CROZIER, Andrew

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Nationality: British. Born: 1943. Education: Cambridge University, M.A.; University of Essex, Wivenhoe, Ph.D. Career: Reader in English, University of Sussex, Brighton. Address: Arts Building, University of Sussex, Brighton, Sussex BN1 9QN, England.

Publications

Poetry

Loved Litter of Time Spent. Buffalo, Sumbooks, 1967.

Train Rides: Poems from '63 and '64. Pampisford, Cambridgeshire, R., 1968.

Walking on Grass. London, Ferry Press, 1969.

In One Side and Out the Other, with John James and Tom Phillips. London, Ferry Press, 1970.

Neglected Information. Sidcup, Kent, Blacksuede Boot Press, 1973.

The Veil Poem. Providence, Rhode Island, Burning Deck, 1974.

Printed Circuit. Cambridge, Street, 1974.

Seven Contemporary Sun Dials, with Ian Potts. Brighton, Ian Potts, 1975.

Pleats. Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire, Great Works, 1975.

Duets. Guildford, Surrey, Circle Press, 1976.

Residing. Belper, Derbyshire, Aggie Weston's, 1976.

High Zero. Cambridge, Street, 1978.

Were There. London, Many Press, 1978.

Utamaro Variations. London, Tetrad, 1982.

All Where Each Is. Edinburgh, Agneau 2, 1985.

Ghosts in the Corridor, with Donald Davie and C.H. Sisson. London, Paladin, 1992.

Other

Editor, with Tim Longville, A Various Art. Manchester, Carcanet, 1987.

Editor, Poems 1923–1941, by Carl Rakosi. Los Angeles, Sun and Moon Press, 1995.

Editor, Poems and Adolphe 1920, by John Rodker. Manchester, Carcanet, 1996.

*  *  *

When Alan Halsey of the Poetry Bookshop in Haye-on-Wye handed us the 310-page collection of Andrew Crozier's poetry, we were immediately impressed by the effectively condensed, extraordinarily pertinent title—All Where Each Is. This notion (Begriff) moves through his oeuvre. The collection literally begins with "each" and ends with "all." The first poem starts with the isolated individual:

   Man's energies have such bounds
   he turns in

The last word in the book, however, is "together"—"go separately together." The sense of "each" and "all" is central to a poet and an editor.

As an editor and as a collaborator, Crozier has provided occasions for poetry by others, and generosity informs his own poetry. In many collections over the years his poems move from the I outward to bestow a sense of sharing.

What do I know? I know that I perceive, and the process of perception moves from the I to the outer world. The process is complex, as the poem "Marriage" demonstrates with a beautifully strange, ironic sheen. More directly, perhaps, there is

   More to be learnt
   looking from the window of a train
   riding through north London into the fields
   than from prolonged scrutiny of the
   others in the buffet car.

Velocity is a derivative of space with respect to time, or the motion of space itself involves time: "The Shores of Romney Marsh / have probably been here since the sea / withdrew …" The perception of motion involves the perception of space, space involves the past, and perceiving the past brings us back to the present or, in the words of Charles Olson, "The chain of memory is resurrection." From the past, the present shore, the slope was

   … sheltering me as I walked
   along its contour to enter Rye
   across the sluice
     from the other side.

How can I tell what I know? What I know belongs to how I know, and how involves the act of telling, which changes through time:

   Yes that's true very good
          more beautiful
   and no less true
          than ever before.
 
 
          Say it again
    You cannot say it again

The I implies everybody. Listening and seeing re-create the outer world, as in "Grand Hotel":

   The three old men are silent
   listening to the sound of laughter
   happy voices rise from lighted windows
   the murmured song of the sea
   blends with the gramophone.

Many of Crozier's collections are beautifully printed, and this is particularly true of Utamaro Variations, printed in 18-point Baskerville on Somerset Cream paper, with a strict orthogonality of lines in Ian Tyson's art creating an interesting dialogue of inner spaces and outer space. The poems move in an unexpected terza rima, recalling the poet of light and of moving light:

   The colours break out and float
   In the appearance of a world
   Reflecting the shadows of a boat
 
 
   As though an inner life unfurled
   Like waves and eddying water
   In a photograph its edges curled
 
 
   With age …

The "inner life" has to move out, has to be "unfurled." Perception moves, and awareness of motion is perception, the motion of "curled" from age:

The End of a Row of Conjectural Units

Formerly the pure element of itself, it might last forever and seem as indistinct as the glare of the sun on a white wall before the thought of shadows has fallen across it; as if the flood of natural light surfacing the bricks, the cement, and paintwork had absorbed them all in unimpeded descent and could keep on going: absolute space.

In 1967 Stephen Rodefer, a poet whose "inner life unfurled" has continued to give birth to poems, noticed what Crozier essentially shares with the reader:

What you see is not what you know. And what you know you may not, you probably do not, understand. But you do know it. You have it. You carry it with you. It is what is yours most dearly.

—William Sylvester