A Final Note by Paulina Wilson

Well, he doesn’t care much for consistency with names, so I don’t see why I should. You know what they say about signifiers anyway. So, here, whoever I am, I am, all bright eyed & perky, ready to critique the whole bloody mess now so fortunately behind us.

And on what basis, I hear my academic friends ask. On the business of having been dragged through the whole briar patch, start to finish & beyond, that’s how. I’m no follower of any head cults – the fact this name was used to stand for that of a ripped apart toy dog indicates the problem, not a viewpoint – which was a difficult one on that occasion, I can tell you.

Let’s start negative, carrying on from Little Friend Sarah. The whole thing’s relationship to any other people than Our Poet, let alone to the many female people it mentions, is odd – there are acts of calling out to specific individuals, in some world outside the poem (hi there!), as family, friends, poets (hmm? maybe). Do you believe this? I hear nothing. These shouts are silent. These people don’t actually inhabit this poem as it lays its pretensions out. An interesting try, and we can’t blame the poem so much as its instigator. Personal not textual weakness here.

Within the poem, names occur & often recur (like mine and yours, Sarah). Do we have any sense of our existence? Are we used in a way which enables us to inhabit as human beings this space we’ve been put into? I haven’t experienced this. We can have another of your “cunning avant-garde tricks” again here – all demonstrably textual illusion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Water offa . . . I tinks we knows dis one, squire. Indistinguishable though from wasted opportunities to deal with any higher order complexities than playground games with levels of meaning. There’s lots of stuff, yes, about people – but no people, just names there. No wonder the nearest approach to them is as vagrants, or unlikely revenants, scrambling up a Kentish beach, illegal immigrants in the populist fantasy.

So the whole political line trails off here also. A politics not based on actual living people is just what, to give him his credit, Our Poet warns us against. But if he can’t manage it either, you’d have to be a profound Adorno adorer to find this enterprise worth pursuing any further. He’s not writing an ideological critique of society & culture & poetry, he’s writing a poem (while occasionally indeed pissing worthwhilely on the pretensions of such critiques).

Utopia occurs in pieces, many of them so damaged as to be valueless (a C.A G.T. again). There’s cooking, a far more popular & useful art than poetry. There’s the consequent communal eating. There’s happy hippy child rearing. There are moments of communal action. There’s hanging around in various urban spaces. There are isolated but frequent pretty visual images (some entoptic). There’s a warm sticky cosy messiness of language, which, OK, at times is worthy of note. (Did you really not think that, Mr Veerses?)

Am I (were they?) (were you?) expecting too much from all this? If we think of what a poem can do, does this do it? Well, probably not much. It’s too long, with an excess of glutinous connective tissue produced by the ritual operations Our Poet compelled himself to engage in – a good way of cutting off personal responsibility. “You can’t criticise this, it really is a non human delusion set”: C.A-G.T.#3. It could have been either much more disturbing, a genuinely holothurian experience, or even more boring (also a genuine holothurian experience). I expect, in fact I know, he fiddled his rules too much. But the gamble which might have justified all this non neurotypical glossogenic apparatus failed to come off. The very existence of this piece of writing here demonstrates such, don’t you think?

Think of this then as the stake thrust into the defeated revenant’s heart to still & extinguish it for ever. Or the trepanger’s trident thrust into the bêche-de-mer & uplifting it into a dry & empty eternity. He, Our Poet, had thought (characterologically privileged information here) of a third sequence. Thank god (or whoever, whatever, nameless etc) that’s just not possible now. The returned dead of Old Albion shall be stuck here still, in Our Little Ingerlund (Prime Minister & Lord Protector: Msieur Farage, 1st Marquess of Thanet). The poem cannot prevent that one bit.

Can any poem prevent a future? This tries at times. As Paulina, I feel bound to advise you to take the notion of the recurrence throughout all history of the emergence of high status elites as a larger scale cycle than the class conflict process – dependent on wishful idealist thinking on Charlie Marx’s part. Where we end up is always determined by the application of coercive power, not any other factor. That’s pretty low level & obvious stuff.

