John Phillips, Language Being Time

 

THE POINT

Why add more
words to the
too many there
already no one
pays much
attention to or
acts differently
after reading
as if the point of
it all were acting
differently which
hopelessly it is

It took some time for me to get to, but I am finally moving through British poet and expat currently living “in the hills of central Slovenia,” John Phillips’ fifth full-length poetry collection Language Being Time (Shearsman Books, 2024), a book that follows his Language Is (Sardines Press, 2005), What Shape Sound (Skysill Press, 2011), Heretic (Longhouse, 2016) and Shape of Faith (Shearsman Books, 2017) [see my review of such here]. His short lyrics each sit the small measure of a koan, thoughtfully offered and considered, held with a small turn. His are not the extreme and casual densities of poems by such as Cameron Anstee [see my review of his latest here] or the late Nelson Ball [see my review of his selected poems here], but something quieter, looser, and at times, more flexible, subtle.

He writes in small turns, poems that occasionally offer a narrative hinge mid-way, where the poem might alter direction, or a straight line heading somewhere other than you might have been thinking, through a deeply thoughtful and engaged poetics. Listen to this short poem, “DISPENSATION,” in full, that reads: “History begins / when loss is / saying what / no one present / understands / this going / towards when / & where / no tense / makes sense [.]” As well, I appreciate this note set just at the end of his acknowledgements, hinting at further engagements, which I would be interested to hearing more than this single hint of what is most likely far larger, and ongoing (including with another favourite of mine, American poet John Levy): “Certain poems are from collaborations with John Levy and James Stallard in which we responded to each other’s words.”

REPLY

This poem isn’t written
until you finish
                          reading it

 

John Phillips, Shape of Faith

READING

Reading Jean Daive on his friend Paul Celan: struck by this sentence: a stranger to nothing in this world. Looking back through the book, I can’t find those words anywhere. Yet swear I read it this afternoon, sitting on the bench in the garden, while my daughter Lana slept upstairs and the house was otherwise empty. It was a line that pierced me. Perhaps because my first reaction to it, however brief, was positive. Then the shock, the revulsion: that someone could say that about another person; that it could be true.

I’m intrigued by British poet John Phillips’ fourth full-length poetry collection, Shape of Faith (Shearsman Books, 2017), following his Language Is (Sardines Press, 2005), What Shape Sound (Skysill Press, 2011) and Heretic (Longhouse, 2016). The threads of his influence in this collection are clear and multiple, building a collection as much as a collage of forms and purpose as one constructed with a singular, stylistic focus. Composing a series of lyrics of sparse, tight phrases (akin to the poems of Canadian poet Nelson Ball) to prose poems, Phillips’ Shape of Faith includes a variety of pieces situated between the short lyric and the prose structure. Through form, subject and dedication, Phillips references Gael Turnbull, Theodore Enslin, Dag Hammarskjöld, Robert Lax, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Michael Palmer, Paul Celan, Fernando Pessoa, Keith Waldrop, John Levy, Randolph Healy, Cid Corman and Ian Hamilton Finlay. Given this is the first collection of Phillip’s I’ve read, I’m curious to know if this is an ongoing consideration of his work, or if this collection is constructed specifically as a series of homages to other writers, allowing his reading to more obviously and overtly influence his work. The effect is compelling, but occasionally the results don’t strike. Somehow, it’s in the poles where his lyric seems most effective, whether composing a straight prose poem, such as “THEORY OF COMPOSITION,” or in a densely packed, sparse lyric such as “MOUNTAINS & RIVERS” or “READING,” that writes:

Remember

these words

know more

than you

you came here

for a purpose

no word

could give.

Either way, the mix is quite striking, and am curious to see what else he has done (and might do in the future).