Norman Jope (U.K.)
Richard Berengarten at 80
I first encountered Richard’s work – naturally, under his previous name of Burns – in the summer of 1982, immediately after I’d graduated. Appropriately, I did so in Cambridge, on a daytrip from a nearby town where I was staying with a friend from university. In those days, finding out about interesting new poetry was a different kind of enterprise and I relied, to a great extent, on browsing the shelves of bookshops such as Heffers, Foyles, Oriel and even Plymouth’s own Chapter and Verse. It could rely on hunches as much as on anything else.
In Richard’s case, it was the title of the book – Avebury – that would have led me to pick it out, as I’m drawn to the poetry of places both as writer and reader. I’d recently co-hosted a memorable reading by Jeremy Hooker at Lampeter and this appeared to occupy similar territory. On opening the book, I was also struck by the form of the poetry which was strongly redolent of the work of Octavio Paz – someone whose work I’d discovered three years earlier and to which I’d been immediately drawn. So I used some of my scarce poetry-buying resources to purchase the book – I enjoyed and appreciated it, but for various reasons (including my own disengagement from the public poetry scene until towards the end of the Eighties) the trail went cold.
Fast-forwarding to 2005, I’d reviewed a couple of Richard’s collections and was unexpectedly approached by Salt’s Chris Hamilton-Emery. The proposition was that I’d edit a book of essays about Richard’s work that would contain around a dozen contributions and run to approximately two hundred pages. As I was in full-time employment (as an administrator, rather than an academic, in higher education) and trying to make headway with my own writing, it was a tight decision. However, my admiration for Richard’s work and, in particular, his identification as a ʹEuropean poet writing in Englishʹ – an identification that in fact sells him short, as he is nothing if not international – persuaded me that this was worth a try.
Six years later, the Companion – containing over thirty contributions and running to over four hundred pages – appeared from Salt and has since been republished by Shearsman. In response to the project’s expansion, I was joined by two diligent and enthusiastic colleagues – Paul Scott Derrick and Catherine E. Byfield – and, with Richard’s untiring help and support, the project was brought to fruition.
My involvement was quixotic – given my other commitments, and the fact that I had no aspirations to an academic career by then – but I’ve no regrets about it, partly because of the stimulating nature of the work and the contacts that I made, and partly because the range and resonance of Richard’s oeuvre deserves that depth of treatment. He is, quite simply, one of the outstanding contemporary poets writing in English that I know of but, beyond that, his international reach appears to me unparalleled.
Indeed, the global range of the Companion, and subsequent critical work, suggests that his work might be read and studied worldwide – both in the original and in translation – in a way that won’t apply to any other English poet of his era. Moreover, at a time of hardening borders, his expansive and outward-looking approach seems both necessary and subversive in response to the nativist onslaught.
What was the then-Richard Burns doing on that July day in 1982? I’ve wondered if he happened to be in Heffers at the very same time as I was, a thirty-nine-year old in the vicinity of a twenty-two-year old me… looking on as I took Avebury from the shelf but saying nothing, letting me be the judge.
Back to introduction here.
Next contribution here.