IN ADVANCE of opening a UK-wide spoken-word tour in Sunderland, iconic singer, musician and writer PJ Harvey has revealed the inspiration behind her latest work.
Harvey arrives on Wearside on Thursday, October 27 to kick-off a spoken-word tour featuring her poem, Orlam – a remarkable coming-of-age tale and one of only a few full-length books written in the Dorset dialect.
Orlam tells the story of nine-year-old girl, Ira-Abel Rawles, who lives on a farm in the village of Underwhelem. Next to the farm is a wood, Ira’s sanctuary, where through West Country traditional rituals, children’s songs, chants and superstitions she makes sense of an increasingly confusing world.
Harvey’s book of poetry follows Ira and the inhabitants of Underwhelem through the last year of Ira’s childhood innocence. The result is a work of beauty, infused with hints of violence, sexual confusion, the oppression of family, but also moments of great joy through song and bawdy humour.
Now Harvey has described the inspiration behind Orlam, the genesis of her poem and how she found the shift from songwriting to poetry.
“My first poetry collection, The Hollow of the Hand, was journalistic, outward-looking, political and global in its approach, so in an effort to create something different and challenge myself I wanted to explore a different narrative stance, and a change in scale to a very contained outlook: one person, one forest, one village,” she said.
“Songwriting for me prior to this had always been a very mutual meeting of words and music, whereas this time I concentrated on making the words work on the page alone and without accompaniment of any kind except for the form of the poem and the white space around it,” she added.
Her journey from songwriter to poet was made easier through support from a series of influential writers and poets.
“I was living in Dorset and began attending a weekly seminar with the poet Greta Stoddart at Bridport Arts Centre. Greta was my first teacher. Later I moved to London and joined the Faber Academy and went to workshops with such poets as Jo Shapcott and Daljit Nagra. I wanted to learn more about the craft.
“I also attended the Lambeth Poetry School and on a workshop weekend there I met Don Paterson. I showed Don some of my poetry work and he offered to help me edit them. I spent two or three years learning and working on the poems with Don and they became my first collection of poetry, The Hollow of the Hand. They also became the lyrics to my subsequent album to Let England Shake called The Hope Six Demolition Project.”
Harvey described how Orlam took eight years to write: “I spent a lot of time in the countryside with my notepad and visited a particular woodland every month where I recorded in great detail what was happening; what flowers were blooming, what was dying, what insects were appearing, what mammals were leaving tracks or scuttling through the trees. At the same time I studied nature books, looking very closely at the different seasons.
“I was also under Don’s tuition at this time and studying other poet’s work under his guidance. I might walk in nature with my notepad whilst meditating on a poem I had recently read that had struck me. Pages and pages of notes would come from one walk, and from these notes two or three poems may arise.”
Tamsin Austin, Venue Director of The Fire Station, said: “Orlam reveals PJ Harvey to be a gifted poet and spoken-word artist as well as one of the UK’s pre-eminent songwriters of her generation. We’re thrilled to be welcoming such a fiercely talented, revered and much-loved artist into The Fire Station.”
During her show, Harvey will be in conversation with English poet Sean O’Brien, a central figure in the contemporary world of poetry. His eleventh collection of poems, Embark, will be published in November. Sean has already won many major prizes for his poetry, including the Cholmondeley Award, the Somerset Maugham award, the E.M. Forster Award and, twice, the Forward Prize for Best Collection.
For tickets for Orlam, go to www.thefirestation.org.uk