So it may not lead now to “our completed expansion.” Whatever might, it’s probably not going to be a poem. It might be some of the emotional ideations invoked in the poem & mediated through its language – though such feelings can lead, & have led more often, to nightmare destruction rather than communitarian paradise. As Our Poet likes to point out, when state structures fail (like beginning now), power usually devolves to those best suited to grasp it – those most willing and able to steal & kill. Might be wiser to try & avoid that stage. And think too, my little friends, of what the 2011 Riots which lie behind much of these poems, & much maybe of your politics, actually achieved: a few deaths, a lot of broken glass, a temporary redistribution of trainers &c. Maybe some urban regeneration projects. And at the end free passes for police murder yet again.

But things are not unavoidable any more than avoidable. Migration, vagrancy, community coming into existence in resistance – OK, these too will exist & survive. Maybe we can applaud how this poem hymns them. That might be worthwhile. And some of the recipes are good. I like the mackerel & cabbage, and would make the Yuletide Pud (but not at bloody Xmas please!). Perhaps, as well, you may get some sense of a writing trying constantly to reinvent itself – following itself but open to (yeah of course, through mere symbolic sampling of) what is around it as language flux, image & ideation & as these drive the process on. C.A-G.T.#4. Some success, at times. Its instability & failure thus laudable. C.A-G.T.#5. Yeah, maybe too easy as much as too difficult. Mere tricks – like all the hard bought canting wisdom of the “socially rejected”.

Despite what he once said, I don’t teach. You learn, from what you will. Take it as you want. No more tricks but yours now.

99. New Classes, New Consciousnesses, New Solidarities1

and each time we return we shall receive illumination
a real team I say rooted in bodies still
a process run on here of sharedness & little children
blameless improvisation now2

To Apply a Gloss3
Is there memory still of Dion Fortune in this town? Where unmade roads on its disordered edge lead up to new millionaire mansions & cheap executive apartments? Here, where Dr Moriarty’s eyes pierced her shell of flesh to lay bare what that flesh could emerge into? Oh, a practical Englishwoman making up magic in a home counties country town, through force of will, self‑cultivated power & skilled improvisations. Here’s what there is: where we return to is what root there is.4

Oh loveliest Hertfordshire, Karla & Darrel don’t like you much, & who can blame them? This little southeastern tip of Offa’s empire (remember her?) joined on just here to a small lump of East Saxon land: let’s make a new start. We still do avoid Hertford, I guess – better down into London (another lost part of Essex). Maybe at our roots, even to Harlow, just to doss there & wait out the bad times in the company of mates. And I’m not sure what D.F. would have made of them, that is of us. I’ll just trust she’s lost by now that racial crap, & knows how identity comes from circumstances & will, enlivened through the fertilising energies of hybrid vigour.5

Now, food made & shared together is magic too. Everyone who is real knows this: bards, sea nymphs, small children. That’s why the Christian Church had to cut out the love feast & replace it with ludicrous small-scale professionalised rituals: a symptomatic compulsive repetition. Wasn’t it so much simpler? And in this case can’t it be again?6

Listen to this. That will be when the overcomplex systems stutter into incoherence & we improvise our own new world out of the bits left. Yes?7

 

 

1 “Oh thingummy! He’s off now!”

 

 

2 “Improvisation! More like shuffling around the same old words again.”

 

 

3 “Well, maybe if I’m doing these notes, I’d better say there’s a bilingual pun on “shine” here, because I don’t think you’d get it otherwise. And I wouldn’t blame you at all.”

 

 

4 “No! Not magic, please. I thought he’d forgotten all about that – but it comes flooding back now I suppose. There was a note about this stuff somewhere I think – but I can’t be arsed to look & I’d be surprised if you did.”

 

 

5 “The boundaries of Dark Age Hertfordshire. Can you get that? Who could really bloody care about all this malarky? Who would read it? Well, yes. That question’s answered. We’d better humour him. Tom Williamson, The Origins of Hertfordshire (Hertfordshire Publications, 2010). Oh, it’s all academic. Still mad suppositions about the unknowable, that means – just with a bibliography. And there’s a good photo on the cover: The Devil’s Dyke. I like that all right.”

