''Briggflatts'' is a long
poem
Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meaning ...
by
Basil Bunting published in 1966. The work is subtitled "An Autobiography." The title "Briggflatts" comes from the name of
Brigflatts Meeting House
Brigflatts Meeting House or Briggflatts Meeting House is a Friends Meeting House of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), near Sedbergh, Cumbria, in north-western England. Built in 1675, it is the second oldest Friends Meeting House in ...
(spelled with one "g" in Quaker circles), a
Quaker Friends meeting house near
Sedbergh in
Cumbria
Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. ...
, England. Bunting visited Brigflatts as a schoolboy when the family of one of his schoolfriends lived there, and it was at this time that he developed a strong attachment to his friend's sister, Peggy Greenbank, to whom the poem is dedicated. It was first read in public on 22 December 1965 in the medieval
Morden Tower
The Morden Tower in Back Stowell Street on the West Walls of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Grade 1 listed building. Since June 1964, Connie Pickard has been custodian of Morden Tower, and has made it a key ...
, part of
Newcastle town wall, and published in 1966 by
Fulcrum Press.
["A Basic Chronology"]
Basil Bunting Poetry Centre''. Accessed 2006-12-01. Bunting also wrote another poem with "Briggflatts" in its title, the short work "At Briggflatts meetinghouse" (1975).
''Jacket Magazine''; accessed 2006-12-01.
, accessed 2006-12-01.
The poem
The poem begins with an
epigraph reading: "The spuggies are fledged". The text contains a note explaining that the word means "little sparrows" in a north-east dialect.
[Davie, Donald. ''Under Briggflatts''. University of Chicago Press, 1989, p. 40.] The poem itself has a five-part structure. The first part has a regular structure of 12
stanzas each containing 13 lines. In the following four parts the stanzas vary in length from
couplets
A couplet is a pair of successive lines of metre in poetry. A couplet usually consists of two successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (or closed) couplet, each of the ...
to
quatrains to stanzas of more than 20 lines. The
rhyme scheme also changes throughout the poem as the bulk of the text appears in
free verse while other lines do contain rhyming patterns.
The poem is noted for its use of sound;
[Helen Price,]
Human and NonHuman in Anglo-Saxon and British Postwar Poetry: Reshaping Literary Ecology
(unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Leeds, 2013), pp. 179-92. Bunting believed that the essential element of poetry is the sound, and that if the sound is right, the listener will hear, enjoy and be moved; and that there may be no need for further explanation.
"Poetry, like music, is to be heard. It deals in sound - long sounds and short sounds, heavy beats and light beats, the tone relations of the vowels, the relations of consonants to one another which are like instrumental colour in music. Poetry lies dead on the page until some voice brings it to life, just as music on the stave, is no more than instructions to the player. A skilled musician can imagine the sound, more or less, and a skilled reader can try to hear, mentally, what his eyes see in print: but nothing will satisfy either of them till his ears hear it as real sound in the air. Poetry must be read aloud."
unting, 1966. The Poet's Point of View', included in Basil Bunting, Briggflatts (2009). Bloodaxe Books, Northumberland
Critical response
Mark Rudman suggests that "Briggflatts" is an example of how free verse can be seen as an advance on traditional metrical poetry. He cites the poem to show that free verse can include a rhyme scheme without following other conventions of traditional
English poetry. To Rudman, the poem allows the subject to dictate the rhyming words and argues that the "solemn mallet" is allowed to change the patterns of speech in the poetry to meet with the themes discussed in the text.
[Rudman, Mark. "Word Roots: Notes on Free Verse". ''Conversant Essays: Contemporary Poets on Poetry'', Wayne State University Press, , p. 153155.]
Reviews
Nicholson, Colin E. (1980), review of Basil Bunting reads ''Briggflatts'', in ''
Cencrastus'' No. 4, Winter 1980-81, p. 45,
References
* Bunting, 1966. "The Poet's Point of View", included in Basil Bunting, ''Briggflatts'' (2009). Bloodaxe Books, Northumberland.
External links
''Briggflatts'' recordingRead by the author (
mp4).
Review of ''Briggflatts''{Dead link, date=November 2022 (in Spanish).
Brigflatts Quaker Meeting House homepage
1966 poems
English poems
Poetry by Basil Bunting