The Broken Word by Adam Foulds

[Douglas]

Adam Foulds is a writer I've been intrigued by for some time. Recently named Granta's Best Young British Novelists, writer Julian Barnes has said he’s “one of the best British writers to emerge in the last decade.” After reading this Homeric prose poem, I can see why.

In this sequence of 10 poems written in narrative verse, Tom, a young British man is sent to his family’s farm in Kenya during the summer before he enters the university. After arriving, he is thrust into the Mau Mau Uprising, a revolt by the native Kikuyu people that sought to gain independence from British rule in the 1950s. The rebellion is violent, brutal, and eventually disproportionately dominated by the British, as also chronicled in the recent non-fiction account, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya.

I don’t know too much about British Imperialism, but by chance, I happened to have also been concurrently reading Beer in the Snooker Club, which details a young Egyptian’s perspective of conflict with Britain at the same time (1950s). It was utterly fascinating to read these two accounts, one from the perspective of a young Brit (The Broken Word) and the other from a victim of Imperialism (Beer in the Snooker Room) at the same time.

In this poem, Tom walks through the coffee fields and hears the ritual worship of Ngai, the supreme God of Kikuyu. He's reminded of the liturgical hymns of chapel back in England. The last stanza wakes him from this memory and foreshadows the coming futility of violence.

4)Facing Ngai

Mid-morning after rain.
Mountains flowing rapidly under clouds.
The valley paths a freshened red
with yellow puddles, glittering weeds.

Tom walked between the lines
of coffee for half a mile,
knocking fragments
of water onto his sleeves --
little bubble lenses
that magnified the weave
then broke, darkening in.
He walked to within earshot
and no further.

A surprisingly dull sound of ceremony,
one voice then many voices,
one voice then many voices,
that recalled school chapel
although probably they were spared hymns.
Tom remembered the hymns,
the light, weakly coloured by the windows,
falling on the boys opposite,
standing, opening their mouths;
and the hymn books,
the recurrent pages greyish,
worn hollow like flagstones
with pressure of thumbs, over years,
years of terms, the books staying always
on their dark shelves in the pews.
The days he wanted to stay
all day alone in the pretty, scholarly chapel.

And then over the voices,
another sound.
Faintly, from behind the house,
Kate practising with a pistol,
its faint, dry thwacks
a fly butting against a window pane.

The grand build of these poems left me in awe. The last poem (10) was my favorite. In this poem, Tom returns and settles into university life, and he’s urged (society, family, and a personal desire to conform) to forget his experiences in Kenya and carry on with life as if nothing happened. He clearly has what we now call PTSD. To all around him, he’s a typical young man, but inside he’s scarred and decomposing. His passion, once characterized by restraint and innocence, now harbors aggression and a subtle viciousness.

This is an excellent narrative poetry collection that is easy to understand, powerful in scope, and beautifully composed.

[Douglas]

I hope I posted this correctly?

[Jenna]

Yep, looks like you posted it correctly! And welcome to the group!

Thanks for this review: I'd never heard of this poet before, actually. While I admit that the writing of the excerpt you provided, with its "recurrent pages" and its "pretty, scholarly chapel," didn't immediately win me over, your review makes a good argument for how this book may succeed as a whole due to a strong narrative arc and a willingness to interrogate important moral and sociopolitical issues. I'll look for this one the next time I'm at the bookstore.

[Douglas]

Jenna wrote: "Yep, looks like you posted it correctly! And welcome to the group!

Thanks for this review: I'd never heard of this poet before, actually. While I admit that the writing of the excerpt you provided..."

Thank you, Jenna. I agree. I almost hesitated quoting this collection because its language is not always musical or poetic. However, the build of the sequence is powerfully impacting.

It reads like a short story in verse. But, I think it succeeds as poetry for what it excludes and the atmosphere it creates.

I usually like my poetry to sing. This didn't do that, but it did evoke something fiery.

[Jen]

Wonderful review, Douglas. I love how you said reading another book at the same time enhanced your understanding. I was won over by the first two stanzas of the section you provided. Considering what you told us beforehand, it is redolent with meaning beyond the simple beautiful description. That said, I suspect this is a book that is even more powerful read a second time to see how tightly knitted together it is.

