John Whitworth’s poetry has given this reader continual pleasure since he first encountered it in various smaller and larger publications before John’s first book, Unhistorical Fragments, appeared in 1980. And it has always left me more than a little envious that John manages to handle such a variety of verse forms with unfailing dexterity and wit. I have only one complaint: that he has not written enough, and leaves us waiting too long for each new volume. He is also much too modest about what he has achieved; I could name many lesser talents who promote their own work with endless vigour and acquire wider but far less deserved reputations.
John has always been a poet who writes with uninhibited directness. Allow me to pick up one of the books on the table in front of me at random, and see if I can justify that generalisation. The book I open is Lovely Day for a Wedding (1985). It opens with a group of unconventional sonnets which mix tenderness and candour in a wholly individual way. It continues through some truthful and rueful reflections on the literary life, culminating in some fairly blunt “graffiti” concerning W. H. Auden, the Queen’s horse and the Iranian Ayatollahs. Need I say that I am nearly halfway through the book without pausing?
I have spent a lot of time in my life telling people that good poetry can require patience, concentration and devoted re-reading. I am now going to say that the sheer readability of poets like Gavin Ewart, Peter Reading and John Whitworth doesn’t in the remotest way compromise the high quality of their work. John is in the ranks of poets who can be read rapidly with appreciation and enjoyment — and sometimes with a useful shock to the system.
Two grateful, personal reminiscences: John has treated me on several occasions to special compositions which I treasure. A poem called “Nice Looking Up” is kept in my own Collected Poems, but may have predated that. It pays me the extraordinary compliment of taking a poem of my own and converting a few lines out of it into something funny and touching in pure Whitworth style. And lastly a tiny memory of a party incident: John and I are both men of modest height, and at a hopelessly crowded Spectator gathering one year, we found ourselves standing on a raised hearth with our backs to the grate (empty in mid-summer, of course). This added about three inches to our 5ft 6", I guess, and we agreed that that was enough. We could see just a little more of the world than we usually did. We would not be looking down on anyone, nor would we be perpetually gazing up in reverence from 4'11". We cited the genius of Pope and Keats, both much shorter men, and we knew that among living poets excellent talents like Kit Wright and C. K. Williams were very much taller than us. We came to no particular conclusions about poetry and height, and accepted an offer of a fill-up of right-wing wine.
Alan Brownjohn is a poet, translator and critic. He was a teacher in schools and higher education for twenty-four years and has been a freelance writer and literary journalist since 1979. Among his individual books are The Railings (1961), The Lions’ Mouths (1967), A Night in the Gazebo (1980), The Old Plea-Pit (1987), The Observation Car (1990), In the Cruel Arcade (1994) and two subsequent collections from Enitharmon, The Cat Without E-Mail and The Men Around Her Bed. He is also the author of four novels and the translator of plays by Goethe and Corneille.
