a page.’

Silence is not always desirable, especially if it has been imposed. But those whose voices have been suppressed, particularly in Welsh history, find some some sort of restitution in poems like ‘Llywelyn’s Daughter’ and ‘FForest.’ Finding the balance between silence and speech in the face of great events or small incidents is the shaping force of this collection. Stunning imagery - ‘chalice of gold overflows / with a cupful of snow’ - made me feel as if I were in an art gallery while the recurrence of certain phrases creates a sense of unity as well as an incantatory effect. This superb volume gets pride of place on my poetry shelf. 

About the reviewer
Gary Day is a retired English lecturer and the author of several critical works including Literary Criticism: A New History and The Story of Drama. His debut poetry collection, The Glass Roof Falls as Rain, will be published by Holland Park Press.