A Sleepwalk on the Severn

by Alice Oswald

‘This is not a play. This is a poem in several registers, set at night on the Severn Estuary. Its subject is moonrise, which happens five times in five different forms: new moon, half moon, full moon, no moon and moon reborn. Various characters, some living, some dead, all based on real people from the Severn catchment, talk towards the moment of moonrise and are changed by it. The poem, which was written for the 2009 festival of the Severn, aims to record what happens when the moon moves over us – its effect on water and its effect on voices.’ Alice Oswald A Sleepwalk on the Severn is a poem for several voices, set at night on the Severn Estuary. Its subject is moonrise, which happens five times in five different forms: new moon, half moon, full moon, no moon and moon reborn. Various characters, some living, some dead - all based on real people from the Severn catchment - talk towards the moment of moonrise and are changed by it. Commissioned for the 2009 festival of the Severn, Alice Oswald's breathtakingly original new work aims to record what happens when the moon moves over the sublunary world: its effect on water and its effect on language.

Genres: Poetry, Nature

48 pages, Paperback

First published April 2, 2009

About the author

Alice Oswald (born 1966) is a British poet who won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002.

Oswald read Classics at New College, Oxford, has worked as a gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden, and today lives with her husband, the playwright Peter Oswald (also a trained classicist), and her three children in Devon, in the South-West of England.

Alice Oswald is the sister of actor Will Keen and writer Laura Beatty.

In 1994, she was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection of poetry, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), won a Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) in 1996, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1997.

Her second collection, Dart (2002), combined verse and prose, which tells the story of the River Dart in Devon from a variety of perspectives. Jeanette Winterson called it a "... moving, changing poem, as fast-flowing as the river and as deep... a celebration of difference... " . Dart won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002.

In 2004, Oswald was named as one of the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation poets. Her collection Woods etc., published in 2005, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year).

In 2009 she published both A Sleepwalk on the Severn and Weeds and Wildflowers, which won the inaugural Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.

In October 2011, Oswald published her 6th collection, Memorial.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alice Oswald is a great poet. In my opinion she possiblbly the greatest contemporary poet in Britain today. I can't praise her work highly enough. And this is a unique piece of work, unclassifiable, with lines and phrases that simply soar, yet are deeply rooted in the real earth.

[Judi Moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an oddity. It looks like a play, but isn't - it's a poem with stage directions. In places it is achingly lyrical. Some of the descriptions of night (moonlit or not) on a marsh are truly scrumptious. The thoughts of the characters inhabiting the marsh/poem at night are also sometimes beautifully original. Occasionally, however, it was more difficult to work out what one was being told. The description of the Severn Bore is a wonder. Worth getting the book for that alone.

The reason I've given it only 4 stars is because of the very small, confusing font used for character names and scene tags. Also the margins are a bit skimpy. The look of the thing on the page (and the usefulness of some of the text) is thus undermined.

Nevertheless - it's an very interesting addition to Alice Oswald's body of work, and I encourage you to look out more of it if she's new to you. Also to hear her perform her work if she arrives at a venue anywhere near you. Her rendition of her 'Memorial' is riveting.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alice Oswald's books are always surprising you in some way and this is no exception. Her vivid imagination brings places and people into such different perspectives.

[M.B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times a little too like 'Dart' - but maybe that's an inevitable and obvious comparison. I liked this long poem a lot. It walks a fine line between wild lyricism and spare, intelligent luminosity. Usually its foot falls in the right places. Occasionally a bit too 'moony' and rural, a bit too disengaged - but what does that really mean? Some people and places are moony and rural and it's quite beautiful and valid. Gave me Lorca-ish chills in places, reminded me of some of his plays. Liked the collection of the dead in the river, and the very English (ie Anglo-Saxon) riff of names - at times the poem is a love litany to those heavy wonderful syllabic sounds. Of course there's flute music (I mean that sincerely; it feels right). Oswald was right to publish this as pamphlet I think, rather than spin the commission out into full collection-length poem - which would make comparisons to 'Dart' even more inevitable. She should steer clear of rivers for a bit? Great to read it on the day the Rothay was pulling back into its banks after flooding.

[Ben Doeh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A slighter river-poem than Dart, but just as magical.

[Matt Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeously descriptive.
The play/poem structure is really fun.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

As this book-length poem and Oswald's inimitable poem Dart both centre on the life of a river, it's hard not to compare the two. However, very little work in the English language could stand a close comparison with the strange genius of Dart and it's more interesting to view A Sleepwalk on the Severn on its own terms. Centering on the Severn estuary, Oswald explores the different stages of the moon's cycle. This narrative poem appears in the form of a play, but the stage directions are part of the poem, and in them, the narrator talks directly to the reader. Oswald is interested in writing in different registers and exploring the effect our surroundings have on our speech, and she uses the structure of a play as a way to do this. At times, this is confusing, and some of the "scenes" feel too slight, but overall, her robust and original language provides strong roots for her experiments. The most evocative parts of the poem are those spoken by the "chorus" -- which, in this circumstance, functions like a chorus in a Greek play -- which reflects on the different stages of the moon. Her language is so interesting and fits so well in the mouth that is begs to be spoken aloud, as in this stanza, spoken by the chorus at half moon:

This night is half moon night, half liquid every roof
This night a half out snail half feels the moonbraile
And things half seen wax and wane in the wind
Their leaves grow sharp and almost blue then blind

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book of poems or, shhh, a verse play, originally published in the UK nine years ago but only now appearing in the US, by the always rewarding Alice Oswald is ever a cause of celebration. Oswald’s brief introduction begins, “This is not a play.” And, of course, this is not a pipe, he says puffing on the stem of a contraption that at its opposite end has a bowlful of lit cherry tobacco. Why the insistence? There are characters here (but so there are in Dart, Ms. Oswald’s amazing poem about the river of that name) and a prologue and sections that could be scenes or acts, in which character interact with one another, but that are not numbered but titled by moon phases: New Moon, Half Moon, Full Moon, No Moon, Moon Reborn. There is also humor of a theatrical kind.

