Richard Aldington

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NEW CANTERBURY LITERARY SOCIETY NEWS

(The Richard Aldington Newsletter)

FOUNDED IN AUGUST 1973 BY
PROFESSOR NORMAN TIMMINS GATES PhD [1914-2010]

Vol. 41, No. 1                  Spring 2013

Editor: Andrew Frayn, English and American Studies, Samuel Alexander Building, University of Manchester,
Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL. UK. E-mail: andrew.frayn@manchester.ac.uk

Associate Editor: Justin Kishbaugh, Department of English, Duquesne University, 600 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15282  USA
  E-mail: kishbaughj@duq.edu

RA and H.D. Website: http://imagists.org/
Correspondent and website editor: Paul Hernandez paul@imagists.org
Correspondents: Michael Copp, Simon Hewett, Stephen Steele, F.-J. Temple, Caroline Zilboorg.
Bibliographer: Shelley Cox. Biographers: Charles Doyle, Vivien Whelpton.


As ever, please be in touch with any reports of Aldingtoniana; information about the wider Imagist circle is also appreciated.  The newsletter depends on the input of all its readers.

 

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Correspondent David Wilkinson writes: The web site 'Find My Past' has put up digitised copies of a large number of regional newspapers offering information rarely available to biographers from other published sources. In that context I have unearthed the following article from The Cornishman newspaper of 11 October 1917.

 

LIGHTS AT PENDEEN

HEAVY PENALTY ON HOUSEHOLDER

 

At West Penwith Petty Sessions at Penzance on Wednesday, before Mr David Howell (in the chair).

A HEAVY FINE

 

Cecil Wm. Gray, of Bosigran, Zennor, was charged with failing to obscure lights in his dwelling house, at 9.45 p.m. on September 19. Deputy Coast-Watch Officer N. E. Cooke said he had received complaints about lights having been seen coming from the defendant's window on several occasions. On the Wednesday evening he went to Bosigran about 9.30. There he met two coast-watchers, who had seen lights the previous evening. For a while they went to the western side of the house, but saw nothing. They worked their way round to the north or seaward side of the house, and at 9.45 or thereabouts, saw a light at the upper window pass across and back again three times. When witness interviewed defendant, he said his new housekeeper had come that week. On that night she had just gone to bed and the light was probably caused by her.

Defendant said previous to the coming of the housekeeper the part of the house in which the light was seen, was unused.

The Chairman: You describe yourself as an artist? - No, a musician.

Mr. Cooke said he had received a great many complaints from inhabitants of the locality.

The Bench retired to consider their verdict, and on their return, the Chairman said they regarded it as a very serious offence indeed.

Defendant would be fined £20.

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Incidentally, I believe that Mr Benney, the auctioneer from whom DHL bought the odd stick of furniture, had his office in 2 Bedford Road, St Ives, that in recent times has been the home of The Book Gallery.

 

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Editor Andrew Frayn writes that there are a few brief mentions of RA in The History of British Women’s Writing, 1920-1945, vol. 8, ed. Maroula Joannou (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).  Jane Dowson’s article on ‘Poetry, 1920-1945’ discusses both Aldington and H. D., and Bonnie Kime Scott talks about H. D. in her chapter on ‘Gender in Modernism’.

 

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Correspondent Michael Copp reminds us that there is an article by Alfred Satterthwaite, ‘John Cournos and “H.D.”’ in Twentieth Century Literature, 22:4 (1976), 394-410.

It is available online at:  http://www.jstor.org/stable/440582. [CTRL + click all links]

 

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Editor Andrew Frayn draws your attention to the last few days of a Kickstarter campaign for further funding for the excellent Paul Lewis’s documentary about RA’s friend Ford Madox Ford.  Paul is truly passionate about his subject, and the documentary features, among others, NCLSN member Max Saunders.  There is a teaser for the documentary on the page.

 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/643139056/ford-madox-ford-a-man-mad-about-writing

 

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Jeff Grieneisen and Courtney Ruffner Grieneisen write: The proceedings of the joint III International Imagism/VII International Aldington Society Conference that was held in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer on June 1-3, 2012 is due out in mid-to late-May 2013. Titled, Ghosts in the Background Moving: Aldington and Imagism, the proceedings are edited by Daniel Kempton, Matthew Nickel, and H. R. Stoneback. The volume is a special issue of Florida English and Courtney Ruffner Grieneisen and Jeff Grieneisen, associate editors of the journal, are producing the volume. The cover art, a photograph of a very recognizable icon of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer was provided by conference participant Anderson Araujo.

