CUMBERLEGE, Marcus (Crossley)

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Nationality: British. Born: Antibes, France, 23 December 1938. Education: Sherborne School, Dorset; St. John's College, Oxford, B.A. 1961. Family: Married 1) Ava Nicole Paranjoti in 1965 (divorced 1972), one daughter; 2) Maria Lefever in 1973. Career: Teacher, British Council, Lima, Peru, 1957–58, 1962–63; advertising executive, Ogilvy and Mather, London, 1964–67; advertising assistant, British Travel Authority, London, 1967–68; English teacher, Lycée International, St. Germain-en-Laye, 1968–70. Since 1978 visiting lecturer in poetry and oriental studies, International University of Lugano, Hilversum, and University of Limburg. Since 1976 translator of Flemish tourist literature, West Flanders. Editor, with Scott Rollins, Dremples, Amsterdam, 1977. Awards: Eric Gregory Award, 1967. Address: Eekhoutstraat 42, 8000 Bruges, Belgium.

Publications

Poetry

Oases. London, Anvil Press Poetry, 1968.

Poems for Quena and Tabla. Oxford, Carcanet, 1970.

Running towards a New Life. London, Anvil Press Poetry, 1973.

Firelines. London, Anvil Press Poetry, 1977.

The Poetry Millionaire. Swanage, Dorset, Dollar of Soul Press, 1977.

La Nuit Noire. Bruges, Manufaktuur, 1977.

XX Vriendelijke Vragen. Bruges, Ganzespel, 1977.

Bruges/Brugge, with Owen Davis. Bruges, Orion, 1978.

Northern Lights. Bruges, Manufaktuur, 1981.

Life Is a Flower. Bruges, Drukkerij Setola, 1981.

Vlaamse Fabels. Bruges, Manufaktuur, 1982.

Sweet Poor Hobo. Bruges, Manufaktuur & Babel, 1984.

Things I Cannot Change. Bruges, Limited Editions, 1993.

The Best Is Yet to Be? Bruges, Manufaktuur, 1997.

The Moon, the Blackbird and the Falling Leaf. Bruges, Paper Tiger Press, 1999.

Once I Had a Secret Love. Bruges, Paper Tiger Press, 2000.

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Critical Study: "Fur die Schule ungeeignet? 'Horse' von Marcus Cumberlege" by Inge Leimberg, in Literatur in Wissenschaft and Unterricht (Wurzburg, Germany), 20(1), 1987.

Marcus Cumberlege comments:

(1980) Major influences: César Vallejo, the French symbolists, Lorca, Blake, Rilke, Eliot, Yeats. Later influences: Gautier, Pessoa, Van Ostaijen and Flemish expressionism; Basho, Wang Wei, Rumi; Mellie Uyldert and Henri van Praag.

Earlier themes: (1) survival of "human beings" in urban society, compassion for the former while satirizing shortcomings of the latter; (2) automatic poetry attempting to situate the poet geographically and define his role as interpreter of mysteries; (3) original poetry in Spanish, French, and Dutch; translation from contemporary Latin American poets. Recent themes: Connemara and West Flanders: haiku; he remains an experimentalist in practice, and his poetry is concerned with changing the quality of life at an environmental level, partly through direct cooperation with musicians and graphic artists. He is conscious of poetry's educational function, and although he treats writing as an act of personal spiritual discipline, he regards his books as an extended physical manifestation of his own personality, seeking through publication to serve, delight, and ultimately enlighten others.

(1985) More recently I began to make free use of Dutch, French, Spanish, and Irish in my original work, with a return to automatic writing.

(1995) Back to haiku and rhyming twelve-line lyrics. One hundred of these published in 1993 in Things I Cannot Change, poems (sometimes humorous) based on my recovery from alcoholism and manic depression. I now get great enjoyment and release from my own writing, which has something of a therapeutic quality about it. The use of language is simplified and spontaneous. There is no more striving for perfection.

