On "Becoming a Tree" by James Graham
an editorial by Oonah V Joslin

"We try to read a wisdom never meant for us:"
James Graham; The Book of Lascaux

It has been my privilege over the past eight years to publish several poems by Ayrshire poet James Graham in Every Day Poets and most recently in The Linnet's Wings. It has also been my great good fortune to have had the benefit of his advice on my own work. James has been the Poetry Group expert and mentor in www.Writewords.org.uk for twelve years and has encouraged the poetic endeavours of countless people with his generous and
detailed comments.

I am delighted that some of these poems have found their way into his latest collection Becoming a Tree (Matador 16th February 2016) a title inspired by Walt Whitman.

There was a child went forth every day:
And the first object he looked upon, that object he became…

I think James may well be a time lord or a shape-shifter. He certainly is a word wizard, and if anyone can teach us what it's like to become a tree it is this man.

The range, depth and precision of James' poetry is fascinating. James seeks out humanity in all its guises with imagination and with empathy. One of my favourite poems is called: History of the Great War. It is a very apt, ironic title. The poem consists of only four lines yet it is a poem that encapsulates what matters most.

Stretcher-bearers found two dead
one grey one khaki hand in hand

First published by Postcard Poems and Prose



'Two dead'. It is as if these were the only fatalities of that war. Or maybe a mere 'two dead' – hardly significant, two among so many others. Priority goes to the living.

'One grey one khaki'. It comes down to individuals here. Grey and khaki – ghastly as death; these colours side by side somehow make the scene more macabre. The two are on opposite sides of the conflict yet not even a comma separates them here. They are at once united and forever separated by death.

'Hand in hand'. Had they met in some hostelry before or after that war they might have greeted each other thus. That simple human connection brings us closer to the pity and fear than anything else could. It is something we all understand – the childlike need for comfort. We reach out to them as they reach out to each other in the moment that makes their connection and ours eternal.

What other history of WW1 do we need?

It is my experience of his work that when James uses a word it is chosen but natural. When he places a word it is weighted but with a light touch. That level of crafting and universality of meaning makes James' poetry irresistible. He expresses life at the grand and minute scale; at its most serious and most ridiculous.

In All the living people he shares the soul and vision of the child who writes:

"Let all the living people of the world
be happy. She must have clothed

that happy in her personal connotations:
a log fire on a winter Friday afternoon, a chestnut pony. But she meant

all peoples. All. And she meant before the people are all dead.

I gave her a top grade, but didn't ask how it should come about;"

For how would the child know? Innocence is a thing to be preserved and nurtured. Here we have the simplicity of humanity is set against the problems we have created for ourselves. And James with the wisdom and experience of a father and gentle humour of a kind teacher (which he was for thirty years) asks:


"happy: is it the last

of our three wishes to which the fairy sadly shakes her head?"

Our conflicts are real. Our castles alas are no fairy tale.
All the Living People first published by 'Every Day Poets.'

In Isle, which was also published in 'Every Day Poets,' James takes an ordinary suburban roundabout and turns it into a place:

"for a thousand elves, minutely stitching tiny shoes and britches"

when our suburban world with its falsified street names like "Beech Grove and Willow Avenue" no longer holds sway. It's a delightful poem! And I find myself hoping that I can become a tree too:

"when the woods are dark and deep."

In the Summer 2015 Issue of 'The Linnet's Wings' we published The Book of Lascaux, another of my favourite James Graham poems. I admire it partly because we share a love of history and archaeology, but also because it acknowledges our tentative grasp on how people used to view their world; that their world is not our world. And it assumes nothing.

"When we speak of them, we have to say perhaps, or probably, or almost certainly. But almost, almost certainly


they understood what we have called

acoustics. Painted their vibrant stags and bison where the sound was good.

And the drums would beat, and the pulse of the mountain would respond."

We can recognise this scene. We can appreciate the visual and the rhythmic but we lack a common language and thereby a common understanding. It is not that they are primitive or we more advanced. There are simply limitations:

"We try to read a wisdom never meant for us:"

The thing is we can never know who or what it was meant for – the animals, the caves; the living or the dead; gods? Or what the message is. We use science. We use poetry. We

"unearth their shards, and dust them off, and guess; decode and annotate their wordless images, read them as metaphor. We hear
but cannot share"

James Graham takes us to the Lascaux Caves and to other places, other times, and there we encounter people just as removed from us as those two dead soldiers were from each other and yet just as close; as removed as the child's reality is from that of the adult; as removed as we are from the elves of that traffic roundabout. But he takes us there for a purpose; so that we may try to read their wisdom and discover our own joy and that is a thing worth doing.

The title poem ends:
"I knew nothing then but the sun and the breeze searching my limb
and the cool water rising through my sapwood."
Becoming a Tree


I highly recommend it.

You can buy it HERE www.troubador.co.uk/matador.asp

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