Artist Spotlight: Andrew Mitchell's “A Scattering of Words on Water"
Andrew Mitchell is a UK-based poet who was born in West Yorkshire. His work integrates letters, memoirs, and scholarship in response to the works of Keats, Byron, and Darwin, among others, in order to create poems and inter-disciplinary performances with painstakingly detailed bibliographies. Mitchell’s works have been performed at the British Library and the Keats-Shelley House in Rome, and he has appeared on the BBC. The Keats biography poem, A Scattering of Words on Water, is one of three linked to the English Romantics by Mitchell.
Responding to K-SAA’s 2023-2025 public outreach theme, Mitchell shares thoughts below on his poetic process and offers his notes on the three passages (also included below) from A Scattering of Words on Water, a poem which spans approximately 1200 lines in total and is a long-form historical narrative poem.
Readers will note that A Scattering of Words on Water reflexively invokes the scholarly practices of indexing and citation, as featured through extensive footnotes throughout the poem and illustrated below following each of the excerpts– “Chapman’s Homer,” “Poor Tom,” and “Shelley’s Cremation.” Reading through the excerpts here gives only an impression of the meticulous references and citations–numbering in the hundreds–that inform Mitchell’s lines of poetry.
Mitchell at work in Ilkley, 14 miles from the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth, United Kingdom.
Andrew Mitchell on the Poetic Process and Commonplacing
Every exploration of a writer’s work is to make a new acquaintance, but what of the writer’s process, the mirror image of your text? A text is a shimmering mirror suspended between writer and reader. So if we look through that mirror at a closely defined text what do we see? We see a linguistic artifact which enshrines the gods, politics and cultural wisdom of an age. In poetic terms this may contain rhythms and cadences regarded as appropriate to an era, hexameters for Homeric delivery or rhyming couplets for the theft of a lock of hair.
Keats enshrined the doubts of any writer at dinner one evening after finishing Endymion, declaring there was ‘nothing original to be written in poetry’ under the exhaustive weight of Dante, Shakespeare and Milton. Woodhouse was to reply that poetry was ‘unexhausted’ and ‘inexhaustible’.
To write is to believe in the inexhaustible nature of literature. However, new ideas and forms of writing bear the weight of history and cannot escape it. Transference in time, place and language inevitably distorts what comes down to us. History is a locked door with a mailbox through which we receive missives of past occurrences: letters, diaries, poems, plays, novels, state papers, etc.. We may with imagination lift the flap of that mailbox and attempt to squint into the past but can do no more than that.
This is so with historical narrative poetry. There is a journey to a particular locus in past time and place. It begins with wide reading. For instance, during the first twenty years of John Keats’ life Great Britain was at war with France and its government reflected this, even introducing imprisonment without trial on two occasions (suspension of Habeas Corpus Act). Keats’ first published poem O Solitude appears in Leigh Hunt’s Examiner in May 1816 and in July 1820 his last poems in life Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes are published by Taylor and Hessey. Just two months later he sails for Italy. This astonishing brevity of poetic existence is breathtaking, leading to what Walter Jackson Bate called ‘the most nearly perfect poem in English’, his To Autumn.
There is a temptation at this point to give up the project entirely, or as one poet friend suggested, choose ten or twelve incidents from the poet’s life. The continuity of one life is not to be found in episodic choices. If this was to be done it was to be done whole, seeing both the light of imagination and the darkly shifting sands of adversity. As Keats remarked after Endymion that he could have ‘stood upon the shore and piped a silly pipe.’ The choice of what to include from a huge collection of possible sources is made easier by analogy. We have all stood watching a stream on a sunny day, marveling how light illuminates the water and how specific stones in the water’s path seem to catch the light. Similarly, a choice of sources is made from those which stand out and can be placed within the stream of narrative. Though the waters must come to full flood and conceal each stone beneath the rhythm.
From the approximately 1200 lines of A Scattering of Words on Water I have selected three episodes [to share below with K-SAA and fellow commonplacers]: Chapman’s Homer, Poor Tom, and from the very end of the Coda, Shelley’s Cremation.
Chapman’s Homer
He paused; above, last of the stars, myriad
as Trojan army fires, now faded with many
last farewells¹⁰³. Sea in lassitude, murmured
below Greek ships, some fired, others with twisted
timbers beneath summer suns of idleness.
