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Waterstones in Hull are extremely supportive of
Hull & East Riding writers, and carry a stock of many of the books mentioned on this site.
T.F. Griffin
The features that make T.F. Griffin's poetry different
were in evidence from the start: a sensiblity forged in opposition, a Blakean sense of vision, and a refusal to conform to
literary trends and fashions - all of which have given his poetry its distinctive character and its values. This spirit of
independence has marked Griffin's career and has added considerably to its particular strength and sensitivity, allowing
him to develop into a poet of extraordinary ability. Sometimes difficult, never obscure, Griffin often reaches out for some
emotional or intellectual truth which lies just outside our grasp and, in doing so, makes it alive for us. Griffin's flame
burns slowly, but it burn deeply too.
Perhaps Peter Didsbury has come closer than most in
understanding the nature of Griffin's value as a poet when he noted in his work a determination 'to chart the struggle
towards the acts of faith by which, faced with annihilation, one chooses and decides to continue to choose to love'.
(Ian Parks).
"The Awakening"
View Ian Parks' account of the book launch at Flux Gallery
When you first meet T.F. Griffin, you are told that he was the anointed son of both St. Philip Larkin and St. Ted Hughes. Indeed, Larkin is said to have declared that if he had not been born a Larkin he would have liked to have emerged from the womb as a Griffin instead.
Yet, when you first read his work, your immediate reaction is “Why?”. Larkin’s verse is characterised by plain language and a rigorous clarity which he magically alchemises beyond the words. Griffin’s comes top-lacquered with an intense, shimmering, obscuring neo-Romantic varnish.
Griffin’s opus requires work – a stiff brush and a strong paint-stripper.
Maybe your next question will be “Why bother?”, except that when any artist has so evidently and painstakingly constructed his or her unique landscape, it is normally worth the effort to try to map it.
And so it proves with Griffinland, the country of inevitable loss, mists and consolatory Arcadian epiphanies, and then you realise what Larkin, Hughes and Griffin all have in common – a relentless sense of horror and despair with regard to the structural nature of the world where whatever one cherishes will sooner or later be crushed by the implacable forces of devastation.
Most people’s favourite Griffin poem is “The Photograph”, a reflection on what is happening behind the smiles of the very photograph reproduced on the front cover of his definitive new collection “The Awakening”. This is one of his most accessible poems, and it simultaneously tells the story of the surface appearance of the photograph itself and of the later bitter ideological disputes with his father (“Grinning as you always did”), and his sense of abandonment by his mother (“She was out of things even then”) who is taking the picture.
However, for me, his quintessential piece is “Dead Friend”, which could almost be renamed “A Poet Foresees His Fate”, or “A Poet Shapes His Fate”, or “Dazed Man Walking”, with its observations on a friend’s courage, humanity and self-abandonment accompanying him to his death. In fact, he dedicates many of his best compositions to his friends – “For Tony Earnshaw”, “Kavita”, “Frank”, Mary Cann”, “Kavi’s Rose”, “For Des McHale”, “Tessa” – spectacularly evocative, ‘eulogaic’ images of the dead and of the dying.
Or try this – his “Lark’s Song”:
There is the sun. Looking up, a lark Practising for death.
My eye is loaded with dynamite; A floundering love, The sort that watches the lark practice.
One of Larkin’s favourites was “The Pursuer”, an oblique reflection on self-love and fate, but he clearly had many others he appreciated too. Indeed, the extraordinary thing about TF Griffin is that as hard as he is to get into, once you connect, his work becomes a miraculous secret garden you are fully loathe to leave – it is a thicket of forlorn love, regret and wisdom growing densely between fatal rocks.
I feel like Ian Anderson in his last line on ‘A Minstrel in the Gallery’ – “I can’t get out!”, and nor do I want to any more, although maybe he does. (TR).
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