Contributors to the volume include: Anderson Araujo (University of British Columbia, Okanagan), Christos Hadjiyiannis (University of Edinburgh), Daniel Kempton (SUNY New Paltz), Jessica Conti (SUNY New Paltz), Justin Kishbaugh (Duquesne University), Anthony Ozturk (Les Roches-Gruyère University), Jeff Grieneisen (State College of Florida), Roy Verspoor (Suffolk County Community College), Alice Bailey Cheylan (Université du Sud Toulon-Var), Valerie Hemingway (Montana State University, Billings), H. R. Stoneback (SUNY New Paltz), Jared Young (SUNY Albany), Courtney Ruffner Grieneisen (State College of Florida), and Matthew Nickel (SUNY New Paltz).

 

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REVIEW: Bradshaw, Melissa. Amy Lowell, Diva Poet. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. 2011

 

Melissa Bradshaw’s 2011 publication, Amy Lowell, Diva Poet, from Ashgate Publishing attempts to recontextualize the life and work of Amy Lowell by viewing her through the critical lens of a cultural “diva.” While Bradshaw’s book focuses on the ways in which Lowell’s physical demeanor and sexuality affected others’ opinions of her and her work, and how Lowell’s unflinching desire to become a celebrity ultimately undermined her position as a poet, Amy Lowell, Diva Poet also makes numerous references to Lowell’s fellow Imagist poet, Richard Aldington. Although the majority of these references simply service Bradshaw’s recounting of Lowell’s role in the development and popularization of Imagism—as well as her contentious relationship with Ezra Pound—two interesting and potentially significant interactions between Lowell and Aldington do bubble to the surface.    

            The first of these interactions takes shape in a letter Lowell wrote, concerning her belief in the necessity of World War I and her particular role in the war effort, to Aldington while he was serving in the British Army. In that letter, Lowell states:

For us women who cannot fight, and who are handicapped in other ways from taking any active part, I feel that the truest thing we can possibly do is just this … . We must keep the world going for the rest of you when you come back. We must keep alive the spirit of beauty, of gentleness, and of idealism. It may be that the war will go on so long that these things will perish perforce for a time, but the whole strength of my mind is now turned towards poetry—not that it always was not so, but the thing has taken on a higher meaning and a greater reality, if that were possible, and I think that when you come back from the army, the world you will have to work in will be more inclined to listen than it ever was before. (qtd. 84)

Bradshaw goes on to posit that Lowell’s belief that her writing of poetry could aid the war effort might have served as the impetus behind her lecture series and book on Tendencies in Modern American Poetry, which took the educating of Americans on how to appreciate poetry as its purpose (84). For my part, however, the most interesting aspect of this exchange between Lowell and Aldington concerns my curiosity as to how Aldington—then actively serving in the Army—would have received this letter from Lowell wherein she both states that “[n]obody can hate war worse than I do, but I believe in this war with my whole heart and soul, in the absolute necessity of it—melancholy as this is” and views herself as actively supporting the Allied (and “associated”) forces by writing poetry (qtd 84). Personally, I found myself left wondering how much this letter from Lowell might have affected Aldington’s later view of his own poetry and poetry in general.   

            The second of these interactions between Lowell and Aldington that I find particularly interesting involves Lowell’s criticism of the explicit sexual themes and content found in both Aldington’s and D. H. Lawrence’s work. Bradshaw states that “[t]hough much of the drama from [Lowell’s] poetry comes from themes of adultery and sexual longing,” Lowell cautioned Aldington and Lawrence that they would undermine their own success if they alienated the average reader with those topics (55). Bradshaw interestingly goes on to argue that

while Lowell’s concerns are in part commercial (as editor of the Some Imagist Poets anthologies she “[felt] the weight of responsibility as the go-between the poets on one side, and the publishers and public on the other”) they are also grounded in the need to express a sexuality that doesn’t fit within heterosexual paradigms, a desire to articulate a queer eroticism that goes beyond the straight sexual “realism” male modernists like Joyce, Lawrence, and Aldington so bravely portray (130).

Yet, even though I validate and champion this reading of Lowell as a poet striving to present a cultural countercurrent to the dominant heterosexual forces of her time, I find Lowell’s overwhelming concern with success and becoming a celebrity quite interesting in regards to her understanding and valuing of Imagism. Specifically, these warnings to Aldington and Lawrence seem to suggest that despite the amount of work Lowell put forth championing Imagism and creating an audience for it, she—unlike Aldington and Lawrence—understood success and popularity as more valuable than “direct treatment of the thing.”

