Where is the ‘now’?

(Pussy Riot performing in Moscow before the arrest of certain members.)

 

By THEA LENARDUZZI

“Where are we now?” is a
phrase that has been on many lips, and on virtually every radio station, since
David Bowie released a song of that title earlier this year. 
But last night the question was posed by Grey Gowrie, a man whose credentials – he is a self-declared
neo-classicist, “neither Romantic nor progressive”, and former Culture
Minister under Margaret Thatcher – suggest little in common with Bowie apart
from the near-rhyme of their surnames – and even this depends on your
(mis)pronunciation of the song writer's name (for the record, it rhymes with
“doughy”, as said of a bad pizza base, not TOWIE, the acronymic title of the
reality television show The Only Way is
Essex).

Last night – in neither
Berlin nor Brentwood, but Mayfair – Gowrie delivered the first in a series
of four lectures on the theme “The Promise of Freedom”, part of a salon hosted
by the Legatum think tank to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the coronation of
Queen Elizabeth II. Gowrie set out to consider the relationship between British
and American culture, from 1953 to the
present, with a particular focus on poetry. He is to be followed by Sandy
Nairne on Portraiture, Sir John Taverner on Music and, finally, on May 23, Dame
Harriet Walter on Theatre.

Having reiterated the
rights to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” prerequisite to
all discussion on the role of the arts in a free and prosperous society, Gowrie – whose own poems
have appeared in the TLS – discussed how poetry has, in its way, promoted the ideal of “freedom in service” that
is a central tenet of the Queen’s reign. To illustrate his belief in the power
of poets to “move a lot of weight”, he provided us each with a booklet –
its own weight and design similar to that of an Order of Service – from which
he read some of his “favourite” poems and bits of verse. We heard work from
both sides of the Atlantic, from W. H. Auden’s “The Fall of Rome” (in which
“Agents of the Fisc pursue / Absconding tax-defaulters through / The sewers of
provincial towns”) and Alan Dugan; to Robert Frost (“Earth’s the right place
for love. / I don’t know where it’s likely to go better”) and Wallace Stevens
(whom Gowrie described as having a voice that, were it ascribed a price, would
be “very expensive indeed”).

Few of us in the room
needed to be converted to the belief that “collectively poets can be quite
predictive”, that they can “advise and warn”, and each riff on the theme was
well-chosen and appreciated – I think, particularly, of one from Carlos
Williams’s “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”, which goes: “It is difficult / to
get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what
is found there.” “I would happily do
this all night”, Gowrie admitted.

But where does the “now” of the lecture’s title
come into it? A pertinent question came from an audience member who wondered
whether poets were “now” socially, and intellectually, more marginal and
whether, if this was the case, it was because of the prosperity that had made
poetry (more) possible – in short had prosperity killed the poet?

Indeed, it is odd that
while discussing prosperity – social, cultural, financial – the internet should have gone unmentioned. Following on from Gowrie’s claim that “people who are free to
shop, are free to think”, uncensored access to the internet has increased the
political role played by the arts in bringing it to the attention of a global
audience – internet shoppers, if you will. We are now aware of the political context motivating artists in all corners of the world – Ai Wei Wei in China, for example, and the Russian
punk-rock group (I stop short of calling them poets) Pussy Riot – in a way that we could not have been before. They are, to quote a
line by R. S. Thomas, read out by Gowrie, “at the switchboard / of the
exchanges of the people.”

Referring to the “pained
conservatism” of Auden and Eliot’s remorseful poetry, Gowrie reprised the dictum
that “when the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake”. Yet, last night's discussion suggests that
though all may not be as prosperous as we'd like – again, socially, culturally, financially –the walls of the British and American establishments aren't exactly trembling with the cries of new voices. 

“Where are we now?” takes on a far more narrow, British
significance, for as Hywel Williams, chairing the salon, pointed out in his
introduction: in 1953 “there was a Conservative government in place and Britain
was bust”; James Bond was big news, Beckett’s Waiting for Godot was proving surprisingly popular with
theatre-goers, and Britten was making waves with his Gloriana, which premiered as part of the coronation celebrations. Sixty
years on, Bond is big news, Beckett is in the theatres, and we are celebrating the centenary of Britten’s birth with a roster of new
books (to be reviewed in the TLS soon…) and performances of his back catalogue. 

Gowrie’s question should, perhaps, be understood rhetorically, or, if
limited to Britain, easily answered with “exactly where we were” and with, in
Gowrie’s words, “nothing new at all” to say: the Greats are still great. But
what if we rephrase the question slightly? “Where is the ‘now’?”