I'm going to agree and disagree with the two phrases that Jenna pointed out. I agree that "recurrent" is an awkward word choice. However I think "pretty, scholarly chapel" is intentionally saccharine, even to the point of being sarcastic.

I'll be curious to see if Don, our current expert on epic-length poetry, pick this up for a read. I'm definitely putting it on my amazon wish list.

[J.S.]

I read this a while back and am largely in agreement with Douglas. It wasn't poetry that grabbed me up close and personal to begin with, but as the narrative unfolds the imagery, resonance and things said and unsaid builds and makes for a powerful and thought provoking epic. The length supports the build up and reverberations of image, story lines and recurring themes.

[Douglas]

Jen wrote: "Wonderful review, Douglas. I love how you said reading another book at the same time enhanced your understanding. I was won over by the first two stanzas of the section you provided. Considering wh..."

Thank you, Jen. I'm fascinated by what's been brought up about the word, "recurrent". I'm somewhat new to poetry reading, but it didn't strike me as an odd word choice at first. I've been recently reading books about how to even read and truly appreciate poetry. I know that the very sound of a word is important and how it would be read aloud. Also, it's important to consider the imagery a word evokes. To me, "recurrent", sounds almost Microsoft-like - a word for the digital age, not to be infused with the 50's. Then, I thought about the sound of the word. I suppose it does sound odd, but then again, the author is British. Perhaps the hard "r" sound is not as offending to a British accent? I'm from Texas, so with a full Texan accent, the word is awful. (I admit, Texan twang is not good for any words. Ha!) I'm so curious to hear more thoughts about this word.

[Douglas]

Don wrote: "Thanks for posting this. Fascinating. I had recently read something by Jomo Kenyatta and was glad to learn of Beer in the Snooker Club of which I was unaware. And, yes, Jen - I definitely will pi..."

Thank you. I will also look up Kenyatta. Beer in the Snooker Club is a rediscovery of sorts. Highly recommend. I'm not sure The Broken Word is epic in scope, it's more of a glimpse of one person's view of the conflict. I may have been wrong to call it Homeric in that sense. In theme and structure, I think it's akin. I look forward to your thoughts.

[Douglas]

J.S. wrote: "I read this a while back and am largely in agreement with Douglas. It wasn't poetry that grabbed me up close and personal to begin with, but as the narrative unfolds the imagery, resonance and thin..."

I agree, J.S. What's left unsaid is conjuring.

[J.S.]

Douglas wrote: "Jen wrote: "Wonderful review, Douglas. I love how you said reading another book at the same time enhanced your understanding. I was won over by the first two stanzas of the section you provided. Co..."

I don't have a problem with recurrent. It's slightly formal, which suits it's role in the verse, but a fairly normal word which I use quite often, but then I am British.

[Jen]

As you noted, Douglas, and J.S. seems to have confirmed, it may be a matter of difference between American and British usage. Like you, it has a technical feel to me or used in reference to a machine's action. It's rarely used in the states in casual language and seems out of place in an otherwise warm reminiscence. I could speculate on it being inserted to suggest the mechanical nature of the routine but from what J.S. said, I think it's just a difference in connotation across the pond.

[Douglas]

Very interesting. I love the discussion. It helps me understand how to read poetry better and to pay more attention to each word's use.

[Jenna]

The word choice "recurrent" annoyed me because it seems ever-so-slightly inexact --- the meaning of "recurrent" is closer to "repeated" than "repetitive," at least where I come from --- but it seems inexact in a way that isn't evocative or interesting, just inexact. As others have commented above, regional differences in usage may partly account for this. To talk about "mountains flowing" and "fragments of water" is also inexact, but it's inexact in a way that's easier to accept as being intentionally done for metaphorical purposes. Tripping over the word "recurrent," however, caused me to go back and reevaluate those earlier phrasings: those images had been a bit hard for me to "buy" in the first place, and struggling with the word "recurrent" didn't make that any easier for me. While we're on the subject, I also stumbled a bit when I first read the phrase "opening their mouths" because, where I'm from, the phrase "open the mouth" principally means "to actively move the lips apart" rather than "to be caught in freeze-frame while having one's lips parted," and this led me to wonder why all these people were parting their lips at the exact same moment (instead of some mouths being caught in the act of closing while others were in the act of opening, which seems like a much likelier situation, given that no human choir can be in perfect synchronicity). Normally, this might not bother me, but in the setting of the other not-quite-precise-feeling phrases, it did trip me up a little. (Not enough to ruin my enjoyment of the excerpt or anything; in fact, I wouldn't be commenting on this at all if you hadn't specifically asked!)

