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Gripscapes: Newly selected poems
Norman Morrissey
ISBN: 978-0-620-91065-1
Echoing Green Press
Gripscapes: Newly selected poems collects the unpublished works of late South African poet Norman Morrissey. It is the first posthumous collection to be published in his name and has been edited by John van Wyngaard. Strandloop, a collection published a year before his death, placed Morrissey’s various published poems into a single volume. This new collection, Gripscapes, includes poems from Morrissey’s notebooks, letters to friends and lovers, poetry parcels sent to friends, and scraps of early editions of poems that have been found. Confessional, melodic, heroic and always intriguing, the poems in the collection both address topics that populate Morrissey’s works, and grant access behind the curtain to where the developing poetic light shone.
For Morrissey, setting out to discover how to write poetry became a large part of his life. In a poem written in 1981, Morrissey reflects that it is “writings/ mostly learning/ where he’s likely to be caught”. He, in this instance, is a poem. Morrissey likens writing to discovering, where the poem is out there and needs refinement, which years of slow work might achieve. Much like a knight errant, the poet is in search of poetry. His life is a quest of refining the technique. Similarly, in the poem “Sawdust”, Morrissey describes how one scraps poems into a shape, like one would carve wood. The thousands of other attempts are not failures, but are “just sawdust/ on your floor”. The act of writing poetry becomes part of living life.
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Writing, for Morrissey, is shown to be an endless quest where lessons are learnt.
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Writing, for Morrissey, is shown to be an endless quest where lessons are learnt. And he is free to confess, in these unpublished pieces, that mistakes were made along the way. These types of confessions in Morrissey’s poems often come from a place of self-reflection. The poems express Morrissey offering himself towards friends and family, or even just writing himself. Only because of the collection’s publication has this private life been laid bare for readers beyond his circle. The collection is ever greater for it. The poems do not read like heavily edited works, but rather like bursts of creative moments that have been slowly pondered year after year.
Lifelong learning is found throughout the text. For instance, one reads in a poem titled “Ideology”, written in 1984, that “I’ll never know much for certain about anything at any one time”. This Socratic notion of ever searching, ever questioning and always attempting to refine one’s point of view for life ties well into Morrissey’s poetic life. The search for truth incorporates the search for how to write and express the wisdom found. And, much like the dialogues, the poems read like a conversation. Since they were unpublished, one is left with the question of whether Morrissey had a natural talent for spur-of-the-moment genius. The poems read as if they have just been thought of, which is to say, they read with the craft of writing well hidden.
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Much like a knight errant, the poet is in search of poetry. His life is a quest of refining the technique. Similarly, in the poem “Sawdust”, Morrissey describes how one scraps poems into a shape, like one would carve wood. The thousands of other attempts are not failures, but are “just sawdust/ on your floor”. The act of writing poetry becomes part of living life.
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The titular poem, “Gripscapes”, written in late 1979, was written on a loose scrap of paper, the picture of which is included in the text. In the poem, a speaker expresses how they handle truth in their lives. The speaker notes how truth is known “by a sense of something slipping me”. What slipped past is likened to a “fin-glint” thing just out of their “gripscaped touch”. They are left with their hand still shaped in this gripscaped touch, as if one firm grasp rightly timed could have captured what went past. Truth leaves its remnants on those who seek it, and this cannot change, for it is always ungraspable. Yet, one can write, describe and reimagine the world slipping past. In this way, both the truth of the world and the truth of writing the world are explored at their joint moment of passing.
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Morrissey’s collection Gripscapes presents the fascinating views of life of a South African poet after their death. The life that it grants access to is one where the poet attempts to write poetry about the world around them.
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Morrissey’s collection Gripscapes presents the fascinating views of life of a South African poet after their death. The life that it grants access to is one where the poet attempts to write poetry about the world around them. The title poem of a past event, mirrors well onto the poetic life that Morrissey has left. His slow building and improving poetic style remained with his search for something else, some deeper truth that writing might grasp. What remains is this collection, likely his last, filled with writings of a life of poetry that very nearly caught some kind of truth through writing. An intriguing collection for contemplation on how one might remain to read a poet after their death has come.
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