Saint Julian Press
Kevin McGRATH ~ Poet
T H E M A R I N E R S P E A K S
WINDWARD as an idea began long ago, originating from a reading of the Homeric
Odyssey, especially Scrolls IX to XII, where a voyage is described. Since then I
have worked with that idea repeatedly, writing and rewriting in an attempt to
conceive of and to represent that ideal journey; such is the basic form of the
book’s truthfulness or the inherent pattern of its belief.
All of my books of poetry are founded upon the
plan or system of the annual year, for that is the primary unit of time: the
circular movement of shadow and light which contains all the elements of
creation and demise, of generation and decease, the meeting and conjunction of
the male and feminine and all the metaphors of landscape and the natural world
which express this, including the sea which is our original source. It is the
great Sun which is our first vessel there.
The poems of WINDWARD were
actually written over a period of say, the last seven years, although there are
lines in the poem and images that derive from poetry written much earlier in
time. It is impossible to point at when a poem is really begun for one is
always in pursuit of those metaphors and never not
in pursuit of the genius of poetry. That is all I do in life and have done
with my life, to pursue that genius and those metaphors and to capture and
depict their underlying vision of life.
I firmly believe that there exists only one book
in this world and that we imitate and emulate that model in all our work and
effort. With WINDWARD I am
representing that conception and its limitless sensibility once again. The act
of writing is simply an endeavor to capture and to present not only what
we know but also how we might actually acquire that knowledge: hence the voyage
and its essential and necessary fiction. The deficit of love, giving what we do
not possess, is our only true accomplishment in life, for if we understand and
know what is perfect it is futile to search for anything elsewhere. Yet
ultimately, only speech is to be perfected as all our work lies in words;
language is the medium for the kind of love which has
no object.
Conceived aboard a passenger liner in the Red
Sea I was born and grew up on the shores and beside the waves of South China,
then spent the best of my youth on a small island off the Welsh coast from
where I used to race and cruise out into the cold rough waters of the British
Sea. That was when I began to think about boats as ideas, where they
came from and where they were going.
As a young man I sailed the Baltic and Levantine
Mediterranean and crossed the Atlantic twice under canvas;
once as navigator and once as a watch officer aboard one of the last of the old
commercial sailing ships. Lately I have found myself living beside the Arabian
Sea where the dhows set off to cross the Indian Ocean, going towards the
Swahili coast of Africa. My view of the world has always been marine, composed of a sensibility for aquatic movement and
the sonority of wind, for the perfection and inclination of light; these have
always been my points of reference.
When I grew older I realised
that time was thoroughly circular and that it was always divided into two, the
male and the feminine. If we are truly to experience time we must not consider
it to be simply linear for the years never advance; we are replayed again and
again and only if we can join with another can we make that circle elliptical.
That is our only possible destiny for sexual love makes time erotic and unpredictable,
utterly immediate yet forever uncharted.
Human beings have always sailed, even in neolithic centuries, and the last great migration was in
the Pacific when mariners—during one of the most wonderful periods in our
known history—sailed only to explore. This is what the best of us do now,
we explore, we do not acquire but we pursue what we are not, out there upon a
bare colourless ocean.
Now, cast up on this stony and hard New England
coast I understand how all of life is truly only metaphor: words, emotions,
images, even love itself, and there is always one step further that is
possible. In writing this book WINDWARD, I have tried to capture and to represent all these aspects of
experience, worldly dimension, and the action of language. This is a conceptual
voyage, a journey that contains everything and where nothing is absent; what is not there does not exist.
Kevin McGRATH, Cambridge, Two
Thousand & Fifteen
❖
Author
photo credit Akos Szilvasi. |
Cover art is an image of Buddhaghosa Visits Suvarna Bhumi, Myanmar, 19th C., photo credit, Lilian
Handlin. |