{"id":996,"date":"2019-03-18T17:21:32","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T17:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/?page_id=996"},"modified":"2019-03-19T12:33:08","modified_gmt":"2019-03-19T12:33:08","slug":"resubmission-for-the-ordinary-level-in-psychogeography-by-jeremy-page","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/resubmission-for-the-ordinary-level-in-psychogeography-by-jeremy-page\/","title":{"rendered":"Resubmission for the Ordinary Level in Psychogeography by Jeremy Page"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stepping Back: Resubmission for the Ordinary Level Examination in Psychogeography<\/em> is a collection of poems written over more than a quarter of a century, which seeks to explore how poetry can give expression to the deeper truths about the connections between poet and place. The author left the town on the south coast of England where he had spent his formative years at the age of eighteen, but has since returned for frequent short visits and longer periods; the poems reflect his relationship with his hometown over the decades in which he \u2018grew away from it\u2019. The collection\u2019s final, eponymous poem (Page 2016: 28 \u2013 30) performs a broadly summative function:<\/p>\n

RESUBMISSION FOR THE ORDINARY LEVEL EXAMINATION IN PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Paper One<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>oh yes, and I am stepping ashore<\/p>\n

ashore<\/p>\n

ashore<\/p>\n

(so many steppings ashore)<\/p>\n

back in Blighty<\/p>\n

Christmas Eve\u2019s only foot passenger<\/p>\n

and my father the welcoming party\u2019s<\/p>\n

only guest<\/p>\n

ashore<\/p>\n

ashore<\/p>\n

for I have suffered the sea to get home<\/em><\/p>\n

(Dean, 2008)<\/p>\n

ashore,<\/p>\n

and one minute<\/p>\n

on Remembrance Hill<\/p>\n

it is a century ago<\/p>\n

and Walter (1897 \u2013 1916), youngest sibling<\/p>\n

(and unluckiest),<\/p>\n

great uncle I never knew,<\/p>\n

is marching to his death<\/p>\n

on the killing fields of France,<\/p>\n

the next<\/p>\n

Julie London is crying a river over me<\/p>\n

(despite my hair, those flares)<\/p>\n

but all I want, must have,<\/p>\n

is a ticket for T Rex<\/p>\n

to see Marc Bolan before he<\/em> dies<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and question 2 asks me<\/p>\n

to define myself in relation to<\/p>\n

this place at no fewer than three<\/p>\n

and no more than five points<\/p>\n

in my life<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

so here\u2019s the Dickens theme pub<\/p>\n

two bars as two cities\/two cities in two bars<\/p>\n

where Jonno\u2019s granddad lost the family fortune<\/p>\n

in a game of poker<\/p>\n

in the London bar (perfidious Albion)<\/p>\n

while in the Paris<\/p>\n

Fabienne made my every wish<\/p>\n

come true<\/p>\n

draped her stockings round my neck<\/p>\n

long before Julie cried that river<\/p>\n

and her shoe<\/p>\n

with its impossibly high heel<\/p>\n

cast in bronze<\/p>\n

became the star of this year\u2019s summer exhibition<\/p>\n

(and how that takes me back\u2026)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

here is a numbered stone<\/p>\n

for every man who marched<\/p>\n

down Remembrance Hill to his death<\/p>\n

on the Somme<\/p>\n

(Walter number 1,958)<\/p>\n

and this is where<\/p>\n

Sam Beckett stayed<\/p>\n

when the time had come to wed,<\/p>\n

to experience the suffering of being<\/p>\n

in a whole new way<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and the fairground lights<\/p>\n

take years to reach me<\/p>\n

as I look down on them,<\/p>\n

and see myself on dodgems<\/p>\n

half a life ago<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and Walter never did return<\/p>\n

any more than I can slip back<\/p>\n

forty years to that fairground,<\/p>\n

those dodgems,<\/p>\n

those brightly burning lights<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Paper Two<\/strong><\/p>\n

but we reassemble on the clifftop<\/p>\n

a random dozen now<\/p>\n

to remember Jonno,<\/p>\n

with all the baggage we\u2019ve acquired<\/p>\n

(while he took with him no more<\/p>\n

than he\u2019d brought, when he went)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and I have less than some<\/p>\n

and more than others<\/p>\n

nothing that compares to that huge trunk<\/p>\n

but encumbered nonetheless<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and we do remember \u2013<\/p>\n

Jonno, all of us, the fairground lights,<\/p>\n

the paths that led<\/p>\n

from there to here<\/p>\n

from then to now<\/p>\n

our yesterdays, and all of our tomorrows.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It opens one Christmas Eve with the poet\u2019s return from overseas as \u2018the ferry\u2019s only foot passenger\u2019. Thus begins a psychogeographical ramble through time and space which sees the poet recall his great uncle Walter \u2018(1897 \u2013 1916)\u2019 \u2018marching to his death\/on the killing fields of France\u2019 and remembered by virtue of \u2018a numbered stone\/for every man who marched\/down Remembrance Hill to his death\/on the Somme.\u2019 There is frequent ludic interplay between past and present as, for example, when the poet sees the shoe worn by his accomplice in some memorable youthful tryst \u2018with its impossibly high heel\/cast in bronze\/ (\u2026) the star of this year\u2019s summer exhibition.\u2019<\/p>\n