(2000) Writing my silly little poems, at age sixty, has become second nature to me. This often nocturnal activity is now as inescapable as thought itself and as necessary as breathing. The lyrics in Firelines (1977) sometimes took six weeks to compose. Those in Once I Had a Secret Love (2000) are often completed in fifteen minutes. Still, the message, or cry, always seems to be urgent and vital.

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Marcus Cumberlege had been writing poems for about ten years before the publication of his first major collection, Running towards a New Life, in 1973, though his smaller collections, Oases and Poems for Quena and Tabla, had introduced his work to the public. During this period it seemed that he was working toward the development of an individual voice, experimenting with various styles, ideas, and forms and with the use of language to obtain different effects. The result was that Running towards a New Life, covering the whole of the period, gives the impression that his work was a great deal more uneven than it had become by the time of publication.

Sometimes the influences are a little too obvious in the earlier poems—one can identify the Auden style and the Brian Patten manner, for instance—but there is a calm assurance about the later poems in the book, which has a roughly chronological sequence. Nevertheless, whatever the style or tone, Cumberlege has always written civilized verse, work that is witty, sophisticated, and rooted in European poetry, demonstrating a wide reading of classical and modern poetry. The polished couplets of "Mural for the Country Residence of a Latin American President," with its deliberate connection with Eliot's "Prufrock" at the beginning, is still one of the best things he has done. His knowledge of technique is remarkable, but his most striking characteristic is a capacity for finding the startlingly apt image or metaphor; when he manages to combine these qualities with a driving theme, he can be superb. In "There Are Days" he shows his real potential.

Having worked his way systematically through the relatively long process of experimentation, Cumberlege appears to be reaping the benefit, if one can judge from his second major collection, Firelines. The volume is divided into five sections—"The Sun Dial," "The Ram," "Harmonia's Necklace," "The Murmuring Branches," and "Errisberg"—each with its dedication, epigraph, and poetic style. He exerts a firmer control over material, manipulates language in a more effective manner, and gives more attention to precision of statement, while demonstrating his versatility in a range of styles. The first section is more structured than the rest and more traditionally lyrical—

   No South or North. I turn.
   Sun breathes, warm as a dog
   Chasing sheep into rock. The moon
   Thrusts its slane into the bog

—but one might hazard a guess that these poems are from an earlier phase. "Oasis" and "Lord Dunsany" are, in fact, included in Oases, published nine years earlier. One can certainly imagine that Cumberlege would not now be content with the following stanza from "Hesperides":

   sun dips a brush in darkness.
   The paintbox in the west
   Closing, one drop of scarlet
   Splashes the robin's breast.

Still, there are some attractive pieces in which the rhyming or half-rhyming pattern lends deceptive simplicity ("Eclipse"):

   The river clambers to its source,
   Apples awaken as they fall.
   Ghosts of the famine stalked our house
   And whispered through a moonlit wall.

"The Ram" section, which links astrological symbols and tarot concepts with "fierced-eyed Mrs. Mop," "the Connaught moon," the "Moorish dreams of Potocki," "the Western Buddha," "The House of Opposites," and Saint John, has striking phraseology here and there, but with its slightly surrealistic use of imagery it is likely to be inaccessible to many readers. The most outstanding poems—"The Connemara Cradle," "A Hot Chestnut," "Questions for Goldilocks," "The Perfect Man," and "Coole Park and Ballylee, Winter"—are all collected in the "Harmonia's Necklace" section.

Cumberlege lived part of his childhood in Ireland and later spent some time on the west coast of Ireland. It is not surprising that this experience seems to have made a strong impact upon his poetry. "The Murmuring Branches" section contains his fine translations from the Spanish of Lorca (including "The Faithless Wife") and Carlos Bousoño, the Flemish of Herman Leys, and the French of Jacques Prévert.

—Howard Sergeant