My Proper Ground: The Poetics of Place in the Twentieth Century

By invoking a sense of place attachment understood in terms of Simone Weil's concept of "rootedness", I explore the concept and its presentation in the work of certain Twentieth Century poets. Specifically, I concentrate on the poetry of David Jones, Laurie Duggan and Charles Olson. What unites all three writers is a fixation on a specific locus and I try and unpack the depth that that locus adds to the impact of their writing. The three writers in question do not constitute anything like a school, but as operators within the modernist or post-modern traditions they share stylistic and thematic concerns that make their work cumulatively compatible for specific study under the headline of the poetics of place, whilst offering different perspectives on that concept. Where they differ in their concentration on locus is where the thesis intensifies and I argue that Olson's total occupation of the city of Gloucester, Massachusetts, contrasts with Duggan's struggle to find an understandable homeliness in the city of Canterbury, Kent and with Jones' yearning for a mythical or historical Wales of the imagination and of his forefathers. With all three poets, however, the need to belong somewhere appears paramount in the presentation of their poetic selves. The thesis sits alongside my own long poem attempting to comprehend my complex relationship with my adopted home city of Canterbury, away from my Yorkshire roots.