Paul Kingsnorth

It was with interest that I came across the works of Paul Kingsnorth, an environmental activist and poet, whose debut collection, Kidland, will be published in 2010.

Particularly striking to me were the poems Reawakening and, especially, The Pool. The style, tone and perhaps message of these two poems bear a remarkable resemblance to a series of ‘creation myth’ verses written by Grayson when he was still a fourteen year-old schoolboy prodigy.

Juvenilia is always fascinating to poetry fans, though often embarrassing to the poets themselves! However, Grayson has kindly agreed to let me reproduce one of these nascent works, Genesis, on the site. Grayson wishes to make it clear that there is absolutely no implication of plagiarism here: since these works have never before been published in any form it is highly unlikely that Mr Kingsnorth would ever have read them. Indeed, for most of the last half-century they have been sitting in an old shoebox in Grayson’s cellar!

But what is fascinating is the way that themes - especially new creation myths, and concerns about man and his environment - linger in the human psyche, waiting to resurface in each new generation and to be expressed by great poetic talents such as Grayson and Paul.


Genesis

In the Beginning
Were the clever monkeys.
They were made by no God
But themselves, for they learnt
To talk, and by Talking
Made themselves Gods
But not real Gods, for there can be
No real Gods
That are made
By themselves.
Only false ones.

They learnt to hammer and cut
They taught themselves tricks.
They killed bears, badgers, buffalo.
Ate their flesh.
So clever were they.

The owls wept in the forests.
The monkeys couldn’t hear,
For all their cleverness.
They shed their hair.

The clever hairless monkeys
Formed gangs and set fire
To Eden. They raped their monkeywives
And invented guns
And tinned meat.
And the atom bomb.
They raped Eden, and Eden wept.

Were they really so clever
Then?

(Unpublished, 1953. With permission)