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Goodbye Grasshopper In July, BBC radio’s current affairs programme ‘File on Four’ featured ‘Funerals without any mourners’ exploring the increase in ‘funerals for people who have died alone with no known next of kin or family’. What is tragic, the programme revealed, is the sometimes painfully long periods before their deaths are noticed. When, on 12th of August the body of Margaret Griffiths was discovered by police at her home in Poole, Dorset, having lain undiscovered for some time, it would be easy to dismiss the event as further evidence of this bleak social trend. No relatives could be traced; Margaret’s funeral was sparsely attended; only a few neighbours and the solicitor entrusted with winding-up Margaret’s estate gathered at the graveside on September 7th. Undoubtedly, the extraordinary reaction on the internet a week or two later when news of Margaret’s death was reported on the poetry web board ‘Eratosphere’ would have come as a complete surprise to this small band of mourners. Although her talent may have been little appreciated locally, she had reputation as a poet which spanned the English-speaking world and was named in 2005 by The Academy of American Poets as one of the ‘greatest internet poets’. This was not an accolade which Margaret would have sought, for although she was a keen participant on internet poetry boards, edited the poetry ezine ‘Worm’ and had occasional pieces published in print magazines, she kept her personal life to herself and sought anonymity rather than fame. Moreover she seemed almost wantonly unaware of the extent her abilities or of her growing reputation amongst fellow writers. An unfortunate side effect of the poet’s belligerent modesty was a tendency to mislay great swathes of her own work through a variety of computer mishaps. In the weeks since her death a concerted effort has been made by admirers and friends to gather together her work, published either in print or on-line, and create an indexed archive of the poet’s extant work. With the assistance of magazine editors and the moderators of the web’s leading formalist poetry boards such a Gazebo, Sonnet Central and Eratosphere. the aim is to publish Margaret’s work in book form and bring to the wider public and literary establishment a better understanding of Margaret Griffiths’ much overlooked talent. After only a few weeks over 300 poems have been tracked down, some finished, some in the making, gleaned from workshop archives. Early publication, however, is fraught with difficulties. It is less than clear to whom this considerable body of work belongs as no living relatives have been traced and as you might expect from the poet’s unassuming character she gave little regard s to what might happen to her work after her death. I suspect she would have treated the notion of needing a literary executor with a characteristic hoot of derision. Given the tragic manner of her passing it would all to easy to characterise Margaret as reclusive and anti-social. However, to those of us who corresponded with her on-line, ‘Maz’ as she preferred to be called, was clever and funny; her personality was both kind hearted yet quick to unmask pretension. In workshops she was a canny critic; as editor of ‘Worm’, an email based poetry ezine, which ran to 40 editions, Margaret treated all contributors with equal respect. Many would be poets, myself included are grateful to her ezine as the place which was willing to print poems by complete unknowns. Those of us who came across Maz in the odd and somewhat hermetic world of cyberpoetry will mourn the passing of a pioneer, a delightful spirit and a generous critic. It is Maz’s poetry, however, that I believe will be her lasting legacy, it is only as the larger body of her work is gathered together that the significance of her writing becomes ever more apparent. Margaret’s talent was wide ranging, her work eclectic; if she had been a chef, then fusion would have been her forte. Her on-line ‘handle’ was ‘Grasshopper’ an apt avatar for a writer who never stayed still, was equally at home with free verse or formal, whose poetry ranged from the screamingly funny to the darkly disturbing. Her manipulation of language enabled her to write at times in a styles which bordered on archaic, yet never descended into pastiche; she was inventive enough to produce nonsense poems that revelled in the street language of imaginary sub-cultures or dystopian distant planets. Above all else Margaret Griffiths’ poems are a joy to read, morsels to savour, little gems of poems that glitter with invention - vivacious and immediate. Here she manages a synopsis of Hamlet in 14 lines; as appropriate to a revenge tragedy the action seems to have been re-invented in a butchers shop. Cutlet, Mince of Denmark It was Margaret’s sonnets that I came across first when I began posting my own work on Sonnet Central some years ago. Maz was a moderator; her advice and thoughtful criticism proved invaluable; above all else the range and variety of the work she produced provided an exciting and challenging model for those of us trying to hone our sonnet writing skills. Perhaps her most celebrated work in this form is the superb, ‘Opening a Jar of Dead Sea Mud.’ The smell of mud and brine. I'm six, awash Unsurprisingly, Richard Wilbur picked out the sonnet for particular praise in Eratosphere’s 2008 annual ‘Sonnet Bakeoff’. The ‘Spherians’ themselves voted the poem their overall winner. Margaret Griffiths was well recognised on both sides of the Atlantic as a gifted and versatile writer. Ding Dong Bell Great Bast, today she pulled out all the stops, In case the few facts we know of Maz’s life - that she seems to have lived alone with a collection of domestic pets, that her death went un-noticed locally, that she seems to have had few face to face social contacts - tempts anyone to invent some kind of buttoned-up spinsterish existence for her, then the energy and humour of ‘Ding Dong Bell’ must lead you to quite the opposite conclusion. Maz came over in all my dealings with her as funny and outgoing, yet honest about her fears and anxieties. She had one more quality in common with D H Lawrence; Maz wrote about sex… quite often, sometimes with disarming candour! Advice from Mother Goose If we try to seek out common threads in Margaret’s varied work then the preceding poem touches upon