When you read a poem by Camille Ralphs, you encounter an artistic sensibility that isn’t present in the work of most contemporary poets, what I would call a palimpsestic ambiguity. To be clear, I don’t mean in this grand phrase ‘ambiguity’ in the typical usage of ‘indistinct.’ What Ralphs offers a reader is perfectly apparent: an Empsonian tour of possibility, an imminence of English in its many-layered incarnations as it’s progressed across continents and centuries. History is the playing field of her poetry; the soccer ball is language; these poems sport across 16th and 17th-century turf with the brilliance of a star player’s Cruyff turn.
How Ralphs wields her linguistic agility is not in the service of showing humankind at its best, but at its worst, or lowest—frail, confused, even vicious, where personhood has degenerated to less-than-human. In her work, the presence of angels may remind us just how far we have to go, how far away from the ideal we tread heavily. Her many-layered diction, revealing dominions of differing, perhaps paradoxical, intellection, revs forth as true narrative vehicle—if not the ‘point’ of the poem (and, believe me, her long poem about the 1612 Pendle witches is no mere bravura spectacle of language; it is an indictment of man’s ignorance and cruelty), then the crackling energy firing phrases of actual poetry.
Comprised of three sections, “Book of Common Prayers,” “Malkin: an Ellegy in 14 Spels,” and “My Word: From the Spiritual Diary of Dr Dee,” Ralphs’ new book (new to America), After You Were, I Am, is a tour de force of great value, one signifying more than just a distinct, brilliant verbal dexterity. Critic as well as poet, Ralphs is the first female poetry editor at the Times Literary Supplement. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous magazines, including the New York Review of Books, Poetry Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She writes a regular column for Poetry London. This interview was conducted via Zoom and has been edited.
Ryan Asmussen
Tell me about the book’s epigraph from the Coptic Gospel of Thomas. In your passage, Jesus tells his disciples, when asked about when the new world will arrive, that it has already come; that they do not see it. Seeing, imagining, vision, in the negative. What is not being seen today in the world? In the world of poetry?
Camille Ralphs
I think the point of that first section is that we live in a time where the dead are simultaneously at rest, or nominally at rest, and endlessly being resurrected in everything we do and think about. We have more records of the past than we have ever had at any other point, and are constantly drawing on that legacy, whether we know it or not, but we don’t necessarily see that or think about it very much. Too much of the time we think about that negatively, or we dismiss tradition for being old fashioned, even though every form was, in its time, an innovation, and every historical event was, in its time, an eruption. There seems to be this strange conviction, not just in poetry, but among people—that probably has always been the case—that we’ve cracked the correct way of doing things now, and with everything done, that’s it. We should throw out all the old stuff. But actually, the past is full of foreign thoughts that seemed correct in their time. And I suppose the epigraph, and in some ways that first section after it, suggests that we could use a little humility, perhaps a little searching, and definitely a little context for everything that we think would like to think about ourselves.
Ryan Asmussen
In a Los Angeles Review of Books article a few years ago, you trace quite a few uses of and ideas concerning ‘etymology’ in contemporary poetry. What is your position (or lack thereof) regarding a poetic preoccupation with etymology? You write there about “etymological solecism,” for example, and it’s everywhere in your collection.
