Lee Harwood

I came to Lee Harwood's poetry unexpectedly, at a reading at Edge Hill. It wasn't the first time I had heard him read. There was another flustered and tense occasion when I arrived late, with my partner, at rather an intimate reading in one of those posh rooms in Cambridge. I couldnt find anything to latch on to at all, the long, hot journey and the self consciousness of arriving late talked loudly over his quiet, complex voice. The reading at Edge Hill was quite other. I heard the poetry for the first time and was touched, moved and challenged by it.

The context had changed, I had changed. The words sank in and stayed with me. I loved the collisions in his gentle, uncompromising and subtle voice. I began to understand more of the context of his work. And then I read The Long Black Veil. It made me cry. And has continued to fascinate me.

You can hear Johnny Cash singing the song that the poem refers to on You Tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28uW2E9p6Pk&feature=related
I spoke not a word/thought it meant my life/for I'd been in the arms/of my best friend's wife............Nobody knows/nobody sees/nobody knows/but me..... which echoes a key idea in the poem; what happens in secret between illicit lovers. The poem is in the form of fragmentary 'Notebooks' and uses a range of clever technical devices to keep working round that point. Nobody knows but me.

I have reviewed the Selected Poems for Chroma.
http://www.chromajournal.blogspot.com/
You can get Lee Harwood's work from:
http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/authors/harwoodA.html