            Overall, I found Bradshaw’s book intriguing and entertaining. It certainly does very good work analyzing Lowell’s poetry, career, and involvement with Imagism. For those interested in reading this book in order to discover new information on Aldington, though, most of the references to him tread over the same well-worn paths. I, for one, however, take solace in the fact that even when Aldington serves as a figure on the sidelines of the major narrative, one can still find his presence within and interactions with that story as illuminating.

Justin Kishbaugh

 

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London-based NCLSN members might be interested in the following public event, aimed at all readers.  You don’t have to be a critic, just interested in reading Ford.  -AF

 

‘Reading Ford’

King’s College London, Room S2.39

2.30 p.m. 20 April 2013

 

All are welcome at ‘Reading Ford’, an open event organised by the Society. With Ford currently attracting numerous new readers, it is an ideal time to explore the book-group approach to reading him as well as more individual experiences of his work.

Five speakers have been confirmed – honorary member Oliver Soskice, Hilary Green, Michael Goldman, Walter Hall and Sally Kirkwood – and we hope there will be the opportunity to have a more general discussion among those present.

If you have any queries, please email Sara.Haslam@open.ac.uk

 

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25th Ezra Pound International Conference: Ezra Pound and Modernism

Dublin, Ireland, July 9 – 13, 2013

The 25th Ezra Pound International Conference will be held in Dublin, a place Ezra Pound knew well, though he only visited there briefly in February 1965. The conference’s main host will be Trinity College Dublin, Ireland’s oldest university institution, founded in 1592 and located in the city centre. Our second host and other conference site on Thursday, July 11, will be Mater Dei Institute, the college close to what was Leopold Bloom’s residence at 7 Eccles Street.

The 2013 EPIC will open at Trinity College Dublin on 10 July with a Welcoming Address by the Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney. Individual plenary talks by distinguished scholars throughout the week will be on such topics as Pound and Irish Poetry, Pound and other writers (Beckett, Coleridge, Joyce, and Yeats), The Cantos Project, New Translations of Pound’s poetry into German and Italian, the Drafts & Fragments Notebooks, and Doing Justice to Pound. There will also be four days of paper sessions and discussions on a wide range of topics related to Pound’s works, life, and influence, as well as Poetry Readings by Irish Poets and by Poundian Poets, and of course the popular EPIC dinner (this time at the Gresham Hotel). Following the conference, 14-15 July, there will be an overnight excursion to Sligo, which will include a stay at the 4-star Glasshouse Hotel in Sligo.

http://ezrapoundinternationalconference.uno.edu/

 

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Please consider giving an RA-based paper at this conference!  -AF

 

The Good Soldier Centenary Conference’

Organised in Association with the Ford Madox Ford Society

Swansea University, 12-14 September 2013

Call for Papers

Proposals are invited for an international conference on The Good Soldier. Long regarded as Ford’s greatest early achievement, The Good Soldier is one of the finest modernist novels in English. This conference seeks to widen our comparative assessment of Ford’s first masterpiece, whose centenary in 2015 will be marked by a special volume of essays in the annual series of International Ford Madox Ford Studies.

We are keen to receive proposals from graduate students as well as established scholars, and we especially welcome papers discussing The Good Soldier in relation to Ford’s other writing: his essays, novels, short stories, poetry, and life-writing.

A paper would be welcome on the 1981 television adaptation directed by Kevin Billington and starring Jeremy Brett, Robin Ellis, Susan Fleetwood, and Vickery Turner.

Connections might be made with the work of other writers who were active in the years before the First World War or who later wrote about that time. The pre-war period might also be extended to include the early years of the war itself, a time, as David Jones suggested, when there was still ‘a certain attractive amateurishness, and elbow-room for idiosyncrasy that connected one with a less exacting past’.

Other writers whose work might be considered alongside The Good Soldier include, for example, Richard Aldington, Vera Brittain, Elizabeth Bowen, Joseph Conrad, H.D., T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Oliver Madox Hueffer, Violet Hunt, Henry James, David Jones, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, Rose Macaulay, Marcel Proust, Siegfried Sassoon, May Sinclair, Edward Thomas, Rebecca West, Edith Wharton, and Virginia Woolf.

Other papers might consider the novel’s ‘afterlife’: its influence and echoes from 1915 to the present day.

 

Please send proposals of up to 300 words for 20-minute papers to the conference organiser, Geraint Evans, by 3 May 2013:  Geraint.Evans@swansea.ac.uk

Further information will be posted on the conference’s website:

http://goodsoldier2013.weebly.com/