Ten years¹⁰⁴! A space of time in which to overwhelm
the self in poetry¹⁰⁵. Shield wall formed at dawn, embossed
bronze lapped, helms close, horsehair plumes swayed
together¹⁰⁶, red as rising dawn across the clouds. Forty-
one days¹⁰⁷, Achilles’ wrath, bitter feuding¹⁰⁸; the man
made for war sitting in his tent. Hector¹⁰⁹,
keeper to a city-state guarded his walls by onslaught
down to the sea’s brink. Many mauled by bronze
lance heads, swords and stones, sinking under
wounds¹¹⁰;
103 The Iliad, Penguin Classics, Trans., Robert Fagles, 1990, Book 8, L 638-49, Trojans waiting to go into battle.
104 Length of the Trojan War.
105 John Keats, The Complete Poems, Ed., John Barnard, Penguin Books Ltd., 1983, Sleep and Poetry, L, 96-97, p. 85
O for ten years, that I may overwhelm
myself in poesy.
106 The Iliad, Penguin Classics, Trans., Robert Fagles, 1990, Book 16, L 213-7
Just as a man constructs a wall for some high house,
using well-fitted stones to keep out forceful winds,
that’s how close their helmets and bossed shields lined up,
shield pressing against shield, helmet against helmet,
man against man. On the bright ridges of the helmets,
horsehair plumes touched when warriors moved their heads.
107 Forty one days is the assumed length of time chronicled in the Iliad.
108 The Greek High King, Agamemnon, had come to Achilles’ tent and taken away Briseis, the Trojan woman who was part of Achilles’ spoils of war. Feeling humiliated, Achilles had called on his mother, the goddess Thetis to bring about Trojan victories whilst he sat in his tent.
109 The Trojan leader Hector’s name means, holder, keeper or protector.
110 Ezra Pound, The Cantos, Faber & Faber Ltd., Canto 1, L 32
Men many, mauled with bronze lance heads
Canto 1 is concerned with The Iliad and the Odyssey.
Chapman’s Homer Time shimmers through this text: Homer to Chapman; Chapman to Cowden Clark and Keats; Cowden Clark and Keats to this moment in time. There was a need to have an accurate description of Keats as he sets out as poet: height, body, eyes and facial expression. Written in October 1816 this poem is an early indication of poetic power. His exclamation ‘O for ten years, that I may overwhelm/Myself in poesy;’ Sleep and Poetry,
L 96-7 has the retrospective ring of Ancient Greek fatalism, so fundamental to that era, neither gods nor humans might interfere, however alive and vital they might be. Homer is such a realist in his treatment of warfare, and Keats as a medical student, would almost automatically assess the bodily impact of weapons. Time returns at the end of the piece to a living portrait of London 200 years ago, as opposed to ruined Troy.
Hyperion-Poor Tom
Reread Lear,
was confronted with ‘Poor Tom’ upon the page³¹¹.
Date written whilst he avoided Tom’s voice,
feebleness³¹². Entered the solemn rhythm,
austere cadences of Miltonic
blank verse. Watched Hyperion flare from stately
nave to nave³¹³, felt his agony as dawn refused
to come at his behest, stretched in grief
upon a rack of clouds³¹⁴, until at dawn he plunged
with peregrine speed towards the earth³¹⁵.
So majestic his shape, brilliant before his brethren,
but a vast shade in that brightness³¹⁶; melancholy
desolation of Titan cherished hopes; fear, hope
and wrath³¹⁷ in regions of laborious breath,
clenched teeth, limbs locked as seams of metal:³¹⁸
upon the flint-covered floor one ground
his skull³¹⁹.
310 Robert Gittings, John Keats, Penguin Books Ltd., 1979, pp. 380-1
311 Ibid, p. 365
312 Andrew Motion, Keats, Faber & Faber Ltd., 1997, pp. 305-6 Quotes letter to Dilke, 21 September 1818
313 John Keats, Complete Poems, Ed., John Barnard, Penguin Books Ltd., 1983, Hyperion I, L 218, p. 289
314 Ibid, Hyperion I, L 302-4, p. 291
315 Ibid, Hyperion I, L 355-8, p.292
316 Ibid, Hyperion II, L 372-3, p. 302
317 Ibid, Hyperion II, L 92-5, p. 295
318 Ibid, Hyperion II, L 22-4, p. 293
319 Ibid, Hyperion II, L 50-2, p. 294
Poor Tom I wished to convey the conflict between the life of the body and the life of the spirit, represented by the slow death of brother Tom from tuberculosis and the deep desire to write Hyperion with its strong Miltonic influences. There is a sense of filial betrayal, which would be quite normal in the circumstances – ‘Have I done enough for him?’ There is Z’s vitriolic attack on Keats, partly the product of Keats’ friend Bailey having dinner with Lockhart (Sir Water Scott’s future son-in-law) just prior to the article being written. Keats is rereading King Lear and cannot refrain from noting the date in the margin ‘Sunday evening Oct. 4 1818’ at the words ‘poor Tom’. The fourth betrayal is from Hyperion where the fall of the Titan gods is in progress. Yet despite this the creative force triumphs in an epiphany which leads to the great odes.
