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The Turl is an arts magazine for and by students at Oxford University, centred around Jesus College, Exeter College, and Lincoln College.

Decay, Destruction, Distortion: Tramp in Flames

Paul Farley’s poetry collection Tramp in Flames is a stellar example of a hideous state of flux. It celebrates corruption—particularly noticeable are the sudden distortions from beautiful imagery to utter destruction.

One of his poems, The Lapse, swiftly distorts itself and fixates on morbid events in a semi-fanatical manner. This rapid warping of time and focus is found throughout Farley, and he uses this state of flux as a looking glass into the dystopian undercurrents running rampant below the surface. As the poem progresses, a decline to decay occurs; it seems almost inevitable. It feels as contemporary as ever in this way, representing the way a single negative thought seems to rush up around us and consume us. As Farley examines a film in detail, his focus changes to rot and loss in the third and final stanza—he starts to talk about “the dead sheep’s seconds-long journey to nothing”. This is very similar to the end of Tramp in Flames, in which a tramp is described burning with a “smell… like a foot-and-mouth pyre”. The endings are gruesome: they reveal what is almost an obsession with death, disaster and decay. Farley’s language really brings it alive: he heightens the gruesome “smell” of a burning tramp by comparing it to a modern event—the mass slaughter of diseased cattle. All paths lead to death.

Similar ideas can be found throughout the collection, with one of his poems even being entitled “Ruin”, despite being about his own newfound clarity in the world after first receiving glasses. Change is no positive force here; rather, it’s a harbinger of destruction. No doubt this chimes with the reader in 2020 as much as it did in 2006. The structure reflects this too: the first stanza changes mid-line, disintegrating the line structure. What follows is an utterly corrupted second stanza, which is essentially one over-subordinated sentence. Farley is really emphasising corruption in his language and in his structure. If this weren’t enough, conceptual decay runs through the poem to a profoundly negative ending in Duel when he “use[s] my thumbs to blow my fucking brains out.” What started off with a child’s imaginative use of pictures for a gunfight quickly descends into a dark and graphic description of killing oneself.

I find this morbid fascination with corruption and destruction mesmerising yet eerie. What starts out so well begins to lose its positive tone and then instantly descends into complete darkness. This same childhood poem makes use of cursing: “bullshitter”, “fucking”. A distinct sense of warped time pervades his poetry; here, we’re instantly transported from childhood to the adulthood whence he reminisces. Similarly, The Lapse: Farley examines closely each snapshot of the film “Jason and the Argonauts”, noting that the four months of hard work put into the skeletons only received five minutes screen time. He laments “Edgerton’s milk splash”, which takes just seconds on screen, but took significantly longer to create. Having noticed this warping of time, Farley is immediately drawn to another use of the same, time-consuming effect—the “seconds-long journey to nothing”. A rapid, inevitable acceleration to obliteration. It’s certainly not cheery.

Similarly, in Tramp in Flames, “the bin bags melt and fuse him to the pavement”, creating an image of deformation. This immediately leads to Farley’s distortion of time, reminiscing about “forty years before” and how the tramp “wet himself”, which parallels The Lapse’s lamentation “Give us back what is ours.”, moving quickly into the past. Farley continuously uses time imagery, and the movement from warped time to decay to destruction is characteristic of his poetry collection. He laments change, and celebrates the past.

Nevertheless, the events are described beautifully. On the burning tramp: his “layers / burn brightly” and “give off the colours of a Roman candle”. It’s as though this event is a spectacle. The vivid imagery contrasts starkly with the dark subject matter. His simile acts as a “heat-shield… for re-entry / to reality”, cushioning such a horrific incident and making it easier for us to discuss. Again, Farley’s work faces up to difficult realities we try to cover up. But underneath this façade—behind this beautified treatment—the contrast makes it all the more abhorrent. Farley writes poetry that is visibly and structurally beautiful—but the meaning is corrupted, as sentences spread over lines, valuing beauty over content. Farley’s “maggots [work] like a ball of fire”—and ourselves, the readers, grab onto the beauty of fire over the disgust we feel about the maggots. We are moths to a flame, willingly accepting what we want to believe. As changes burn the world around us, we sit down, enjoying the warmth of the flames and bathing in the spectacle before us—and we gloss over everything else.

Farley loves word play; particularly, mentioning a method and then, soon after, adopting it for his own. In Pantoum of Emergency, Farley mentions how “My genome has found itself put to the sword” moving to talking about “the broad steeled parang of the tropical wood” which “filmed itself chopping…”, distorting the focus of the poem, thus making the poem seem particularly violent. As with all his poetry, every idea is twisted; here a violent tone descends as fast as a thrust of a sword.

Farley’s poetry considers the dazzling portrayal of terrible events—an easy way to gloss over problems in society. And yet the alternative seems to be an obsession with distortion and destruction—an alternative where all roads lead to oblivion. In a time where half the world is pretending climate change doesn’t exist, and the other half has been besieged by eco-anxiety, Farley’s poetry represents the choice we have today—a choice which has no pleasant answer. For those of us who recognise the death and destruction which lies behind everything, Farley seems to leave us a rousing anthem: “Give us back what is ours.”

#im proud of this work #based on my a level coursework!#Paul Farley #Farley #Tramp in Flames #dystopia #literature #poetry #state of flux #corruption #decay #distortion #destruction #OC

#Poems #Paul Farley #For the House Sparrow in Decline

"To become immortal, and then die" #deathsofthepoets

I’m faced today with writing about another one of those books which has had a profound effect on me, but not really knowing quite where to start. I came across mention of it in a Twitter conversation – I can’t remember who started it, but it was about how poets died, and someone mentioned that there was a book on this topic. Its title, logically enough, was “Deaths of the Poets” and it was by two…

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#deaths of the poets #michael symmons roberts #paul farley #poetry

A poem by Paul Farley

Monopoly

We sat like slum landlords around the board buying each other out with fake banknotes, until we lost more than we could afford, or ever hope to pay back. Now our seats are empty — one by one we left the game to play for real, at first completely lost in this other world, its building sites, its rain; but slowly learned the rules and made our own, stayed out of jail and kept our noses clean. And now there’s only me — sole freeholder of every empty office space in town, and from the quayside I can count the cost each low tide brings — the skeletons and rust of boats, cars, hats, boots, iron, a terrier.

Paul Farley

#paul farley #english poetry #monopoly #sonnet

The Legend Of Firestoke

What is Firestoke Games? This is the question echoing around Scotland's games industry this morning, after Angus's own Elon Musk, announced a new venture into videogames.

What is Firestoke Games? This is the question echoing around Scotland’s games industry this morning, after Angus’s own Elon Musk, announced a new venture into videogames. Paul Farley, the Tim Cook of Tayside, shocked the world yesterday, with the release of a single image. A monochrome Munro, alongside the news that he was returning from his self-imposed exile, to the world of gaming. Games…