The Isle of Portland

 

Graphic in Portland: a Triptych by Susan Duxbury Hibbert

touchable stone(s) left in imaginations' flows to be, I hope, re-eroded by readers ... and re-built again by them ...

I'll take that invitation from the Author's Note by Mark Goodwin. In fact I'm not sure how else I would get to the quarry-face of Portland: a Triptych (KFS, 2019) without a weary trudge over explanatory ground.  

Mark Goodwin:

StPaul'sCathedralpartlycrushedbyTheUnitedNationsBuil

ding&otherNewYorkfacadesBigBenThePalaceofWestmins

ter&BuckinghamPalacejostlingonthetipofTheBillBigBeno

nitssidetrain-wiseorlikeapatientwaitingrocketasleeepall

spacesonTop&UnderHillsoccupiedbyallPortlandStonebuil

dingseverconstructedanywhereinaworldonanEarththeTo

werofLondonChristchurchPrioryLondonBridgemangledto

gethertoresembleanornateglacialmoraineyetwithenough

voidswallsfloors&corridorstodrawinmenwithstringinsear

chofbeastslikebullsPolaris&Persephonechattinginnumer

ouscoolwhitesepulchresasifomnipotentascenotaphsrisefr

omrubbleroundthemTheBritishMuseumTheBankofEngla

Tim Allen:

Psalm belly eagles onto platform. He's the train's draper.

For the wild crystal 14 year olds. Flamingo voiced.

Origin of Species inseparable from mum's separates.

Daemon's dropper glare. Kittiwake flounces whitefish skirt.

Morose old coal-horse in love again with a look-alike foal.

High Noon magi dust air shocks pink torchlight dust.

I ironed out helicopters. Any old raison against the current. 

The wood wobbled in the shorts and rotted in the longleg.

Lazy gamer snorts reasons for vandalising Auntie Oolite.

Bucketful of green drizzle makes room for orchard of crabs.

Monstrous tar flowers in Vestal temple. Romantic hate.

Phosphorescent trickle. Smell of the galaxy's dewy cleft.

Austere stillness drums in Austin 1100 as silent as lice.

Behind a veil of herring girt roots of sanity insanely shrill.

Stuff fester milk stiff saucer mould. Fitting room panic.

The young helicopter pilot posed as Aphrodite's owl.

The young helicopter's forearm posed in the owl's boots.

Poverty fox doubts that any of these riches really exist.

Norman Jope:

In this port of call

he paces like a prisoner –

distilled sea water

has turned to sweat,

in a place whose only resource

is salt.

The greens of Charleville are alien

to this place of doomsday fire

where Abel lies, an eternal creditor

in a squadron-whine of mosquitoes,

below Big Ben's dwarf replica

on the slopes above misfortune's well.

He has come to bury his past in gold,

to pay homage at the Tower of Silence.

He hates this horrible rock

but hears its call to prayer

above the muezzin

who marshals the inmates

against this interpreter,

this coxcomb lyricist.

He knows long residence

impairs the faculties,

and soon will dwell instead

amongst hyenas in Harar –

but he bides his time

as sunlight moistens

the harbour's eye,

its cargo of fins and maws.

*

A book about the Isle of Portland, so long as you don't take "about" in a narrowly discursive sense. A book that releases Portland, maybe. 

Extracts are always a violence, and the above samples don't come away cleanly: each is traduced in its own way. 

Mark Goodwin's block of text (from Portland Mix, p.14) is really meant to be black and grey and sideways to the page. Its buildings and monuments are made of Portland stone. Tophill and Underhill are topographical features dividing the island: Portland stone is quarried from the shallow strata of Tophill. 

Tim Allen's growing-up lines (from Pontoon 4, p. 22) are shorn of their marginal commentary. For instance, the first verse I've quoted is annotated Sermon on the Hump. That is, the Green Hump in Hallelujah Bay. Tim's questioning of his childhood faith is a recurrent theme, and hence I suppose the Darwin references. Kittiwake: they nest on the cliffs of Portland and are seen from the Bill. Tar Rocks: coastal reef in Hallelujah Bay exposed at low tide. Austin 1100: popular 1960s car. Little Owl: common on Portland, nesting in abandoned quarries. They are Athene's owl in Greek mythology, but in this memory they are Aphrodite's owl. 

The extract from Norman Jope (Veästa, p. 38) is the most violently decontextualized: this comes from the section about Aden (Aden Mix), and its intruder-poet (or rather, ex-poet) is Arthur Rimbaud, born in Charleville. That was in 1880, ten years before the completion of Big Ben Aden, never mind the "dwarf replica" in Arwa Street, Crater. "Misfortune's well" might refer to British colonisation or the Aden Emergency or the notoriously impoverished back-streets of Crater (Aden's arab quarter in colonial times).  But here as in its other armed service interludes (Gibraltar Mix, Maltese Mix) the poem keeps echoing the Isle of Portland, in this case the village of Fortuneswell in the steep Underhill part of the island. As per Mark Goodwin, Big Ben has a Portland connection too, though actually rather tenuous: Portland stone is in the Palace of Westminster's ancient foundations and recent restorations, but not the 19th-century work. Other Portland references are persistent: the prisoner, the harbour . . . The "coxcomb lyricist" refers back to the Veästa of Portland legend, "a mythical monster, like a red-bearded cockerel with half-yard legs" (Norman's Author's Note).