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New British Poetry: 12 Nothing Desperate

© Dr J D Ballam

Dinah Livingstone published her first poetry pamphlet in 1967. Since that time she has written, edited and translated numerous volumes of prose and verse, many of them receiving well-deserved critical approval. PRESENCE (London: Katabasis, 2003) is a multi-faceted and interesting collection, coming four years after her TIME ON EARTH: SELECTED AND NEW POEMS.

Divided into three principal sections, PRESENCE reflects three of Livingstone's dominant themes: 'London and Country', 'Mexico' and 'People and Occasions'. Each of these sections contains poems very different in character and tone, but one of the things that struck me about the book as a whole is its lack of anger and that species of thought I can only call a too-clever-to-be-moved-by-the-world frame of mind. Many recent collections show both these characteristics to a degree that is very quickly cloying, and in place of this easiness with her reflections (because that's what much anger and ennui amounts to) Livingstone offers curiosity and patience. That is, she frequently dramatizes a moment of doubt or confusion or wonder, without offering instant proposals for those experiences' significance, preferring to wait, judging the present as it becomes 'the present' again and again in retrospect, as the mind re-focuses upon its data within the flux of changing contexts.

Many poems in PRESENCE deserve to be quoted as examples of the multi-vocal narrator and to show the breadth of forms, which range over a wide spectrum of styles. Certainly many treat the act of writing as something, not merely important, not merely to be taken seriously, but as a real force giving and sustaining vitality. She writes in 'Shape',

Splendor formae, beauty so old and so new,/ burns in the breast, and the instant caught/ in a song sung, a still photo, a kiss,/ belongs to earth's musical living process,/ with new poems that go on being written/ out of the tohu and bohu of dreams/ as long as language survives,/ so that people talk to each other/ and mean it, [...]

She is neither exaggerating not being reductive here. As she makes clear throughout the book, knowing oneself-including one's spiritual and social orientation-is bound-up with knowing the shifting distances between ideas and words. She explains in 'Hoddeson Wood',

The seeing is transitory and as I've grown/ I've spelt it differently. No longer God./ Call it bliss, loneliness seeking union/ love instressing insight pouring out/ what I can say now from where I am/ in a language that is mine and yours.

PRESENCE is, in design and execution, a book that seeks to express the value of living thoughtfully, of cherishing the many tiny threads of being and kindred hopes that span the gulfs separating individuals and cultures.