Friday 1 March 2013

Jo Shapcott's 'Gherkin Music': "Joining the Game of Brilliance"



Gherkin photos © Minouche Wojciechowski



London is a city of contrasts. This is the ultimate cliché; I don't think I've ever come across a city which someone wants to sell to tourists and which isn't called "a city of contrasts" at some point. I have found, though, that London's contrasts can be particularly beautiful or savage.

I was on my way home tonight and had just got on the bus at Sloane Square when a friend texted to ask if I wanted to meet up for dinner. Poised to text back "no, I'm on my way home," I realised that I had nothing much to do at home and didn't particularly want a night in, so instead I hopped off the bus and headed on foot towards Kensington to meet her. I walked up Sloane Street, where the shop windows are like art galleries to me - some of the lovely displays suggested that horses and bags are in this year (I could definitely live with that.) And on through Knightsbridge and up towards the Royal Albert Hall. Near the Victoria and Albert, I ended up buying a hot chocolate for a man who was homeless and ill - he had a cancerous lesion which he'd wrapped plastic bags around. I think part of me closed off in self-defense when I saw that, not really able to confront the fact that I'd just been window shopping in Chelsea amongst people with far more money than they need, and that I was wearing a warm coat and off to have a restaurant dinner before heading home to a flat which is at least tolerably warm - while this man was quite possibly in the process of dying on the street.

This is where London's contrasts are savage, and they are often to do with the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, one of the outstanding failures of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first. I will never forget the day when I found myself on a particularly threatening housing estate in Brixton in the afternoon, and then in the evening I went to a millionaire's house in Holborn for an art exhibition. I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the exhibition, but the contrast gave me a kind of moral headache. "They will certainly build houses and have occupancy...they will not build and someone else have occupancy; they will not plant and someone else do the eating" (Isaiah 65:21, 22, New World Translation) - this is how the world was actually intended to be.

London's contrasts can also be magnificent and fascinating. I went to St Katharine's Docks one night recently with friends and we were dumbstruck (though conflicted) at the sight of the Tower of London with the Shard rising jagged and space-age behind it. I cannot possibly imagine how the Tudors would have reacted to this. It was one of the most science-fiction things I've ever seen.

I thought of such contrasts when I read one of the new Poems on the Underground - the new set are all London poems, as it is the 150th anniversary of the London Underground. I've loved 'Stations' by Connie Bensley, as well as pieces by Wordsworth and Yeats. This poem, though, really made my day when I saw it on the District line - I imagine I wore a big stupid smile on my face as I read it.


GHERKIN MUSIC (Jo Shapcott)


This poem does a number of things rather wonderfully. The Gherkin is an icon because of its distinctive shape; the first line asks us to "walk the spiral", and then the poem takes a shape and does just that. I'm not a big fan of shape poems, but this one is not obtrusive - it feels very organic and intuitive, a part of the words. The line breaks resemble a staircase (probably a spiral staircase) but they also evoke the shapes of the glass panes which make up the Gherkin, "where flat planes are curves" and "fragments of poems." Although your eye must read down the page to experience the poem, the words and the shape somehow make you feel as though you are ascending - this is wonderfully done and not something I've not often experienced in poetry. The poem itself becomes a "game/of brilliance".

I was also struck by the fusing of the secular and the spiritual in this poem. The building is described in terms which make it into something like a cathedral - "names fall like glory/into the lightwells" - but it is well known that this building is yet another temple to commerce. Shapcott also calls it "St Mary Axe" - the Gherkin's official name is actually 30 St Mary Axe, the name of the street. But again, this term would naturally bring to mind a place of worship. The City of London is, of course, densely populated both with skyscrapers and immensely rich corporations, and with a depth of history which includes many churches and other old buildings. All of this comes together in just a few lines, in a poem which should be providing a moment of transcendence for many Tube travellers this year.

6 comments:

  1. Somehow I like the Gherkin, and find it splendid on the skyline, but it does make me wonder what the future will bring. The current Prince of Wales once remarked--as he rowed past it in low carbon fashion on the Thames--that the new library building looked more 'like a place where books would be incinerated rather than kept'. Your post was mostly about poetry, of course, and about sometimes disturbing contrasts. I find London quite irresistibly oppressive with both.

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    1. I very much agree with all this. I think one of the things that gives London its fascinating tension is this kind of thing - sometimes developments and contrasts are both exciting, and frightening or discouraging. You do wonder where it's all going to lead. Many think the skyline is getting too built up. It's still mainly concentrated in the City business district, and Canary Wharf - however, not far from where I live (Battersea/Vauxhall) there is currently a huge amount of construction going on and they are saying it may become "the new Canary Wharf." I find this both stimulating and worrying. And yes, I remember hearing that Charles was less than thrilled with the then new British Library. I like it very much, but more inside than outside, for sure.

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  2. St Mary Axe is such a fascinating place name that I looked it up. Wikipedia [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary_Axe ] refers to a Gilbert and Sullivan song which spells it 'Simmery Axe', reflecting a local pronunciation, 'S'M'ry Axe'.
    A Londoner, reading aloud, might pronounce the last line of the poem as 'Simmery Axe is brimming', thereby bringing out a clever internal rhyme (and creating an image of a simmering pot, brimming over).

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    1. David, thanks so much for bringing that out! I wasn't aware of that pronunciation and would have totally missed the implied metaphor and alliteration. Love it! Also, I found out that the name "St Mary Axe" contains within itself the kind of tensions which I discussed in this entry. "St Mary" was the name of the historic church, but "Axe" was from the name of a historic tavern nearby...

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  3. Before I read the Wikipedia article I assumed the name had gruesome origins and I was trying to remember if Dan Brown had used it in the London part of The Da Vinci Code!
    The link with a pub reminds me of the origin of the name Elephant and Castle: I had exotic notions about it until I found out it came from the name of an inn. However, Wikipedia also said a cutler originally traded on the site and the cutlers' organisation had an elephant in its coat of arms, a reminder that handles were made from ivory.

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    1. There is a good deal of controversy about the origins of the Elephant and Castle name (it's an area I know quite well - not exactly one of London's most scenic spots, to put it mildly.) There are many pubs called Elephant and Castle, and the Wikipedia theory *may* be correct, but it has also been associated with a mispronunciation of Infanta de Castilia. Any or all of those may be urban myths, though...but the origins of London's place names tend to run deep and dark.

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