 

 

6 “Don’t you just hate it when men go on about children & domesticity, and how important it all is? God save us, please!”

 

 

7 “Well, alright then, maybe we can follow this. It’s a good political programme – but I don’t what the jesus this is to do with poetry now, do you? Or is that indeed the cunning avant-garde trick of it? Am I being bloody naïve here? Or not naïve enough? And I’ll tell you one more thing – I’m surely now fed up to my teeth with his bloody old poetic prose.”

86. Something Now We Can All Agree Upon

oh – all these memories then
pretty sloppy if you want what happened
they catch the shine, that’s all
nothing solid left to return to

no – not one thing (that
ended – just another – call it process
yesterday’s landing craft today’s tourism
but they still keep on diving of course

all this huge & thingy world then
a homeless migrant out of nothing
something like spontaneous fireworks
ending up with just what you are

natural language brilliant for fantasies
makes mud smell of nutmeg if we ask
though it may tell us nothing of here
existing too much likewise in its own right

lost on now some ridiculous plane
totally unsure of what is outside (more rain
always the same abased elements here
until the sky & land no longer know what colour

elastic in what? – I’d say warped & rotten
woven up wretchedly on the cheapest of looms
let’s start up again w/ Harlow & fun
gangs of noisy actual children – agreed upon this

75. A Recipe for Smoked Mackerel on Cabbage

for Martock, and everyone I knew there (and at Yeovil Grammar School – though how I rejoice that institution has long been totally dismantled!)

Yes, fish are glittering & slippery
always leave me a little unsure
but here my imperfect grasp is remedied
through already processed product which
cook themselves up minimally problematically
& remind me always of the mackerel men
selling the catch off the backs of lorries
straight up from West Bay1
the nearest bit of coast due South to Martock
so holidays there meant a caravan by West Bay’s shingle2
& this isn’t how anyone ever ate in Martock anyway
grilled or fried with potatoes & peas or boiled cabbage
which you don’t need me to tell you how to make
but this dish much more full of divine & inflowing splendour

Cooking is what cooking is
and what food is has everything
to do with the infilling of imaginary’s belly3
as pragmatic a reason as possible please
so make whatever approximation you would like
it’ll be true as anything else: 4 or so smoked mackerel fillets
                                – peppered is great
                                an onion (or half)
                                a carrot (or half)
                                some mushrooms
                                white cabbage
                                              a fair amount
                                              all split into shards
                                (or you can veer from
                                the type & bastard mix
                                always good – nice
                                pointed spring cabbage yes
                                and some greens
                                                even kale
                                                not any savoy
                                – misguided & a fault I find)4
                                a little marrow
                                                or courgette5
                                a pepper green & shiny
                                maybe some peas
                                and some things lighter also
                                                        watercress
                                                        broccoli sprouts
                                                        or chard
                                                        even lettuce
                                plus added to all these
                                                        ground pepper
                                maybe some chillies
                                or your favourite chilli sauce
                                important the fish sauce of Vietnam
                                & a little soy a must

Let us be thankful for that which is
& whatever congeries of vegetables have come through
reverberating endlessly
sliced finely to hand
                      – except those you’ll use softly
                        as a bed above the rest
then fry up the onions, carrots
                                & the chillies
                                (if you like
& add in the cut up vegetables
all within a large & heavy pan
let them begin to work & season now
w/ a bit of pepper & a little soy & added too
a useful splash of fishy sauce
then cover for a little
say 10 minutes or more
& like a melting glacier rich juices begin to form beneath
drop on your soft bed of more tender leaves or shoots
& add the mackerel after them
                              then cover again
you can leave it be on a lower heat
for half an hour or less – no
                              fashionably wilted greens but
a thick & mixed up British mud of vegetable & liquor
serve this lovely stodginess with rice
                                       – it’s nice!
                                       (still we are children in some kind

So here it is like the debris of a former world
recast as something newer, dark & nutritious
food like compost to nourish up your belly
leaving you heavy but full of fertile vigour

[Though eating mackerel reminds me somehow of childhood, we actually rarely ate them – I think my mother, East London middle-class, was a little uneasy about fish sold off of lorries on the village street. But, she’d approve the nourishment & all the vegetables. The recipe was suggested to me again by Ginie (& it’s like a Chinese hotpot dish6), but ending up usually played out this way (depending on what material there is). It is a matter of inhabiting, in the food, and in the writing, what actually you do inhabit, and inhabiting it fully, even down to the dark rich lower depths that are what we spring from & must return to. Not Dorset shingle, but Somerset mud. Not purified origins, but that appalling multitextual sea we drift on.]

