Spring 2010

Thomas A Clark has produced a book-length poem of genuine visionary intent. Elegantly typeset, The Hundred Thousand Places invites reading in a single sitting. It also invites incantation; Clark has spoken of his poems generating 'small harmonies which attune our ears to harmony' (Oxford Poetry, VII.3). The natural world is glimpsed in fragments of language aspiring to the quality of music:

between sea and sky
drifts of bugloss
a blue butterfly
lifting from the lyme grass (p.20)

Clark's subject matter is the dramatic, windswept landscape of the Scottish highlands, his methodology that of walking, looking and listening. I use the term 'methodology' deliberately; in its studied minimalism, there is something of the chemical formula or mathematical equation about his poetry. The material world is observed not as a site for personal revolution but as the theatre of cause-and-effect.

the rock by the water
broken by bracken
tormentil and heather
releases colour  (p.40)

[...]

from rock
heather
from astringency
colour           (p.41)

Thomas A Clark's poetry often appears as installations in galleries and public spaces. He shares the visual artist's concern with the act of seeing. Sometimes landscape is presented as a kind of devotional act. Perception is invariariably guided by light.

in the gloom the eye
flies to light
to light on a branch
and pause        (p.58)

The conceit of this reputation of 'light' renders vision an active force, which not only captures but alters subjective reality. Throughout this poem, we negotiate a path between perception as a passive and active process. Landscape is constantly in flux, moving in and out of focus:

a plane
of appearance
where nothing is deferred

lacking depth    (p.22)

At times, the reader is led through what appears to be an illusory topography, revealing computer-generated vistas, a world created by and for the viewer's presence.

if you stretch out
in the long grasses
your weight is distributed
over the headland
to rest as lightly
on the crushed grasses
as sky on sea    (p.26)

If there is any sense of progression in this poem of walking, then it is towards a recognition of the individual's immersion in the elements, in 'constantly/ spilling water' which 'pours around you'.

you are the first
thing the wind meets
as it whistles up
the side of the mountain

rocks, trees
mountains
solitary persons
swept up
in the wind      (p.47)

Occasionally Clark tends towards a naïve (perhaps deliberately naïve) representation of the interaction of human and landscape. Scree is 'innocent/ of incident'; a hill-walker is 'free of concern'. Whilst these lines seem to sanction a nostalgic, idealized position (landscape as therapy), the poem is no thesis. Later, the poet is more pragmatic:

it was not your
intention to bring
all your resources
here but you do   (p.69)

The Middle English dream vision Pearl is brought to mind as a poetic forebear, both for its unashamed delight in language and landscape, and for its tendency towards philosophical inquiry. The language of delight is, in fact, one of several registers in The Hundred Thousand Places; each moderating the others. Clark is particularly skilled at a kind of deadpan abstraction. For instance:

whatever is lifted
by the wind is dropped
again into a calm
slightly ahead of itself  (p.35)

That 'slightly' is right on the mark, illustrating the precision of Clark's writing [...] The Hundred Thousand Places realigns our understanding of the lyric voice and of its investment in the natural world.