Camille Ralphs
There is a quieter usage, which I think I refer to in the essay you mention as a polysemic use of etymology. And that appears in the work of a lot of poets I’m very fond of, like Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill, and Zafar Kunial, who will build in very quietly, on a hidden level, these etymological links between words. A reader might not immediately notice them, but someone who’s very familiar with language will sense that there’s some kind of network of caves going on underneath the poem. Someone who is very familiar with the dictionary, probably with Latin, or possibly, in some cases, with German, will be able to say, ‘Oh, I see what’s been done here.’ It feels a little clever if you start looking at it too closely, but if it’s taken in as an energy, it feels like allowing the language to speak for itself a bit. The other thing I tend to think about a lot is the metaphorical way of thinking about etymology— that is, using it as a way of showing how history is present in our language, how our language reflects changes in human thought, where the English language traveled to over its lifespan. Other poets use it quite differently. Again, in the essay you mentioned, I talk a little about how etymology is used sometimes to suggest a sort of prelapsarian world, or before it all went wrong ecologically, that there was maybe a language that wasn’t as corrupted and complex as this, and in some cases it’s used as a post-colonial metaphor, a way of saying, ‘Well, look at all of the words that have been lifted from other languages, look at the violence that’s hidden in this etymology. How can we extract that and draw attention to it?’ I’ve been very interested to see how this has developed in the past decade or so in contemporary poetry in general.
Ryan Asmussen
Touching upon your poem “Rig Veda,” where do you find truth in the language of irony? The speaker prays, “common be the most identified-with of all grounds: the / You Are Here. / ringèd be our moods; / strung like the beads on a preteen bracelet be our hearts.” This is very funny, but it’s more, much more. There’s a sickness in the body politic when it comes to irony. Too much of it, and it trends dark. But poets would love to love irony all over again, right?
Camille Ralphs
You’re absolutely right. There’s a dark use of irony that has taken off, I think, probably since the internet became a thing and we became aware of the level of saturation of ideas. It suddenly became very difficult to say what was true and what wasn’t. So, people started hedging their bets a bit. Cliché, now, is everywhere. It’s very hard to say a beautiful thing without doing it in a ‘poet voice.’ Sometimes it feels like the only way to say something is to take on a historical voice, as I have by using and subverting the language and tone used for irony. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but it’s possible that two ironies make a kind of truth. It’s an old idea in its way. It’s like a contemporary take on the old metaphysical thing, borrowing strange conceits like water drops and compasses and grenades and so on to discuss love and faith, etc. But, there’s also a sense in what I’m saying of doubt. Going back to what you said about the dark side of irony, I don’t want to say anything with total certainty, or most things with total certainty, because I don’t feel like I have any of it. And that’s the humility again, looking at the past and looking at everything that we have and going, ‘Ah!’
Ryan Asmussen
Were the first section’s poem-prayers “after” Herbert, Rumi, Donne, et. al. conceived from a position of homage, an enamourment of the poet’s style, or were their beginnings more subject-oriented? Conceivably, they could spring from more than one position.
Camille Ralphs
It’s a good question, actually, because it’s really a mix of both. It depends on the poem or prayer you’re looking at. In the case of stuff like the actual poets I’m modeling here, like John Donne or George Herbert, and definitely also in the case of the rewriting from the section of Ecclesiastes, it’s down to my long standing love of, and in some cases, borrowing from, the style, particularly the form. Even the syntax and uses of rhetoric in there. I just saw something in those verses that made me think this could be adapted and updated in a way interesting to me. But, there are also some where the opposite is true. The ‘after John Baillie’ poem, for instance, the one that starts, “I call to your mind the workers of this world.” That was a case where, okay, he uses anaphora as a rhetorical device, but that wasn’t what caught my eye as did the theme of the poem. I looked at that prayer and thought, ‘This is the kind of thing I’d like to engage with.’ Similarly with the Job adaptations. I wasn’t entirely sure where those were going to go, but I knew that the story of Job was interesting to me, and I wanted to explore that in some way.
Ryan Asmussen
The title of the collection is itself an echo of an echo, of “Before you were, I am” in your “Wessobrunn Prayer,” which in itself is a reworking of the 8th century Old High German poem in praise of creation. With this respect to this palimpsestic way of seeing things, what are you saying, historically or otherwise, to readers with your title, After You Were, I Am?