So were it a play you might think of Stoppard or Dylan Thomas’s Under Milkwood. But by the end of this slender volume I wasn’t thinking as much of Stoppard or Thomas but of the South African artist William Kentridge and some of his own genre defying video art works that are animated dance dramas, progressing across the room in looping sequences that mystify and captivate viewers as they go around and then around again. Oswald performs a similar magic with words. She calls it “a poem in several registers, set at night on the Severn Estuary.” Whatever it is or isn’t, it’s a treat to read.

[james · Rating 4 out of 5]

'[chorus:] The night de-mists the dreamworld / This night is born the half strength shadow / Still pooling under my feet still half transfused / It's like I blot the world like on wet paper / This night it's lovely to stroll out / On a moon-walk sleepwatching on your feet / I'm going to stare up half this night / And then proceed by dreamsight, moonstinct.'

//

[see reviews for The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile & Woods etc.]

While initially mesmerised by this, I was ready to treat it – over Dart – as the apotheosis of Oswald's aesthetic ideals; on reflection, I'm not so sure. Dart is, particularly on a micro-mimetic/defamiliarising-sonic/phonic level, insurmountable.

I have real affection for Sleepwalk though – it's easily my favourite casual read of Oswald's. It felt extremely homely, oddly. A stillness punctuated by interruptions – Shh! – did you hear that? – this night-soundscape is resided over by two blind wanderers in tandem: Oswald and the Moon.

Would earnestly recommend this to anyone.

[Peter Schmidt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wanted to like this example of the new eco-poetry, but like most contemporary British poetry this is too timid and repetitive. Which is sad, since Oswald's founding idea of doing a long poem as a fantastical dream drama set in the marshlands was an inspiring one.

For a better imagination of the marshlands as an alternative vision of England's post-industrial future—and also a work grounded in Dickensian portraiture of quirky people and a mystical sense of nature's power—see Philip Pullman's novel The Golden Compass (US title; the UK title is The Northern Lights). It's part of his His Dark Materials trilogy.

[Andy Oram · Rating 5 out of 5]

The source of the magic in this book-length (but highly structured) poem is elusive. The magic lies in things half-started and then left unfinished or directed into unexpected channels. The poet keeps you on guard all the time, using everyday language ("The rain I'm ok with") and then whipping into mysterious metaphors and even dreamlike nonsense. One enters the eternity of nature through the details.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first words of the book are "This is not a play" which of course makes me want to see it produced as one, maybe like one of the Noh influenced productions of Yeats' "At the Hawk's Well." What could be more dramatic than all that water flowing on stage or a cast list that includes the Moon and the poet herself in the role of "dream secretary"?

[Jamie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't hate Sleepwalk on the Severn, but it didn't do much for me in comparison to Alice Oswald's other work. I liked probably about a third of this poem, especially the chorus bits. Some stanzas are really beautiful but on balance this one just felt like a lesser Dart.

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really for me, I think. My relationship with the moon is strong and quite different to the poet's. I've never seen the Severn, but I doubt I would relate to it in the same way. It's evocative, and I'd be interested to read other works of Alice Oswald's, but this one missed me.

[Karl Hallbjörnsson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very otherworldly poem that sometimes behaves lile a play. Very poignant and beautiful

[Leilani · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the format of this collection, and I enjoyed some sections of most poems, however nothing has stuck with me

[Radish · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dream-like poem with surprisingly funny moments.

[Paddyspub · Rating 2 out of 5]

3.0/10
I really wish I enjoyed this but I didn't.

[Mer Mayhem · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5

[Simon Sweetman · Rating 4 out of 5]

More great work from Alice. A new favourite.

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

I should have paid more attention to the blurb on the back of this book...I took note of the fact that it was about the Severn but filtered out the part about it being about the moon...this was a mistake on the part of my subconscious, 'cos really, the moon is a done subject for poetry in the same way that spindly Elves and stocky Dwarfs that don't get on well together are a done subject for fantasy fiction...it would take a stupendous act of imagination to find a worthwhile new approach and Oswald does not succeed here.

This poetry is dull and not very poetic and fails to inspire anything in me except an urge to be more diligent about avoiding contemporary poets tackling themes as if the Romantic movement had never happened.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5*

Although I understood the concept of this narrative(?) poem, and, let's be honest, who couldn't when it is so nicely explained on the back and at the start, I still feel I missed so much. All the real, pure genius flew over my head. Some of the magic sunk in in lines and stanzas, but not the whole thing. I enjoyed reading it. With most of Oswald's work even if I don't get it, I am still blown away at times, but with this piece my feet stayed firmly on the ground.

[Bavo · Rating 5 out of 5]

40 pages long poem that is an ode to the night and the moon, and their effects on people. It is gorgeous, lyrical and an almost mystical experience. Read it in one go and you will be bewitched by the magic of words and nature, and the sparks that fly when the two come together -- especially in a marriage as beautiful as this one.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as lovely as Dart, but still more interesting than most poetry I see in book form. Oswald's connections to rivers are obviously deep ones.

[Hanneleele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meeldis, aga ei jätnud nii sügavat jälge, kui oleks võinud.
Või ehk raskemini märgatava ja käegakatsumatumata.