Eric Mottram makes an effort to get back into swing after the setbacks on the health-front and discourses on his colleague: Dr. Howell Daniel's passing
and his future projects.

40 Guernszey Grove, London SE24 9DE
Tel. n°: ..................
September 2, 1993

Dear Wignesan,

Thank you for sending Disquisitions on Poietics [Italicised but not the book of the same title, only pp. 15 to 95 in the "Journal of Comparative Poîétics"] and "back to background material" [a self-bound volume of poems which were included in Blind Man's Lantern: poems that lash out, mock and rip into the dark. Pub. 2015 with lacunae, errors and derangement of the layout of poems.] The poems particularly the first third or so of the book are particularly interesting because they perform personal experience into poems that give a certain access to the poet, which might otherwise well be unknown. But I'm sure you must have been told this by your readers already.

Disquisitions [italicised] is much more difficult to say anything about at all briefly, nor would you wish me too. Publically offering a poetics, [EM mistakes "poîétics" for "poetics"] given the large number of them already existant and with more to come, is a valiant action and I hope you have been rewarded with your friends' and other readers comments and discussion. A poetics is always an insertion into a massive library of such texts. And as for your need to augment it, no one in the field would be less than sympathetic with a writer's need to make for origins in this art.

I seem to recall that my last letter to you was rather a long time ago, perhaps with the books. I can't remember whether I reported my visit to Coimbra University, but perhaps I may tell you it was very enjoyable, both work in the conference and giving a reading. And I have been invited back, so it couldn't have been all that bad. That was in mid Spring. Completing lectures and seminars at King's over, I had a pleasant invitation to the Aldeburgh Festival, staying with two friends, both poets, in a very rural place called Saxmundham, and visiting Aldeburgh and Saouthwold for the first time since my brother and I were very small boys. Our father's relatives, living just outside Cambridge, rather liked the Suffolk coast. Then, more recently, I spent my annual week in Southwest Wales - rather a risk, but friends there encouraged me to take it as usual.

My Welsh friend of thirty or so years, whose family introduced me to the region years ago died. He was also a valued colleague at the Institute of United States Studies in the University of London. The director, Professor Parish, and I, managed to have an obituary for our distinguished colleague in The Independent [italicised] newspaper, and two memorials to him have been established, one of his old university at Aberystwyth - an annual prize for American Studies - and the other a seat on the cliff at his home town, Tenby. There may be a third here in London. At the request of his daughters, I spoke the homily at the funeral service, and was asked to include in it a poem I had published in his honour in Estuaries [italicised: Poem dedicated to Dr. Howell Daniels : " Precipice of Fishes (March 1990), pages 54-55 in Estuaries: Poems 1989 - 51. Twickenham: Solaris, 1992, 62p.] and which his girls told me he liked very much and had shown it to many people during the terrible weeks leading to his death. This moved me very much, but reading the poem at the dear man's funeral proved very difficult indeed. But being at Tenby this August was so full of entirely good memories of him that I realized how right our mutual friends there were to tell me to come. It is still a great loss to many people that he died so young -- he was only just sixty. (It was cancer of the stomach.) [A note added in his own hand on the typescript.]

At the end of next week I'll (be) making a return visit to Craster Castle, in Northeast Northumberland, near the fishing village of Craster - another beautiful area, and other fine friends.
So summer and early autumn are thankfully active and pleasant. Quite apart from plenty writing and reading, preparing for King's work in October, and some good commissions in the winter and spring. Two small poetry books asked for , which is heartening. But no highly paid professorship somewhere ! Idle dreams......

Thank you for having a word with Mr. Whitman [George Whitman, owner of Shakespeare & Co. on the Left-Bank at Zero-Mile, Paris.] about a possible Paris visit. I was thinking perhaps of the latter part of this month. What time do you think would be the most suitable ? I cannot make September 5,8 and 11-14. If the shop-apartment is booked, I could easily manage the dear old hotel, and would not mind that at all. (Sorry about this typed addition. Stupid errors in the writing).

I had a phone call from Cressida - that rather pleasant girl who was working in Shakespeare & Co. last time I was there. [Miss Cressida Creece (?): I knew her father in London during 1965-66 when we both lectured for the Commonwealth Institute, and fancy meeting up with his daughter in Paris in the early nineties !] She wanted to give me copies of the first issue of your Journal [italicised! Journal of Comparative Poietics, Vol. I, n° 1, featuring Eric Mottram on the cover], and we arranged that she leave them at King's as I was about to leave London. But - and this was some weeks ago - nothing has arrived. I will of course send you a cheque again as soon as they do. There is certainly no problem in offering them to people here and in the States. I hope you will be glad to know. I still think I was a very fortunate man to have such a tribute. But you surely know this already. As soon as the new books come through, be sure I'll let you have them.

I nearly forgot to say: I haven't forgotten that I said that I would revise your bibliography, etc. of my work in Journal [italicised] number one. [The idea was to prepare a new number of JCL entirely devoted to Eric Mottram as a fully introductory "visiting card".]

Yours sincerely,

Eric

Just in case, please may I draw your attention to my changed telephone number.

(c) T. Wignesan - Paris, 1993-2023