what seems to me to be a recurrent theme. Many of her poems explore the female psyche through figures derived from myth, folklore, fairytale and legend, often using dramatic monologue. In many poems powerful, female archetypal figures take control. In ‘Hippolyta at Dawn’ the Queen of the Amazons dominates her lover: He sighs, he yields; this skirmish ends so soon. ‘First Woman’ celebrates Lilith as Adam’s mate before Eve. A mysterious, powerful presence, ….Lilith prowls her realm, the night yields stars Even in more homespun tales the tables are turned in favour of the female characters. In ‘Fairytale’, Did you ever believe that In other poems male, demon-like creatures, hound the female protagonists, sometimes, as in ‘Demon Lover’ to comic effect, I knew you were a demon when your eyes However, in ‘A conversation with the dark’ the fears are more palpable, and a sense of terror threatens to overwhelm the poet’s characteristic poise. You sit like dust again behind the door. Yet for all this ‘Anima rising’ I doubt that Margaret would have been happy to be regarded as a feminist poet. Indeed, in 'The Woman’s Circle', she mocks the hypocrisy of the group’s prurient interest in pornography, Faith views the tilting pricks and shaven groins, Margaret Griffiths spoke rarely in public about either her life or work. A rare exception occurred when Margaret agreed to be interviewed as the Poetry Kit Featured Poet in July 2001. We learn a few tantalising facts about the person behind the poems, that she was born in central London, that she’d visited relatives in South Wales frequently as a girl and came to love nature and the countryside. Interestingly she reflected, 'I suppose the biggest single literary influence on my childhood was one of my father's friends, a writer of elegant social history, who bought me books every time he visited. They were wonderful illustrated books about the Greek Myths, Tales from Shakespeare, the Arabian Nights, Perrault's Fairy Tales. Later he brought me classic novels, reference books and dictionaries. I would often pick a dictionary as bedtime reading, as I found words so fascinating'. Perhaps the most telling statement in the interview is, in fact, the opening sentence, "I hope that with all my poems, whatever else I am trying to communicate, I will communicate some of my delight in language and the magic of words." To me this sums up the essence of Margaret’s gift. Whereas many of us work over a long time to find a particular poetic voice, Margaret was much more interested in experimenting with radically different voices and personae in her work. Her facility in this respect was remarkable. In ‘Family feeling’ she created a kind of faux street talk, which seems to languish half way between 'The Sopranos' and Raymond Chandler. So Bobby has the case. The trouble is ‘Spaced’ recreates, within a few opening lines, the ‘space-punk’ world of Hans Solo’s Millennium Falcon or Blade runner. Carpenter rode the starstorms round the outer rim Yet Margaret also reveled in rich, romantic diction. The following lines from ‘Longing’ would not be out of place in a late Victorian piece, they have a fin de siecle yearning about them, a century too late. You always lingered just beyond my sight, She wrote extensively about scenes from history, and revealed in later years an enthusiasm for a lost medieval world of chivalry, hunting and falconry. She cuts the morning wind, a grey-fletched arrow Her ability to write convincingly, apparently at will, in a bewildering variety of voices made Margaret wickedly good at parody. When Sonnet Central became even more besieged than usual by egomaniacal poets with a penchant for posting truly terrible ‘traditional sonnets’ in the style of Shakespeare or Keats, Margaret parodied their efforts as follows: Casting Pearls Who else but Maz could have come up with ‘The more I Shakespeare ape, the more Bard, I.’? Given Margaret Griffiths’ versatility as a writer it is no surprise that when her death was announced on Eratosphere contributors recalled with fondness a wide range of poems that had been workshopped there over the years. One title, however, kept recurring, - ‘The Bateleur’. She was returning to the gauntlet when There is much here that typifies Margaret Griffiths’ art. The subject matter seems both ancient and modern simultaneously. The sonnet itself is wonderfully well organised, metre, form and meaning honed into a rich amalgam. Most of all the poem is beautifully phrased. She landed there Perhaps it is far fetched to suggest the way the startled eagle settles upon the poet’s ungloved wrist is a metaphor for the power of art over nature; nevertheless, there is something mythic about the bird’s return. It is a magical piece in the best sense of that overused word. I still can’t quite believe that Maz has gone; I’m still shocked at the circumstances of her death. What happens now? I have no doubt that the copyright issues will be solved in time. I am confident that a small press will be pleased to publish a selection of her poems; it will be well received and her reputation will continue to grow. What I fear is that the grim circumstances of her death may overshadow her life; that she will be cast as a latter-day Emily Dickinson, a fine poet little known in her lifetime but much appreciated after her death. But Maz was nothing like that. Her situation is more analogous to the Arctic Monkeys circa 2003 than Emily Dickinson in 1886. In other words Margaret Griffiths is not an undiscovered poet; but she may be the first major poet whose reputation on her death was almost entirely based upon her web presence and not on print versions of her work. What would I like to happen? In five years I would like to be browsing in the poetry section of a Borders store somewhere seriously unliterary, like Ellesmere Port. Just before I reach the Faber 'Collected Works of Ted Hughes' I would like to come across the Faber 'Collected Works of M A Griffiths'. Hopefully its plain coloured cover will be green, bright grasshopper green. The poet should have the last word. Margaret did leave her last orders in sonnet form. Given the sad circumstances surrounding her death there is a sickening irony about the piece, a tragic reminder that life rarely follows art. As for the poem itself, well, it’s very ‘Maz’. Last Orders - The Movie Alan Wickes September 20th 2009 © Pete Turpie (Alan Wickes) 2009 |