Add MS 88998/2/49

20 communications from Douglas Oliver.

• (1). Cambridge, 3 February 1970. Typed letter (1 sheet), with envelope. Comments on Harwood, The Sinking Colony (1970). Comments include the phrase 'Inside the harm is a clearing', which Harwood then utilises as the first line of a new poem (see letter 9 June 1970, item 3 below). 'I've just landed a job with a Paris press agency and am moving in a rush, probably by Feb 22.'
• (2). Paris, 20 April 1970. Typed letter (1 sheet) enclosing typed poem 'The number of windows' (2 sheets), with envelope. 'Where I've ended up - a suburb of Paris full of baker's shops, work in a news factory - was a result of chance.' Thanks Harwood for 'promoting [his] cause with Fulcrum: that was good of you.'
• (3). Paris, 9 June 1970. Typed letter (2 sheets), with envelope. Passage marked by pencil in the margin: 'I think you're perfectly right to put such stress on intellectual clarity and directness. There remains the problem of what happens if someone like me does not have the intellectual clarity yet wants to be direct. The only result is to write a cranky sort of text.' On the second page of the letter, Oliver comments on Harwood, '"Inside the harm is a clearing"' (Collected Poems, pp. 164-6): 'The desire to be clean, or [sic] games of identity ... I think we share that reason for trying for honesty. You say your poem is a tombstone to your earlier period; and I wonder what's coming out through the rhythms because you have so much scope. I should like very much a copy of your new book and quizz which side of the "tombstone" it will lie.' The envelope includes Harwood's annotations on recto and verso.
• (4). Paris, 2 April 1971. Typed letter (1 sheet), with envelope. Letter includes map and directions to Oliver's address. 'If it were possible, it would be nice for you to give a reading on the George Tysh programme.'
• (5). Paris, 5 May 1971. Autograph letter (2 sheets), with envelope. A letter to Harwood in the hands of children Kate and Bonny Oliver, including a story in Douglas Oliver's hand ('There was once a house living by the river').
• (6). Paris, 20 May 1971. Typed letter (1 sheet), with envelope. 'I liked your list of priorities from our talk' - letter includes Oliver's 'list'.
• (7). Paris, 9 June 1971. Typed letter (4 sheets), with envelope. Having received Penguin Modern Poets 19 (Ashbery, Harwood, Raworth). Letter discusses Jack Spicer, A Book of Music, and addresses questions of poetic form.
• (8). Paris, 22 June 1971. Typed letter (1 sheet), with envelope. Refers to review article in The Times by Michael Wood, 'The neck of eloquence' - cutting enclosed with next letter. Letter lists various books wanted (a study of Ramon Lull, 'a solid textbook on medieval philosophy', texts by Giordano Bruno).
• (9). Paris, 26 July 1971. Typed letter (1 sheet), enclosing cutting (Wood, 'The neck of eloquence'), with envelope. 'I may be moving back to England in the autumn' (Coventry).
• (10). Coventry, 1 November 1971. Typed letter (1 sheet), with envelope. With thanks for Harwood's Tzara translations. 'The novel is under rewriting just now, having been turned down at first try by MacGibbon and Kee.'
• (11). Coventry, 17 November 1971. Typed letter (1 sheet), with envelope. 'Your veil ['The Long Black Veil'] has a movement in the PR [Poetry Review] version that intrigues me. As though a current had passed through the cameo sections of the Sinking Colony.'
• (12). Coventry, 11 January 1972 (postmark). Typed poem 'Whirlwind' (1 sheet), enclosing a note to Judith Walker from 'the man who goes back to look at posters' (1 sheet), with envelope. Addressed to Harwood at the Aegean School of Fine Arts, Paros, Greece.
• (13). Coventry, 11 April 1972. Typed letter (2 sheets), with envelope addressed to Paros. 'I've a place at Essex Univ for next autumn to read Literature, their U.S major option; now all I've to do is persuade Coventry City Council to part with a mature grant.' Comments on the poetry of Charles Olson and Robert Duncan.
• (14). Coventry, 5 May 1972. Typed letter (2 sheets) enclosing poem 'Switches on internal driver' (1 sheet), with envelope addressed to Paros. 'So let me start with a very Harwoodesque (ish? ian?) concept of narrative.' Continues discussion of Olson, remarks on Ed Dorn.
• (15). Coventry, 1 July 1972. Typed letter (2 sheets) enclosing 2 poems '"The height of love is praise for third parties"' and 'Importantly' (3 sheets) and pencil drawings (1 sheet) relating to The Diagram Poems (Ferry Press, 1979) With envelope addressed to Paros. 'Great to know you have about finished the long, black veil.' Oliver is moving to Brighlingsea in September.
• (16). Coventry, 5 August 1972. Typed letter (3 sheets), with envelope addressed to Paros. Detailed comments on 'The Long Black Veil'.
• (17). Brightlingsea, 3 February 1973. Typed letter (1 sheet), with envelope addressed to Lee Walker in Boston, Mass. 'You ask me what's out over here.'
• (18). Brightlingsea, 11 April 1973. Typed letter (1 sheet) enclosing poem 'A Western' (2 sheets), with envelope addressed to Lee Walker in Boston, Mass. 'This summer I'm going to take off for perhaps a month or so and go round yer dear ole Limey places, perhaps armed with a market research questionnaire or with some other strategy, call on doorsteps and write some poems from the material that accumulates [....] The area I want to get at still lies for me under the general heading of ageing [...].'
• (19). Brightlingsea, 24 May 1973. Typed letter (2 sheets), with envelope addressed to Lee Walker in Boston, Mass. 'Hey, it was really nice to get the Boston Eagle, such a warm publication, freshly baked [...] And there you all are on the back, thoreau the world like an Enid Blyton four.' (Refers to photograph of Wieners, Harwood, Warsh, and Corbett at Walden Pond - see Add MS 88998/1/1, item 20.) Harwood returning to Brighton in June.
• (20). Brightlingsea, 22 November 1973. Autograph letter (1 sheet) enclosing typed poems (3 sheets): 'leaves from a Pythian, Oliverian oracle' (i.e. In the Cave of Suicession). With envelope, annotated by Harwood.