Favourite Books of 2011: Nox & Four Quartets

Here’s the last installment. And yes, finally, some poetry. I have to admit I don’t read an awful lot of poetry in comparison to fiction – reading is usually pure escapism, I want to dive into another world and totally immerse myself – but when I do dip my mind into the poetic pool I find some mighty fine fishies.

TS Eliot's Four Quartets

I’ve been involved in Southwell Poetry Festival for two years now, and it’s been a fantastic experience – inspiring workshops, talks and readings by library staff and poets famous and not-so-famous, poetry pub crawls… but for me the most memorable event was a reading in Southwell Library by the Nottingham Stanza group of the whole of TS Eliot’s Four Quartets. There were 13 of us in four groups, each taking one Quartet and dividing it up into sections. An oboist played at the beginning and end of each Quartet while we shuffled on and off the stage. The whole event lasted over an hour, and it was absolutely amazing. It was the one event I heard people talking about again and again for the rest of the festival, and it was a real privilege to take part. I’d read bits of the Four Quartets previously, and listened to a recording of Burnt Norton, but to hear the whole thing from start to finish in a variety of voices was just… there aren’t the adjectives to describe it.

I read a section from East Coker – the second Quartet, and also coincidentally a village just down the road from where my mother lives in West Dorset. I persuaded her to take us there on a ‘fact-finding mission’ last Easter.

Images of East Coker

We’ll hopefully be reading from Paradise Lost this year, in Southwell Minster, which promises to be even more amazing.

Nox by Anne Carson

My final favourite book of 2011 is Nox by Anne Carson. This goes back to the theme of books as beautiful objects containing beautiful words. It is a printed version of an elegy she created for her brother. Originally put together in a notebook, the book is printed on one long strip of paper which is concertinaed into folds and presented in a sturdy and gorgeous box. Nox takes Catullus’s poem 101 (an elegy for his brother) as its starting point, and gradually translates it through the document. At the same time she remembers her brother, questions why she needs to memorialise him, and tries to work out how to do it. The words, the pictures, the presentation, everything about this book is stunning.

I wanted to fill my elegy with light of all kinds. But death makes us stingy. There is nothing more to be expended on that, we think, he’s dead. Love cannot alter it. Words cannot add to it. No matter how I try to evoke the starry lad he was, it remains a plain, odd history. So I began to think about history.

Wow.

Tune in again this time next year* for my pick of 2012′s reading material. I’ve already got 8 books on my list, one of which might make it to my favourites and two of which definitely won’t!

*or you could carry on reading throughout the year to see what mad schemes I get myself involved in, if you like…