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Door into the Dark opened the portals to a different future | Door into the Dark opened the portals to a different future |
(1 day later) | |
When I was a child, there were two books of poetry in the whirligig at home: a collected Tennyson that had once been given to my great-grandmother by my great-grandfather, and a Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke which my mother had won as a school prize. Nobody read them. Nobody read anything much. They preferred the life outdoors. Then I began doing English A-level, and was taught for the first time by Peter Way, who walked straight into my head and turned the lights on. Within a few weeks my old life seemed to have fallen away (though not the subjects it contained), and all I wanted to do was to write and read poems. | When I was a child, there were two books of poetry in the whirligig at home: a collected Tennyson that had once been given to my great-grandmother by my great-grandfather, and a Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke which my mother had won as a school prize. Nobody read them. Nobody read anything much. They preferred the life outdoors. Then I began doing English A-level, and was taught for the first time by Peter Way, who walked straight into my head and turned the lights on. Within a few weeks my old life seemed to have fallen away (though not the subjects it contained), and all I wanted to do was to write and read poems. |
My parents were bemused, but Mr Way was pleased and began lending me books of his own: Wordsworth, Hardy, Edward Thomas, Larkin. One day, standing by his desk to return whatever it was I’d borrowed that week, I noticed at his elbow a copy of Door into the Dark by someone I’d never heard of before – Seamus Heaney. Noticed because I wasn’t sure how you pronounced “Seamus”, because the title was so alluring, and because the lettering on the jacket was very beautiful. | |
“What’s that, sir?” | “What’s that, sir?” |
“It’s just come out.” (This would have been the winter of 1969.) “It’s his second book.” | “It’s just come out.” (This would have been the winter of 1969.) “It’s his second book.” |
I wanted to borrow it, but I couldn’t; Mr Way was still reading it. So next weekend I biked into Oxford and bought a copy in Blackwell’s. I already owned a few Penguin poetry collections (Robert Graves, e e cummings, Baudelaire: I had no plan to my reading, I was just gobbling at random), but this was the first book of proper contemporary poetry. It felt like a significant moment. And … | I wanted to borrow it, but I couldn’t; Mr Way was still reading it. So next weekend I biked into Oxford and bought a copy in Blackwell’s. I already owned a few Penguin poetry collections (Robert Graves, e e cummings, Baudelaire: I had no plan to my reading, I was just gobbling at random), but this was the first book of proper contemporary poetry. It felt like a significant moment. And … |
In later life we can still sometimes sense the top of our head ripping open when we find a new book to love. But not much compares to the sheer amazement, delight, shock, recognition we felt at such moments in the earlier part of our lives. Today I have only to see that same copy of Door into the Dark sitting on my bookshelves to remember the feeling that a locked-up door in my life had suddenly swung open, and a different future was possible. | In later life we can still sometimes sense the top of our head ripping open when we find a new book to love. But not much compares to the sheer amazement, delight, shock, recognition we felt at such moments in the earlier part of our lives. Today I have only to see that same copy of Door into the Dark sitting on my bookshelves to remember the feeling that a locked-up door in my life had suddenly swung open, and a different future was possible. |
And, paradoxically, all the more so because as well as feeling absolutely surprising, the book was full of things I recognised – even though the rural East Anglia of my childhood was a far cry from rural County Derry, and my stage in life was very different from Heaney’s. When I read about the “Green froth that lathered each end / Of the shining bit”, I saw the horses in the stable yard at home; when I came to the “billhook / Whose head was hand-forged and heavy”, I was clearing undergrowth with my dad; when I swam through A Lough Neagh Sequence, I was back fishing again in the rivers and loughs I’d known in my childhood. | And, paradoxically, all the more so because as well as feeling absolutely surprising, the book was full of things I recognised – even though the rural East Anglia of my childhood was a far cry from rural County Derry, and my stage in life was very different from Heaney’s. When I read about the “Green froth that lathered each end / Of the shining bit”, I saw the horses in the stable yard at home; when I came to the “billhook / Whose head was hand-forged and heavy”, I was clearing undergrowth with my dad; when I swam through A Lough Neagh Sequence, I was back fishing again in the rivers and loughs I’d known in my childhood. |
In other words, the book made me feel adventurous and rooted at the same time. Of course I missed important things – including and especially a lot of the politics and religion, which I picked up later in poems like In Gallarus Oratory and Requiem for the Croppies. But I’d heard the principal melody of things, or so I felt, and it’s not an exaggeration to say I fell in love with it. | In other words, the book made me feel adventurous and rooted at the same time. Of course I missed important things – including and especially a lot of the politics and religion, which I picked up later in poems like In Gallarus Oratory and Requiem for the Croppies. But I’d heard the principal melody of things, or so I felt, and it’s not an exaggeration to say I fell in love with it. |
Since then, I’ve read better books of poems, including better books by Heaney, but no other collection has touched me like this one. The squelch and slap of the writing; the beautiful interplay of vowels and consonants (which carried Heaney’s voice into my ear long before I ever heard him speak); the connections between past and present (always cleverly done, but with no smartassery); the narrative anecdotes (in The Wife’s Tale, for instance), as gripping as a short story; the warmth of the heart at work. | |
Inevitably, I suppose, I wanted to contact the man who had made me feel like this – just to thank him. So I wrote him a fan letter. I shudder now to think what it must have said, and even at the time it didn’t seem strange that I never had an answer. But I was undaunted. | Inevitably, I suppose, I wanted to contact the man who had made me feel like this – just to thank him. So I wrote him a fan letter. I shudder now to think what it must have said, and even at the time it didn’t seem strange that I never had an answer. But I was undaunted. |
Early in the spring of the following year, I noticed that Heaney and Ted Hughes (whom I had also got pretty keen on) were due to read some poems by Wordsworth (ditto) at an event at the Poetry Society in London – I think it must have been to celebrate the bicentenary of Wordsworth’s birth. | Early in the spring of the following year, I noticed that Heaney and Ted Hughes (whom I had also got pretty keen on) were due to read some poems by Wordsworth (ditto) at an event at the Poetry Society in London – I think it must have been to celebrate the bicentenary of Wordsworth’s birth. |
Off I went to listen, and found myself in an audience about 25-strong. Imagine. At the end I took up my copy of Door into the Dark for Heaney to sign. I must have told him about the unanswered missive, because in black biro on the title page he wrote “Seamus Heaney to Andrew Motion – instead of a letter – with thanks 7th April 1970.” I carried it home like a trophy. Actually no, not at all like a trophy – or only when I showed it to Mr Way. Like treasure. | Off I went to listen, and found myself in an audience about 25-strong. Imagine. At the end I took up my copy of Door into the Dark for Heaney to sign. I must have told him about the unanswered missive, because in black biro on the title page he wrote “Seamus Heaney to Andrew Motion – instead of a letter – with thanks 7th April 1970.” I carried it home like a trophy. Actually no, not at all like a trophy – or only when I showed it to Mr Way. Like treasure. |
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