The first section \u2013 \u2018Paper One\u2019 of the resubmission, as it is framed \u2013 concludes with the poet reflecting on the impossibility of return as he looks back on fairground lights, which, like distant stars, \u2018take years to reach (him)\u2019 as he sees himself \u2018on dodgems\/half a life ago\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018Paper Two\u2019 sees the poet and friends \u2013 \u2018a random dozen now\u2019 \u2013 reassemble on the clifftop to remember \u2018Jonno\u2019, whose late grandfather, who \u2018lost the family fortune\/in a game of poker\/in the London bar\u2019, is referenced in \u2018Paper One\u2019. Here the poet looks back on the losses and gains of his own life and those of his friends and contemporaries \u2013 \u2018all the baggage we\u2019ve acquired\u2019 \u2013 and engages in an act of collective memory, remembering \u2018Jonno, all of us, the fairground lights,\/the paths that led\/from there to here\/from then to now,\/our yesterdays, and all of our tomorrows.\u2019 The notion of \u2018remembering the future\u2019 is critical to the underlying narrative of the collection, in which place \u2013 \u2018the Town\u2019 \u2013 is the constant against which the triumphs and vicissitudes of a life may be played out. There is an inevitable tension between the poet \u2018growing away\u2019 from his hometown and the place becoming ever more itself, echoing the words of Tom Dyckhoff: \u2018Folkestone is the new and, indeed, the old Folkestone. I visit often, always agog at how much more like itself it\u2019s become, more Folkestoney, more magnificent.\u2019 (Dyckhoff 2015). Every return is different, he seems to suggest, because with every return we bring something different back with us in the shape of lived experience. Conversely, the Town remains stubbornly itself, its cumulative identities somehow reflecting his own.<\/p>\n

The act of compiling the Resubmission was in itself a retrospective psychogeographical journey of exploration through a succession of physical and temporal landmarks, each of which perhaps uncovered a further layer of self. It is only now, in conclusion, that I feel able to acknowledge myself as the frequently unreliable narrator who has negotiated the difficult terrain between fact and fiction, there and here, then and now, and to use the first person pronoun: as if I may now have earned the right to tentatively assume the identity of participant\/researcher (or interrogator). Raymond Williams (1980) has remarked that autobiography is neither fictive nor non-fictive, and the various selves I have encountered in revisiting the poems in the Resubmission in an attempt to make meaning from a life<\/em> in relation to a place<\/em> have underlined the truth of his observation. Bollnow (1963) has noted that \u2018Every location in experienced space has its own significance for human beings\u2019, and this has never seemed truer to me than in my efforts to identify the staging posts on this psychogeographical journey.<\/p>\n

No English examination board has ever set an ordinary level examination in Psychogeography and no submission ever preceded this \u2018resubmission\u2019, but if the learning outcomes of the non-existent syllabus can be summarised as \u2018the composition of a mental map transposed upon the physical layout (co-ordinates) of place\u2019 (Coverley 2010: 16), then the act of compiling the Resubmission, of revisiting place by interrogating the poems that have given expression to the poet\u2019s relationship with it over time, may perhaps be deemed to have met them and may therefore warrant a tentative \u2018pass\u2019 \u2013 Helena Nelson\u2019s (2017) designation of the \u2018reader as examiner \u2026 poet as failed student\u2019 notwithstanding.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bollnow, O (1963) Mensch und Raum,<\/em> Stuttgart: Kohlhammer<\/p>\n

Coverley, M (2010) Psychogeography,<\/em> Harpenden, Hertfordshire: Oldcastle Books<\/p>\n

Dyckhoff, T (2015) \u2018Folkestone, Kent: a bit like Detroit, without the Motown\u2019, in The Guardian<\/em> Weekend<\/em> 10 January 2015<\/p>\n

Nelson, H (2017) \u2018Reader as examiner, and poet as failed student\u2019, in Sphinx<\/em> at http:\/\/www.sphinxreview.co.uk\/index.php\/opoi-reviews-2017<\/a> (accessed 31 December 2018)<\/p>\n

Page, J (2016) Stepping Back: Resubmission for the Ordinary Level Examination in Psychogeography<\/em>, Lewes, East Sussex: Frogmore Press<\/p>\n

Williams, R (1980) \u2018The Veto of the Imagination\u2019 in Olney, J (ed) Essays Theoretical and Critical<\/em>. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stepping Back: Resubmission for the Ordinary Level Examination in Psychogeography is a collection of poems written over more than a Continue ReadingResubmission for the Ordinary Level in Psychogeography by Jeremy Page<\/span>\u2192<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-996","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P90GIn-g4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=996"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1071,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/996\/revisions\/1071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/lifewritingprojects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}