I can only describe my own subjective experience as one individual reader; not trying to be prescriptive or anything.

[Jen]

Great addition to the discussion, Don. It could be that the hymnal pages are a metaphor for memory, ghostlike memories. Definitely speaks of the complexity of the work as does Jenna's comment about other language she found jarring.

[Douglas]

Utterly fascinating, both Jenna and Don. I'm so new to poetry reading. I've actually considered taking some courses to help my reading, but I wonder if I'll learn more by participating in this group discussion than I would a class.

I'm not sure if Foulds considered PTSD in this work, but Tom clearly exhibits the symptoms in the latter poems. I need to read again to see if I can find any other allusions to PTSD.

Jenna, what would be a more precise way to describe "opening the mouths" in this context in your opinion? The image that I see is of a choir, with mouth's agape, perhaps singing, "Halleluiah" or something that requires a fair amount of movement. He's reminded of this after hearing the Kikuyu people worshiping. He doesn't actually see them because we know:

"He walked to within earshot
and no further."

What he sees is a memory. Perhaps the memory is not fluid or moving, but a fixed portrait of the choir in mid-stride? I don't know?

[Jenna]

If the line had read "standing, their mouths open" or, as you suggest, "standing, mouths agape," I would have had no difficulty with it. And I absolutely agree with your interpretation that what he sees is a memory, because "he walked to within earshot and no further." We were never in disagreement on that point. If he were indeed experiencing the memory in a static/fixed mode, that would be all the more reason to choose against the phrasing "opening their mouths." I would be similarly (mildly) bemused if I were to come across a sentence in a book that went something like "The soldiers' corpses sprawled on the grass, opening their mouths" rather than "The soldiers' corpses sprawled on the grass, their mouths open." Again, these are just minor snags (I don't really want to use the word "nitpicks," since, as I said, what I'm trying to do here is describe my subjective reading experience rather than make an objective value judgment).

[Douglas]

Jenna wrote: "If the line had read "standing, their mouths open" or, as you suggest, "standing, mouths agape," I would have had no difficulty with it. And I absolutely agree with your interpretation that what he..."

I really appreciate your views. The dialogue and literary criticism will improve my reading and understanding, and it also highlights how hard the craft really is. Thanks!

[Sarah]

Great to walk into this fascinating discussion (fashionably late!). I read Foulds' The Quickening Maze a couple years ago, a novel about the poet John Clare, but didn't know he wrote poetry himself.
From the excerpt it also seems to me like poetry that would have a cumulative impact rather than dazzling the reader with images and turns of phrase. I did enjoy the writing, though, such as:

The valley paths a freshened red
with yellow puddles, glittering weeds.
*

Kate practising with a pistol,
its faint, dry thwacks
a fly butting against a window pane.

Thanks for reviewing, Douglas. Great to have you in our group.
sarah

[Douglas]

Thank you. I really enjoy this group. It's already improved my understanding and appreciation for the craft of poetry.

I really liked that last stanza. It's one of the best images of futility. The fly inanely trying to escape a closed window. Even though he uses it to describe another character's gun practice, I think it also alludes to the futility of war and colonialism.

[Brendan]

I also enjoyed this book when I read it a couple of years ago, but I do have to quibble with one part of your review: It isn't a "sequence" of ten poems but a single poem in ten parts. Its subtitle is "An Epic Poem of the British Empire in Kenya, and the Mau Mau Uprising Against It."

[Douglas]

Brendan wrote: "I also enjoyed this book when I read it a couple of years ago, but I do have to quibble with one part of your review: It isn't a "sequence" of ten poems but a single poem in ten parts. Its subtitle..."

Thank you, Brendan. I missed that entirely. It makes me want to go back and read it again.