Hayden Murphy meets James Fenton, a very English radical
JAMES Fenton is rich. Word-wealthy. Unique. A rich and wealthy poet.
We met, early morning, in a central Edinburgh hotel. Opulence surrounded
us. The night before, the award-winning writer, as guest of the Poetry
Association of Scotland, had given a reading to an appreciative but
small audience in the Netherbow Theatre. Elsewhere in the capital a huge
audience applauded Les Miserables. Fenton's words were being heard all
over the city.
James Fenton was born in Lincoln in 1949. ''In or near the Cathedral
Close''. Third child of a theologian. His mother died when he was 10.
His father remarried. James spent holidays from boarding-schools with
Aunt Eileen in Wales. As ''Uncle's mother's sister'' she later turns up
as the poet's guide to Jerusalem. The poem of their travels appeared as
The Holy City in The Independent. Was the secularisation to Jerusalem in
later versions significant? ''Compositor's necessity'' chuckled the
Buddha-shaped figure before me, finishing a full breakfast.
In 1967 he went to Magdalen College, Oxford, to read English. Two
years later he switched to psychology, philosophy, and physiology. His
teacher, John Fuller, became his friend and later collaborator in a book
of ''light verse'', Partingtime Hall (1987). Edmund Blunden set an
oriental theme for the 1968 Newdigate poetry prize. Fenton's contrary On
Western Furniture won. His theme, coincidentally, was similar to
Sondheim's in Pacific Overture, written a year later. Musicals are a
backdrop to Fenton's career.
In 1972 Terminal Moraine (Secker & Warburg) won The Gregory Award. He
used the #1000 to go to Indochina. From there he wrote ''political
commentaries'' for The New Statesman. His account of the fall of Saigon
is harrowing, confessional about fallibility and frailty, and memorable.
Later he went to Germany reporting for the Guardian. Inspired by a sense
of a radical responsibility for ''a shifting-sand historical past'' he
wrote in A German Requiem (1981), ''It is not what they built. It is
what they knocked down.''
His Edinburgh-based brother, E.I.S. activist Tom Fenton, recognised a
gap in the marketing of poetry. The brothers bought out the remaindered
copies of Terminal ''at about 30p each'' and sold them to ''specialised
shops for #10''. The S.A.C. responded with grants for new work from
Kathleen Jamie, Ron Butlin, John Byrne, and Liz Lochhead. Star of this
''literary gym'', and The Salamander Press, was best-selling The Memory
of War: Poems 1968-1982 by James Fenton. Compassion subjugated by
pragmatism was a reverberating theme.
Critical acclaim, followed by prizes, was compounded financially with
paperback acceptance by Penguin. Fenton was working as Drama Critic for
The Times. Journalistic ''ephemera'' was published as You Were
Marvellous (1983). Jonathan Miller, impressed by the reporter's
theatrical sense, asked for an English libretto of Verdi's Rigoletto.
English National Opera made it a success. The retired reviewer became
the toast of London.
Impresario Cameron Mackintosh commissioned a script for another Hugo
adaptation in 1985. This was ''Les Mis''. Fenton's lyrics were rejected.
But sections of his text were ''assimilated'' by subsequent writers. His
agent had negotiated ''a somewhat less than one per cent on box-office
takings''. It is packing in audiences at Edinburgh's Playhouse. The poet
is financially safe for life. A modest flat in London, a five-acre farm
outside Oxford, are evidence of a content, secure life-style.
But what of the poetry? ''A parsimonious brilliance is its own
reward,'' said John Mole of Fenton. James is not prolific. As book
reviewer for The Times he christened ''The Martian School'' (Craig Raine
etc), ''fireflies brilliant with the hyphen''. Physically he was in the
Philippines reporting on ''Pacific politics'' for The Independent. In
1989 he produced from ''out there'', in a limited edition of one
thousand, The Manila Envelope. Polemic, poster, and poems were sent on
request ''abroad''. New poems followed.
On Christmas Eve, a year before the poem eventually entitled Jerusalem
appeared, Aunt Eileen had guided him around what he obviously found a
most unholy city. This is one of the few, maybe the only, radical
statement in contemporary English literature about Semitic/Christian
divides. It is centrepiece in his new collection Out of Danger (1993).
Heated writing where ironic wrath cascades: ''There is no covenant
between your God and me.'' In sad anger it concludes: ''the
interrogation will not die . . . I have destroyed your home. You have
destroyed my home.''
Discussing this, the beaming breakfasting Buddha became a radical
Blakean invoking the wrath of a God, deploring human waste in lives.
As we separated he questioned ''Nationalism''. He winced at the Irish
in Belfast labelling him ''Brit''. He declared as ''English''.
I departed, leaving behind a Radical, true as Tom Paine, Shelley, and
E. P. Thompson. A ''true begetter'' of a respected, if badly preserved,
even traduced, tradition.