Camille Ralphs
It’s actually sort of an echo of an echo of an echo. In fact, the original version of this comes from John’s gospel, chapter eight, verse 58. Jesus finds himself in an argument, as he does, with, I think, the Pharisees, and he’s spoken quite familiarly of God and Abraham. And the Pharisees say, ‘But you’re not even 50, yet. How can you know Abraham?’ And Jesus responds, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was I am.” The line I wedged into the Wessobrunn poem is a reworking of that, which the title of the book then reworks again. And that process of reworking, I suppose, says something about the way the book came together, and my understanding of language and history and what it means to say ‘I am’ when so many people before you have said that. The point is probably that humility thing, again: it’s deflecting or deflating the grandiosity of the claim in John’s gospel, because obviously I am not Jesus, and simply saying, ‘I’ve arrived after all these people, and cannot help but walk behind them, perhaps in their shadow, but I’d like to be in dialog with them.’ Of course, a lot of the poems, as you noted, are called ‘after Rumi’ or ‘after John Donne,’ but that’s not just a statement of allusion. It’s also a statement of timing. I exist in this world, and they don’t anymore, not physically, at least.
Ryan Asmussen
More echoes, now. I hear John Berryman from time to time in After, particularly his voice/s in Homage to Mistress Bradstreet. You quote him in your poem “Job 3:11-26.” Is there a connection or influence you would acknowledge?
Camille Ralphs
That’s a very good observation, because Homage to Mistress Bradstreet is probably my favorite long poem. Berryman is a long standing influence. I think he and I have a lot of the same influences as each other, and I also love his work. He engages quite a lot with the book of Job himself, as you know; he has his translation of the same section I did. He put the book of Job on his reading lists when he was teaching. He hoped, I think, to write a book about Job, but his notes for it were never compiled or were lost, which is a tragedy.
Ryan Asmussen
In reference to your poem “after John Donne,” a riddle of life and living, the speaker is “unhurt” yet “can’t heal.” An example of a, let’s say, ‘clear’ ambiguity. There are many more such ambiguities, some rather Empsonian, in the poems. This multilayered approach to language is, of course, poetic, traditionally so. But you balance a great deal of material, insight, angle, intellectual provocation upon it. What led you to this artistic attitude of open interpretation/option?
Camille Ralphs
I think it’s less of a ‘yet’ to my mind than an ‘and so.’ Even more ambiguous, because if you’re unhurt, there’s nothing in you that needs healing, yes, but also in this poem’s understanding of the problem, at least, you are unlikely to be able to heal somebody else’s hurt. So, that poem is quite horrible in its way. It’s a sort of theodicy, a circular argument for the necessity of evil and suffering or something. And I think, and my shamefaced horror about it, is the reason for the ambiguities in general, because a lot of the things in the world simply aren’t logical or controllable or palatable, don’t make sense, and actually the only way of thinking that can honestly register human experience, in that case, is poetic, is ambiguous, or even confusing or upsetting, basically, anything but black and white.
Ryan Asmussen
I’m thinking about the dozens of speakers in this collection, historical figures, and so on. Your poetry is, to some extent, reflective of the way you think. So, where is the ‘I’ of this work? Or perhaps there isn’t one?
Camille Ralphs
Yes, the problem of my own identity is one that I’m exploring more in the work I’m doing now. I think with this book and with previous books, I’d tried to sublimate myself in either an historical voice or an historical literary voice. And by doing so had created a necessary separation that seemed to make honesty more possible or easier. I’d like in the future to keep reducing that separation to a point where it’s more of an obvious ‘me’ speaking. But, for whatever reason, I do tend to lean towards ventriloquisms. I suppose it was Oscar Wilde who said, ‘If you give a man a mask, he’ll tell you the truth.’ I think that’s quite true of myself, maybe it’s because I’m not sure what I think from moment to moment about some things. If I just had an ‘I’ on the page that was purely me, I’d probably disagree with it the next day.
