I blame the dead

We have been to a thing. Breaking with this blog’s tradition of oblique references to low-level gossip and self-recrimination at various things over the years, I disclose we were in attendance at the memorial of our friend the literature festival director and educator Kay Dunbar. With her husband Stephen Bristow, Kay co-owned and ran the Ways With Words literature festival, and associated events across the UK, from 1992-2022.

If you have been to Dartington, and sat in its medieval Great Hall, you will know that its height, stone walls, wooden floors and giant fireplace make it a deeply resonant space in which to listen to words. I’m deeply grateful to Kay and Stephen for putting on so many memorable events there over the years. My mind goes back to the waves of love passing to and from the stage where Seamus Heaney read his poems, a year or so after his stroke in 2006, palpable and mimetic. As Stephen spoke in thanks and farewell to Kay, I saw those same waves drawing us all in.

Towards the end of Stephen’s wonderful speech, he invited Blake Morrison to read a couple of poems in tribute to Kay. He began with ‘Covehithe’, the name of a small village just up the coast from Southwold, one of Ways With Words’ many venues. It was not a poem I knew. It begins innocently enough, with bald, almost bland statement: ‘The tides go in and out’. Before you know it, we are confronted with the reality of coastal erosion, the ‘creep’ of cliffs ‘stuck in reverse’ towards the ‘graves of Covehithe church’. A subtle poem of mourning and loss, it was perfect to its occasion.

The turn, when it came, was not one I expected: ‘I blame the dead’. Tonally, it’s out of keeping with the plaintive ‘What’s to be done?’ that preceeds it, not to mention the previous stanzas. I admire it, not least because it risks saying something you would never confess to in normal life, let alone in the solemnity of a memorial gathering. Like a gauche eruption at a dinner party, it brings into play forces, in this case the agency of the dead, that would normally stay silent. But then again, if a memorial gathering teaches us anything, it’s that we aren’t here long. Pick up that pen and write that poem, that memoir, that blog post, that one-woman show. There’s no point in blaming the dead. We’re here now.