POETRY REVIEW 2: Tim Cresswell, Soil, Fence, Plastiglomerate

Tim Cresswell, Soil, London: Penned in the Margins, 2013/2020 (£9.99, paperback, ISBN:978-1-908058-15-7)

Tim Cresswell, Fence, London: Penned in the Margins, 2015/2020 (£9.99, paperback, ISBN: 978-1-908058-31-7).

Tim Cresswell, Plastiglomerate, Penned in the Margins, 2015/2020 (£9.99, paperback, ISBN: 978-1-908058-76-8).

Reviewer: Rodanthi Tzanelli

The idea that a neatly organised volume of rhymed ideas mushrooms out of nowhere betrays an ill-informed view on the ways poets arrive at a beautiful and/or politically informed product. Likewise, the claim that poets manufacture well-organised ‘trilogies’ without a great deal of a posteriori engineering – both in terms of self-narration and promotion – projects a flat picture of works with a deep passion for language and ideas. Works of passion are uneven and occasionally also contingent results of one’s craft, regardless of the mentorship one enjoys to perfect what one does. I find that this is the case with Tim Cresswell’s self-proclaimed trilogy ‘Earthworks’: the product of a beautifully crafted, but also often uneven, labour of love that developed across a decade, each of the three books (Soil, 2013; Fence, 2015; and Plastiglomerate, 2020) is self-standing, both stylistically and conceptually.

This is not an accusation – had this been the case, the reviewer would have acted in bad faith, given her recently published trilogy (the production of whose poems dates as far back as the late 1990s). Rather, it is an observation on the manifestation of a common structure in presenting poetic ideas in published form, behind which uniqueness and an unconfessed commitment to particular idea(l)s hide. To properly review Cresswell’s work I would need more space than I have here. As a compromise, I endeavour to provide some vignettes from his three books, which I consider significant, if one wants to unearth both commonalities and unconfessed commitments (an arc or series of arcs). Cresswell has consistently received praise for his work, in which his “scientific eye” is stressed somehow disproportionally over his sentimental and aesthetic/emotional moments. Resorting to such typifications is both understandable (he is a well-known geographer in academia) and not entirely accurate. It is possible that because we belong to the same international and interdisciplinary network of the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ I can provide an alternative look into his work.

I do not see his books as a trilogy, but an intricate referential web in which we find the effects of modern human behaviour on society and natural life. Cresswell is a humanist at heart (he is a declared disciple of the late humanist geographer Y.F. Tuan), so even when his writing focuses on pollution (as is the case in the Plastiglomerate), he is reluctant to decentre the human voice from his poetic scenario. The rare appearance of anti-humanist philosophical voices such as Foucault in Soil begins with an abstract analysis of soil-land-territory only to progress to an intimate discussion with “mother” (possibly a metaphor for earth or land?). Therefore, we are back to interrogating the place of humans in the new scientific principles of abstraction. Humans also constantly travel the high Arctic in search of meaning and belonging where boundaries and borders divide and define:

“This fence: 

metal posts mark out empty intervals

post   space   post   space   post   space

borders   boundaries     beating the bounds

once a year:    post      post      post […]

chainlengths    poles    planks    beams   barbed wire    electric

rips and zaps     snagged clothes      snarls of wood on nails […]”

If not a trilogy, then what? Let me try to walk you through a few signposts scattered across the three books to highlight their hidden arc-plot(s): speaking of water consumption in “A Glass of Water” in Soil announces the appearance of several human actors, who drink several pints of it – “they say my body is sixty percent this”, one of them says. “I thought of France/my family/my friends/the fine sky”, and again, “when I was far from home/when/I was north/when/I had grown accustomed to blue sky […] I stumbled in with my cameras and calamity”,  he proclaims in Fence (xxxv), despite the book’s fascination with the exotic border. “I can’t breathe”, he says, when “Alice” turns up in “Tremor” in Plastiglomerate with nails painted in different colours, “each one a flag that means/something to her”. The human narrator asphyxiates in these snapshots and feels alienated by the fast pace of social change – note that this is the work of one of the leading names in the new mobilities paradigm. Often non-human species assume in his writing anthropomorphic qualities, or, otherwise, the poet assumes the role of an observer of their fortunes in the Anthropocene, often from afar:

“Here come the helicopters

The cameramen, clamouring

For coverage, risking a stampede.

The walruses hunker down

Waiting for a freeze-up.” (“Haul Out”, Plastiglomerate)

It is not always clear whether Cresswell is a virtual traveller or a presenter of real experiences he has collected during his actual journeys. I respect the preservation of this ambiguity as the sign of a successful staging of events. However, the same ambiguity generates a stark contrast in his poetry between his horror towards cultures of speed and his composed use of technologies associated with such cultures to craft stories. I have used this technique deliberately myself, and I wonder to what extent it is a conscious occurrence in his work. I received no actual response to the question I recently asked him on whether he is a magical realist (a theme I spotted in his use of folk myth to weave ideas of transformation in Soil and Plastiglomerate) and wonder whether this is an unconscious trend too. These dispositions work towards one end, which, in my opinion is both magical and poignant.

To me, Cresswell’s ‘trilogy’ presents an alternative narrative of nostalgia, which he prefers to camouflage as an “out of place” poetics of place (a theme in his academic work). If humanist Y.F. Tuan and literary/social theorist Walter Benjamin are among his favourite intellectuals, “Alice” is not in his fictional world. If there is a trace of the “scientific gaze” in his poetry, it is mostly cast upon the ways new age humans behave: they both fascinate him and amplify feelings of uncertainty about the future in some of his poems. When he speaks about transformations in his adaptation of Tam Lin in “Turn” (Soil), I have the feeling that he conveys through erotic and somatosensory language visceral encounters with the unknown, as well as the limits of human articulation of the massive: pollution, social breakdown, and “homelessness”. His affective style is more present and more effective in “Turn” and The “Two Magicians” (Plastiglomerate) than in his shorter poems, such as “A Theory of Migration” (Plastiglomerate), or “Disappointment” (Soil), which have the form (again, intentionally, I suspect) of dry PowerPoint presentations to convey rationalisation and alienation. 

I bought all three books to read them carefully in my spare time, hoping that they will be as interesting as the academic work that Creswell does. I found their themes strangely familiar but also uncanny in their atmospheric presentation. Cresswell is a good stylist, but also a polemicist when it comes to questions of politics. His poetry revealed a different side, more nuanced in its regard and possibly also more in line with the great critical analysts of modernity. Without suggesting “pomophobia”, Cresswell is closer to modernist trends. I am not sure whether this work would appeal to the young generations of poets, mainly because its sober and at times elegiac tone transcends individual concerns that rightly occupy more space among the younger creative voices. It is, however, delightful to ponder for anyone interested in subtle critique and the dark side of hope in an age of uncertainty.