Ryan Asmussen
There’s so much to ask about these second and third sections of the book. Let me offer just one question. Reviewers have emphasized themes of witchcraft and the occult, but in the case of both sequences, “Malkin,”about the Pendle witches, and “My Word,” about the infamous alchemist John Dee, for me the poet’s primary concern is the given character’s approach to speaking, to utterance. Narrative becomes secondary. The historic, by way of the personal, and by way of the mystery of language, becomes ‘present tense.’ Our immersion in this, for lack of a better word, ‘spirit’ rather than a moral or political stance—is this what drives you to create such harrowing monologued narratives?
Camille Ralphs
I think we get more to the heart of certain historical situations, which may have comparable contemporary partners, if we see them dramatically. If we hear the people who are involved speaking. You mention that maybe it’s immersion in the spirit rather than a moral or political stance that drives me to do this, and I think that’s probably true, because as much as it’s horrifying to me the way the Pendle witches were scapegoated, a crucial part of the narrative not often reflected on—because people are so caught up in the idea of the witch hunt as representative of something as allegorical—is that quite a few of these people went around claiming that they were, in fact, witches. Some of them used that as a way of having power over others. Now, what do you do with that information? That’s not a simple thing to process historically. It’s not a simple thing you can fold up and turn into an allegory. Or is it? I don’t know how you get around that without looking at each person individually and trying to consider what their individual feelings were, what their role might have been, how it came to all that. And with John Dee, a hugely complicated man who was representative of a hugely complicated time, brilliant, driven, hubristic, melancholic, and finally damned, I feel for him because he’s like so many of us in that he was desperately seeking evidence for his convictions, no matter how much snake oil he had to buy into along the way. However much that hurt him and seemed nonsensical to him at some points, you have to see him, if you read his diaries, having to persuade himself repeatedly that the awful things he’s being tricked into doing are actually God’s work, and he does enormous damage to his family that way.
Ryan Asmussen
Ange Milko, in a fine review of your work, said that your poetry confronts a crisis: “Given complete freedom, a tabula rasa, how does a poet begin? And even more urgently: from whom or from what does a poet derive their authority?” I could be a little deluded, perhaps, but I don’t see this as a driving energy of the poetry. If anything, you attempt to juggle a plethora of material, not so much a blank slate, as if to say ‘what can we do with all of this wealth of language; how can we use it, transform it?’
Camille Ralphs
I think definitely that was a concern with this book, the volume of language. I’d also say maybe that when you have so much language and so many possible starting points within it, that white noise starts to perhaps resemble a blank slate or a black space. And if you’re like me and have any kind of metaphysical strain of questioning in your work and in your general way of thinking, you do have to start asking questions about vocation and where that comes from, if it exists. There’s a term I always find it interesting to think about, which is the term vates. In Latin, it means either poet or prophet or seer. Thomas Carlyle divided it into two possibilities: vates as a prophet who would be writing and thinking in the vein of ‘how do we think about the world morally? How do we change the world?’ and vates as a poet who uses language and symbol as a way of getting at the essential nature of the world. For him, these are the two ways that people have understood poets throughout time, and I think I’ve definitely spent time trying to figure out which of those is happening in poetry right now, and which category I fit into. Whether it’s either of them or both of them, I’m not sure. Auden suggested that if somebody wants to be a poet, they should learn at least one ancient language and two modern languages, they should have a vegetable patch, and they should learn to write in poetic different forms. They should also study rhetoric and etymology and other subjects, including mathematics, animal husbandry, all sorts of things that don’t seem to make sense when you first read about them. I followed that line for a book I published with a small press in the U.K. called Daydream College for Bards. In practice, it was quite helpful because I wasn’t sure where to place myself within everything, how to face myself, how to think I might be a poet worth reading when so much is happening: ‘So much poetry has already happened. How dare you think that anyone ought to read your work?’ Also, I wanted to figure out what my own first principles were in the light of the poets whose work I loved and also didn’t love.
POETRY
After You Were, I Am
By Camille Ralphs
Published by McSweeney’s Publishing
September 16, 2024
