Finnigan's Wake.

I am continuing with my sound based translations of Mins Loy’s poetry. This play with words is something I have always enjoyed - I remember being given long words in school (‘Constantinople’ stands out) in which we had to find as many words as we could. One way of keeping a class of nine years olds quiet? When I worked in the local technology campus library we had a routine of completing The Times crossword over our morning cup of tea as a team effort then doing the word finder - a bit more competitive. This concentration on one word and the potential within it, whether for meaning or sound, is what attracts me to poetry. I like using constraints or procedures as these allow me to set my own rules but make the results more unpredictable - like producing a puzzle of words that I can look for connections in and that can throw up unexpected meanings. Perhaps it is that I have learned to not read poetry for a definitive meaning and so it doesn’t matter to me to have clarity throughout a piece of writing. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense as long as it is held together in some way. Perhaps by rhythm or structure or repetition of sound. One of my favourite reads is Joyce’s Finnigan’s Wake. There are moments of clarity where sense as well as word play and sound can be detected but then there are points at which there is no point in trying to force sense. The sound is enough. Something like hearing snatches of different conversations. You catch part but it moves and changes before you get a complete picture. As is our experience of words, sounds, meanings - it seems rarely can we fully understand the masses of language moving around us especially at the speed it often passes through us. And sense changes anyway - other sense layers continually deepen and change our perception and reaction to information. This is why I don’t go for a poem that makes complete sense. Sense never can be complete. There’s always another something to bring to the mix.