On Being a Poet
Meeting William Spettigue was one of the biggest Lessons of my Life.
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.
These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
― Emily Dickinson
William Spettigue was a poet. He was not a writer, playwright, or teacher, even although he taught for some years at Ipswich secondary school, in order to provide an income for renovating the marvelous house on the Shotley peninsula.
His teaching only had one purpose: to stop teaching in order to be able to live his dream life with his wonderful wife Usch, a life dedicated to thinking, to reading, to creating, to enjoying the sheer beauty of every season, of every day, of every very moment.
And of course, to writing poetry.
A poet is unlike any other person. For being able to see beyond a world which common mortals might call “reality”, for being able to look deeply into the darkness surrounding us, to see further and to perceive the reflections of the invisible radiation he continues to emanate, and then, chisel those otherwise unseeable reflections into words, sentences, rhymes which become melody and music; to do this a poet needs to live outside this world.
The poet needs to step apart from being involved in a society that depicts itself as the only possible way of life in which its members are constantly being eaten up by every day hurrying, preoccupation, feelings of guilt, earning and counting senseless money, obeying written and unwritten laws, rules and codes of conduct.
And, the poet must not anesthetize himself with all the drugs common mortals need to use, in order to survive their every-day lives; watching television for the hours, talking rubbish all day long, doing work which is not connected to the inner needs of the person, losing life time and being distracted by endless commuting, futile shopping, non-sentient holidays, or by following trivial religious dogmas.
William was a master at keeping himself out of the game. He could not be bedazzled by chimeras like success, wealth or achievements of any kind. “There is nothing to achieve, I think. You can’t really look at life like this”, William would say cheerfully and bite into one of the sweet apples we had just picked in their magic garden that morning.
Even if immune to most of the world’s seductions, he was aware of the continuous invasion of distractions: “You always have to defend yourself!”, and one of his many virtues was to remain as much as possible unpolluted from what society, as we call it, tries to inflict onto its members.
Actually, society must only be happy about its outcasts. Especially to be happy about the poet who refuses to accept its so-called values, because he, and only he is the true alchemist. By standing aside, he can see. By keeping himself apart, he creates time and space for being able to continue his work made of secret procedures only known to himself, and finally to having the conditions to succeed in transforming life’s lead and coal into real gold, into a precious piece fabricated from noble metal. Give him coal, give him lead, give him time and space, and he will, eventually, hand you over a golden bowl filled to overflowing with gemstones of all kinds.
Being a poet is more than a profession. More even than being a writer. Being a poet means that, besides being talented, besides having deep cultural backgrounds and visionary courage, you do not permit anything or anybody to possess power over yourself, not money, nor fear, nor vanity, and that you continuously fight against the parts in you which are susceptible to distraction from your poetic work. “It is also a process of freeing yourself. Freeing yourself from constraints, from systems of power and seduction, and, maybe most important, freeing yourself from yourself.”
If you do have the guts to take the consequences, eventually the way of your life will merge with your poetry, and your poetry will merge with your life.
“Have you ever written short stories?” and “Why don’t you write a novel?” I remember asking William when I was a young man just starting my own theatre company and trying to explore the world through different forms of artistic expression. For me at that time, even if I had decided to dedicate my life to the arts, it seemed close to craziness to dedicate one’s whole artistic life exclusively to writing poetry. But William was very clear about it, and his answer changed my vision of artistic work: “I do not want to spoil my words”, William would say in his slow, concentrated yet very light way. “Words are extremely precious. They are like gems. Every single one of them is a little masterpiece of human imagination, transformed into sound, into music, and eventually coagulating into a single line exploring its existence on paper. While I love to read excellent prose — Proust’s writing for example, even if not poetry in the narrower sense, comes very close to its musicality. His words do detach from the page, they become airborne and start to fly, there is something like a colorful sound they emanate, — I feel I need to concentrate my time and my energy onto the strong musicality poetry asks for, onto a rhythm it gives, onto a freedom it calls for, through a clarity of form, structure and schemes. And, you know, Markus, even if extremely difficult, it is possible writing a complete novel in poems. I am preparing myself for it”. Soon he would have been ready to start, and for the following thirty years he would unwearyingly work on his masterpiece Escaping Chas, handwriting and reciting, outlining and typing and then singing the words, chanting the lines, beating their rhythm, and their lonely house between the two rivers would glow from creativity, from Usch’s giving shape and colour to porcelain, and from William’s chiselling words into rhythms and rhymes, out of an endless deep sea of the unconscious.
In the evening, after delightful walks across the fields to one of the rivers, or after a magic day by the sea in Aldeburgh, after long talks about art and literature, after delicious Usch-made cakes and later maybe several beers or some glasses of wine, we would sit in their living room, in front of the fire, maybe reading, maybe reflecting about time coming to a standstill while listening to a choir of clocks chanting their canon through deep rural evening silence. William would read himself through the mountains of books piled up on his desk besides his armchair, and at a certain point Usch, with a magic move of her hand would make appear her iPad and start her little evening journey across her colleague’s pots and through recent news and unearthing mysterious glazing formulas. After a while, she would grumble about the disastrous internet connection, about the catholic service provider checking on the morality of her and of all their neighbors’ internet behavior, and William would look up from his book and ask: “Oh, this sounds awful! Do we really need all that?” After Usch’s explanations about her need to be connected to the world and to be in touch with galleries and clients, William would say: “Oh yes, I see. This must be important for you. But I do not want to understand all this. I don’t even want to think about it. One can’t do everything.”
And then he would give me one of his enormous lessons: “You see, Markus, one really has to concentrate”. “And what is it you are concentrating on now, William?” “I am,” and his bright, luminous smile enlightened the room, “concentrating on living a happy life.”
The book “Escaping Chas and earlier Poems”, edited in 2019 by Associazione artistica PETRUSKA, is available exclusively through the editor.
William Spettigue
William Spettigue was born in 1936 in London. His parents lived in Rio Tinto in Spain where his father worked as a mining engineer. He loved his holidays in Spain, especially being by the sea, living in a house on stilts in Punta Umbria. Boarding school in England was not to his taste, but he made a lifelong friend there.
He revelled being at Oxford, Hertford College where he took a degree in Law. After his father’s untimely death he went with his mother to live in Wivenhoe in a Cottage overlooking the river.
He went to Paris to study “Civilation Française“ at the Sorbonne, where he met his wife Usch. Together they renovated a cottage in Suffolk and lived there happily for 56 years, writing and potting.
William Spettigue died on February 24th, 2019.