 

 

1 now chichi incomer artisanal Dorset – Café Surf at last

 

 

2 the alternative was Burnham mud

 

 

3 thus making it constant & real. And, yes, Keston, we are what we ate – are you not a materialist, then?

 

 

4 steam it & it’s delicious – serve buttered (w/ a little nutmeg & lemon juice also, plus pepper)

 

 

5 a mock-heroic marrow – either adds a little added substance like sweet stodginess

 

 

6 hmm – might work well with glass noodles included? – & preserved radish, yes

61. A Recipe for Coconut Cream Tapioca with Mango

For Neirin & Ianthe, who I’m sure will like this, &, in a couple of years, try making it as well as eating it

OK then, my little ones, this
like you is very much a work in progress
improving as we go along like you
& like you cheering, even ludicrous
full of potentiality to transform
now, except to you, things are never new
& this recipe gains from its mirroring
throwing back an individual & thus disordered mess
against the commonplace of branded uniformity
except they aren’t, but vary quite pleasingly
like little children again, each a separate self
so we’ll make these as small pots
to eat where & how we wish
sweet transient drops I offer

For it we’ll need
(it’s almost believable)
here to make 2 portions
                        30 g tapioca – not big balls for bubble tea
                                       but littler that’ll grow like seeds
                        30 g sugar
                        160 ml coconut milk – well mixed!
                        40 ml single cream (but rich!)
                        + either a can of mango purée
                          or 1 fresh, soft, ripe mango
                          depending on what you can find
things needed simply thus
                        place all but the mango in a little pan
                        & put on a low heat
                        stir it & check it
                        everything frequent
                        when it sets to boiling
                        lowest heat that’ll simmer
                        still stirring occasionally please
                        & in about 25 minutes or more
                        you’ll find this translated
                        not commonplace but creamy
                        when the tapioca pearls
                        have gained their translucence
                        soft, oh yes, as frogspawn
                        – meanwhile if you’ve got fresh mango
                        perfectly ripe1 & delicious
                        cut off & peel one side
                        then process into mush
                        put this inside 2 little pots
                                          ramekins or jars
                        so it’s a low level
                                            oh a fifth
                        then once the tapioca is ready
                        let it cool a little
                                             but not to set
                        then spoon on top
                        & eat at your leisure
                        just at room temperature2

[I have got this recipe by reconstructing a gorgeous pudding Ginie & I regularly buy at Waitrose, that combines the mango/tapioca/coconut we variously got in some Malaysian dishes at the C & R in Rupert Court3, but gaining a hit of pure West Country cream. The home made version is a little rougher, but fresher. The tapioca cream could be spiced – cook in a cardamom pod or two, sprinkle cinnamon – but, really, it’s just a good specific taste as it is.4 Try it, dear little children! Not just for its own sake, but as a post‑colonial relic, linking these grandparents’ childhoods, one of tropical tastes & Singapore streetfood (and beyond, the exoticism of cassava cultivation – beware the cyanide!), with the other’s stodgy but comforting English nursery food of the days of Empire, what all good children named frogspawn.]

 

 

1 is all, too & absolutely

 

 

2 Yes, it is a Laodicean dish! Embrace this! Never stark antinomies, fit only for Manichees, but all the infinite gradations of actuality.

 

 

3 We look forward to taking you now it’s reopened, as we took your mother & Uncle Nick.

 

 

4 Other variation is to use sago pearls – though our local East Asian store, Oriental Spice (now reborn as Oriental Phoenix), next to the launderette at Hockerill, doesn’t stock them, nor any of the local supermarkets shelve dry sago or tapioca.