Quantum Poetics

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

Yn y gyfres wreiddiol hon o ddarlithiau cyhoeddus, mae beirdd blaengar, cyfoes yn siarad am eu crefft â chynulleidfa o Brifysgol Newcastle ac o'r ddinas. Mae tair darlith Gwyneth Lewis yn archwilio'r berthynas sy'n cysylltu ffurf a gwleidyddiaeth gyda chynnwys barddoniaeth, gan archwilio hefyd sut y mae pob un o'r rhain yn newid ein dealltwriaeth o amser.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

In this innovative series of public lectures at Newcastle University, leading contemporary poets speak about the craft and practice of poetry to audiences drawn from both the city and the university. Gwyneth Lewis's three lectures explore the connection linking form and politics with the content of poetry while exploring how each of these changes our understanding of time.

Dosbarthu

Byddwn yn dosbarthu eitemau sydd mewn stoc o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith, fel arfer drwy Royal Mail Tracked 48. Ar gyfer archebion o flaen llaw, byddwn yn dosbarthu’r eitem o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith ar ôl ei derbyn gan ein cyflenwr.

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Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

Gwyneth Lewis begins Quantum Poetics with a bold assertion: ‘In order to understand poetry, which is a material activity, we need to grasp some of the paradoxes of particle science. Poetry is a form of science.’ In the three linked lectures which make up Quantum Poetics , given in March 2014, Lewis makes her case for her opening statement, exploring diverse ways of thinking about poetry and physics. ‘The Stronger Life’ begins the book. Here Lewis inverts the popular belief that an author must experience mental health difficulties in order to achieve something in writing, suggesting instead that poetry can keep the poet well: ‘I would argue that the poet’s value to society primarily lies in his or her resilience in the face of dread, in their insistence on shaping something forceful, energetic and delightful out of this blankness. These strategies are the very ones that can get one out of depression.’ Such a positive exploration of poetry and mental health is refreshing and very welcome. Lewis draws on her experiences and those of other writers to explore the power of transformation through writing. Her approach here is largely unscientific, with conclusions made from autobiography and anecdote, which is perhaps understandable when dealing with a subject that can be considered intangible and personal. In the second lecture the relationship between poetry and particle science is pursued more overtly. Lewis conceptualises ‘the pre-linguistic source of all art’ as Illyria, the place where the characters of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night are shipwrecked and which Lewis likens to quantum entanglement: a sea of interconnectedness from whence art springs. Thinking about poetry in this way is potentially innovative, but the length of the lecture (just 16 pages) doesn’t provide enough space to explore the science in a way that makes this meaningful. In terms of the evidence used to support the ideas, sources are dropped into the text without much sense of who these individuals are, their relationships to the field in question and whether or not they’re authorities. It’s all a little woolly. Elsewhere in the lecture, Lewis applies de-centrist positions to her biography and the question of whether to write in English or Welsh, positioning herself on more solid ground. The third lecture is perhaps the most successful of the three. It explores how poetic techniques such as metaphor and rhyme can be understood through the quantum science of entanglement. Lewis suggests ‘there’s a deep congruence between the structure of the physical world and poetry itself’, using Welsh-language poetry as an example. She shows how the mutations of Welsh give words ‘a quantum fuzziness at their edges, the sound they make is purely relational’. The strict form of cynghanedd demonstrates this well and Lewis’s arguments are convincingly applied to her material. Lewis’s style is very readable and she uses wonderfully expressive turns of phrase to clarify often complex ideas. One of my favourite examples is, ‘If free verse is paddling in the sea,’ then cynghanedd is ‘kite surfing’. In all three lectures she draws on her book-length poem A Hospital Odyssey , published by Bloodaxe in 2010, to reflect on her own poetic practice. She also makes use of her translations of Dafydd ap Gwilym’s poems and Shakespeare’s The Tempest . There’s a great deal of fascinating material here. Though some elements warrant expansion and greater depth, it’s certainly an intriguing start for a potentially longer, more rigorous work. It will no doubt prove useful for those who wish to learn more about Gwyneth Lewis’s poetry, the brilliance of which stands out in this book.