Clavics

SHORTLISTED FOR THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR POETRY 2011 / SELECTED AS THE ECONOMIST POETRY BOOK OF THE YEAR It is not immediately obvious what Clavics is about. What is apparent is that it is an elegiac sequence, mourning for the musician William Lawes who was killed at the Battle of Chester in 1645; delicately constructed, each page is comprised of a section made up of two stanzas, together forming the shape of a key. Before long, however, the tone makes it clear that nothing is to be taken at face value; amongst the lines are provocations and incongruities, playful references and about-turns. Clavics is a celebration of seventeenth-century music and poetry, yet is confrontational and sometimes shockingly modern. From one line to the next you may be pulled out of a potently evoked moment of history, thrust up against the wall of sexual politics and strained meaning in contemporary language, and then dropped back onto a battlefield. Geoffrey Hill's work is at the centre of a debate about how poetry should develop to find its place in contemporary society. Should it embrace the superficial potency of much of modern culture or turn back in upon itself with ever more complex layers of meaning? Should poetry attempt to gain a broader audience and engage 'the market' or consolidate its role as an increasingly obscure bastion of the intellect? Since his election to the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry, Geoffrey Hill has not shied away from these questions in his addresses. Now in his first book since he took his place amongst the highest of poetry academics, he has provided his provocative answer.