My first significant collaboration was with Gerard Manley Hopkins in my long work Interregnum (Creation Books 1994). Interregnum is centred around Pendle Hill in the north of England. Hopkins was stationed at the Jesuit teaching college of Stonyhurst in the shadow of Pendle where just under 3 centuries earlier the unhappy drama of the Pendle witches had unfolded. They were eventually hanged in Lancaster in 1612 for witchcraft. I was born in a neighbouring town and grew up with the myth of the witches but not, alas, with the realisation that Hopkins had lived so close by.
When researching the witches I came across one of their spells and it seemed remarkably similar to some of Hopkins poetry written during his time at Stonyhurst. As it has always been my belief that the women, whilst indulging in the usual spells and incantations of rural folk, were practicing Roman Catholics under a king who had narrowly escaped being assassinated in the Gunpowder Plot. The convergence of people, place and religious belief was irresistible. The witches would speak Hopkins in the section Chantcasters: Here are a couple of excerpts:
Wild air,
world-mothering air,
nestling me everywhere
that's fairly mixed
with riddles
and is rife
in every least things life
and nursing elementor
What we have lighthanded left
will have waked
and have waxed
and have walked
with the wind.
This side,
that side hurling
while we slumberedor
Three biters bitten:
Earth's eye. Earth's tongue. Earth's heart.
Our counterparts cleaved. Wreathed. Cloven.
Making extensive use of his poems written at Stonyhurst without alteration except editing down my only interjection is to slip in one of the witches' own spells (as in the above) which only a Hopkins scholar would be able to identify. It posits the question: if Hopkins had written what he did in the 17th century would he have been hanged? If the witches had written in the 19 th century would we hail them as poets? How much does the balance of a life hang on its placement in time, social position and gender? My collaboration with Hopkins allowed me to expand and collapse many social, political and historical myths. Using my own words in this section, no matter how brilliant they may have been, could never have made the same impact as these chance collisions of words and worlds.
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