DRIFTING Tom Branfoot
Drifting After Blue Poles by Inger Christensen
There is no sea between, no barnacled hull to lie down upon in order to reach you no foghorn to stop capsizing, annihilation, grazing the coastline only the soft & distant hum of a city about to sleep, the closing sound sapphire dusk descends and limpet stars encrust the canopy gold leaves Jackson Pollock bold leaps Jackson Pollock there is no great distance, no odyssey; but stare into the distance, away becomes further away and you become further away drifting on a cerulean sea, weaving and deep as night untouchable as dreams Tom Branfoot
Blue Poles (Number 11), Jackson Pollock (1952)
Blue Poles Tonight, away begins to go farther away, and the dream what do we know of the dream metallic leaps Jackson Pollock silvery streams Jackson Pollock I gaze across the sea see in the distance your walk and you pass the Pacific, distant and blue phallus and Moloch pace my view on into otherness on into otherness? are we in the world after or before are we or are we not magnetic force it is apparently me you inform: genesis woman dream that begins tonight to go farther away tonight to reach farther away metallic leaps Jackson Pollock silvery streams Jackson Pollock on across the blue sea Inger Christensen
On D r i f t i n g A few days ago, I received an email from Waterstones’ mailing list claiming unprecedented demand. In these uncertain times, it feels as though people are finally turning to books, to words, to the contents of what makes up our everyday. Nothing sums up the contents of our everyday like the late Ingrid Christensen’s Cold War masterpiece Alphabet. After discovering her in a recent BBC podcast, I began to delve into her work. Alphabet is a book-length poem written in the Fibonacci sequence. In a similar manner to our current, unprecedented times, Christensen looked to words for assurance, in the threat of mutually assured destruction (MAD). Each section of the poem begins with a sequenced letter and itemises things beginning with said letter — much like how we learn the alphabet in our early years. As the podcast points out, Christensen’s poem seems incrementally relevant in our current climate. Her alphabetised items are predominately natural: ‘apricot trees exist… bracken exists… cicadas exist… doves exist… early fall exists…’. However, as the poem progresses: ‘killers exist… atom bombs exist… oblivion’. Christensen’s poem functions as an encyclopaedic recording of the beautiful, whilst it still exists. Yet the spiral of the Fibonacci sequence cannot help but drag in the dangers of the contemporary world, creating a snowball effect. My poem Drifting is an after poem, written for Christensen’s Blue Poles — a poem written after Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles. This referentiality is very postmodern but not necessarily a deliberate form. However, it does bring up an interesting discussion about art’s authenticity in our oversaturated and mediated world.
I first read this poem whilst my girlfriend was at home in London. I resonated with the work because of the perceived distance in the poem; presumably between the poet and the artwork. I connected with reference to ‘otherness’, the ‘distance’, the ‘reach[ing] father away’. The sea draws any poet in. Drifting focuses on the absolute vastness and incomprehensibility of the sea. The ocean’s ability to kill, destroy and separate, has infiltrated the mechanics of Drifting and many other works of literature. The reference to The Odyssey connects all of these anxieties. Homer’s epic continues to be relevant in every historical epoch. As a perennially translated cultural text, it regains contextually in every rebirth. Odysseus’ return is forever relevant, especially in wartime — or in the limbo of threat and the migrant crisis. Drifting was written as a form of linguistic connection, in the same way social media operates. It’s a kind of wish-fulfilment, I’ve always believed that poetry is alike to prayer. And, as I’m self-isolating with my significant other now, it seems to have worked. As a final statement, the line ‘a city about to sleep, / the closing sound’ is a reference to the brilliant Blue Bendy song ‘Closing Sound’. In times like this, the greatest thing we can do is read, learn more about the world we think we know. Look out of our windows and record the things we see: the changes in nature, the atmosphere and music of the changing world.
Tom Branfoot
To m B r a n f o o t ’s d e b u t p a m p h l e t Burnt Forests will be published in May 2020 by Pariah Press.