Shelley’s Cremation
Dull hollow sound from mattock
blow, exposed skull⁴²⁰; flesh of arms and face
entirely eaten, other stained dark indigo.
White nankeen trousers now black, Keats’s
poems doubled back in reefer jacket, single
snake’s coil for iridescent Lamia⁴²¹. Silence,
broken by Byron: Is this a human body, more
like the carcase of a sheep, satire upon
our pride and follies⁴²², a shrivelled husk of life,
horribly embalmed by death. No hundred
feet long pyre⁴²³, but a grid of bars and strong
iron sheet to lay him on⁴²⁴. Instead of two
handled honey and oil jars⁴²⁵, more wine poured
over him than consumed in life, with oil,
salt and frankincense, as resinous pinewood
burnt furiously air filled with yellow flames,
tremulous with shimmering waves⁴²⁶.
420 Edward Trelawny, Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron, Constable & Robinson, 2000, p. 91
421 Ibid, p. 9. Also: Richard Holmes, Shelley, The Pursuit, Flamingo, 1995, p. 730
422 Fiona MacCarthy, Byron, Life and Legend, Faber & Faber Ltd., 2003, p. 429
423 Homer, The Iliad, Penguin Classics, Trans., Robert Fagles, 1990, BK., 23,
L 188, p. 564
424 Edward Trelawny, Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron, Constable & Robinson, 2000, p. 89
425 Homer, The Iliad, Penguin Classics, Trans., Robert Fagles, 1990, BK., 23,
L 188, p. 565
426 Edward Trelawny, Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron, Constable & Robinson, p. 87
Shelley’s Cremation Little time separates the deaths of Keats and Shelley (Feb. 1821 to July 1822). In June 1821 Shelley composed his elegy for Keats Adonais in 55 Spenserian stanzas. Time’s refractive mirror comes through Bion’s Death of Adonis and Moschus’s Elegy on the Death of Bion. The fates lurk here. Trelawny’s decision to cremate Shelley and his companions was Homeric, within the grandeur of landscape, pathos of loss and sense of mortality. Keats’s Lamia folded back in the dead man’s pocket. The heart kept in Mary’s copy of Adonais. Both now lying close to each other in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome.
Ars longa vita brevis.
Indexing Notes, Assigning Headings, Compiling Excerpts
Mitchell’s own indexing process is extensive, and he keeps the physical notes for this project in two shelves of his library. He began compiling the notes for A Scattering of Words on Water in 2015. “This continued whilst I began drafting text between 2016 and 2018. The draft was edited late 2023/2024. I wrote the Coda to the poem 2018/2019. Each folder is labelled with its title. The contents are divided into working parts. With the Keats poem each small section of the proposed text had an envelope folder which initially gathered notes and then drafts. Folders needed to be for small pieces of text because otherwise the task appeared daunting. The Rome sections were written first and then divided up throughout the poem. I wanted to give the idea that Keats fell asleep to the sound of the fountain at the Spanish Steps and dreamed his life, waking occasionally. Sections were quite rudimentary: Rome, Childhood, Education, Training, etc.”
The K-SJ+ editors have commonplaced twenty additional passages from Mitchell’s roughly 1200-line poem, A Scattering of Words on Water, using headings provided by the poet and organizing them in a partial index below. These headings and their corresponding excerpts provide K-SJ+ readers with an extended and non-linear preview to the poem before it will be published in full.
About the Author
Andrew Mitchell is UK-based poet and an Honorary Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. Many of his works have been illustrated by artist Mary Kuper. In 2013, The Burial of Lord Byron was first performed with cello and dance at the Attenborough Theatre, University of Leicester. Soon after this the pamphlet, illustrated by Mary Kuper, was accepted by the V&A London for their international collection. In 2016, it formed the opening ceremony for the International Byron Conference in Gdansk. Performed in their Shakespeare Theatre, the cast included a mezzo-soprano singing Byron poems set to music, a keyboard player and four eurythmic dancers. This poem will be revisited in December 2024 to mark the bicentenary of the poet’s death in a London performance with cello and illustrations for the Byron Society. Both the Attenborough Theatre and Gdansk performances are on Andrew Mitchell’s YouTube channel. You can explore recent performances of his multimedia poetic works incorporating dance and music here.