|
The official website of THE POWYS SOCIETY |
|||||
|
Philippa Powys |
|||||
| Home | About The Society | News and Events | Publishing News | 2010 Conference | |
| John Cowper Powys | T. F. Powys | Llewelyn Powys | The Powys Family | ||
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Powys Society Publication List [Order Form] Powys titles currently in print
|
Philippa Powys Novelist, poet and playwright Catharine Edith Philippa Powys (1886-1963) was born at Montacute in Somerset, the ninth of eleven children in this multi-talented family. She had no formal education and much of the knowledge she acquired in youth was self-discovered. Her early adult life was spent farming, but in a family of prodigious writers it was no surprise that her own creative energies were channelled into literature from an early age. In 1924 she moved into Chydyok, an isolated farmhouse near the majestic Dorset coastline, with her sister, the artist Gertrude Powys. A few years later her brother, Llewelyn Powys, and his wife, Alyse Gregory, joined them to occupy the adjacent cottage. Despite never achieving the success of her literary brothers she wrote at least two novels at Chydyok that were never published – The Tragedy of Budvale and Joan Callais – as well as a play, The Quick and the Dead. Subsequent novels included The Path of the Gale and Further West, but these too never saw the light of day. In 1930, she had a collection of poems published titled Driftwood, and three short pamphlets of poems appeared thereafter (many of them republished in 1992 in Driftwood and Other Poems). That year also saw her only success as a novelist with The Blackthorn Winter, published by Constable in London and by Richard R. Smith in New York, it was reissued in 2007 by The Sundial Press. The Blackthorn Winter In The Blackthorn Winter a band of gipsy travellers in the West Country catch the eye of a restless, young woman, Nancy Mead, in particular the seductive Mike. Leaving behind her dull blacksmith lover, Walter Westmacott, she elopes with him for a life of adventure on the road. Soon enough the powers of desire and passion set off bitter conflicts that bring remorse, revenge and death in their wake. The Blackthorn Winter is an ardent and uncompromising portrayal of life in rural England in the 1920s, and of one woman’s battle with her own emotions. ‘A sense of immediacy informs The Blackthorn Winter … The prose swerves from the abrupt to the naive; it is full of inversions, as though the author were quite unaware of the kind of language employed by her literary contemporaries. But she is not writing for a conventional novel-reading public … The book is alive with textures and smells; it is not written about country life but out of direct experience of it, the kind of life a rural readership would recognise.’ – From the Introduction by Glen Cavaliero REVIEWS: ‘There is a distinctive energy and wildness to this work; its scenes of the harsh and peripatetic Gypsy life of the period are compelling and memorable.’ – The Times Literary Supplement (March 2007) ‘The charm of the book lies in its atmosphere – a heavy, slow, earthy atmosphere – and in the power of the author to conjure up country sounds and scents and scenes to such an extent that we almost cease to be readers and become participants in the story.’ - Spectator 'If the first pages of The Blackthorn Winter seem unremarkable enough, the Introduction will have given a foretaste of how unusual and original a book it is. Not a difficult story to read, it is an easy story to misread. Like her brother, John Cowper, Philippa Powys has a great sense of drama. Her plot is dramatically simple, her dialogue spare, and the visual beauty of The Blackthorn Winter has a cinematic quality. How interesting to imagine its author making a film!' - Cicely Hill from The Powys Society Newsletter
'The only "real poet" in the Powys Family.' - John Cowper Powys John Cowper Powys delighted in telling Philippa she was the only 'real Poet' in the family, even when it had long become apparent that the bulk of her literary output would never see the light of day. In this, though, he was not insincere. He was not alone in detecting in his sister's work qualities to be admired, and he never ceased to encourage and advise, praising her for successes, consoling her for disappointments, and characteristically playing down his own achievements. He helped in the practical business of the correcting and typing of her manuscripts and in communicating with publishers, and her ultimate failure to achieve a popular profile or stature equivalent to those of her three literary brothers did not dampen his faith in her potential or alter the fact of her own achievements. Was it not rather the public, or the publishers, who had failed to appreciate her qualities? In the year that saw the publication of The Blackthorn Winter, Philippa Powys’s main collection of poems, Driftwood, was also published, by E. Lahr in the Blue Moon Booklets series. This aptly-named volume of twenty-four poems was 'Dedicated to "Valentine.",' the poet Valentine Ackland who offered her encouragement with her writing.In addition to the ordinary trade edition of Driftwood, a hundred numbered copies were printed on large paper and ten numbered and signed copies bound in white buckram. Subsequently, three pamphlets were published, Poems (Sidmouth, 1932), Some Poems (Sidmouth, no date), and Four Poems (no place of publication or date). In 1992, The Powys Society issued a collected edition of Philippa Powys’s poems, Driftwood and Other Poems, which gathered together all her published poems as well as eight previously unpublished poems and included a portrait of the poet by Gertrude Powys.
LOVED AND LOST
'Seagull! Seagull! Why so fast ?' 'O Child of Fate, I cannot stay.' 'Speak, O Seagull ! Speak to me Flying there over high white cliffs.
'My heart is sore, my heart is torn, Thy cries re-echo my broken soul. Hover near and comfort me, Who in thee findeth a soothing hope. My love is dead, I wander far, To find him whom I so much love. My cries ring sharp like the moaning winds, My tears are salt like thy own sea-waves. I cannot find him, even though, Tis only to see him from afar. O Bird of Space ! Bring him to me, Surely he will hear thy call.'
'Never, never will my cry break upon his listening ears, Never, never will my wings brush awake those lids of sleep. He is dead, no more to rise, lying Where buttercups and daisies grow.'
'Stay, O Seagull, Stay with me; Tell me how to pass these days Reft of passion and of joy, Starved of sunshine and of hope.'
'Hearken now, though not in life, you'll hear his voice In the whirl of the wind; in the changing of clouds; And in the blackness of night the foaming breakers shall declare his spirit. By day the sands shall mark his name, And the sight of boats shall testify That you knew him, and he knew you.'
'O Bird of Sky, it is not enough. I want him, himself; in body, in life, To walk these hills and hear the lark And smell the scent of the golden gorse, And you too say, he lies stiff-cold Under clods of earth . . . O ! God forbid ! O ! Miserable day !'
SONG OF THE WIND
Blessed is the wild rough weather, Blessed is the whistle of the wind. Blessed indeed is the wind that hath the breath of life: Blessed is the Spirit that joins its voice to that of the wind; Blest again is the Spirit that hears the voice and cannot reach it. Blessed above all are they, for they suffer not alone but in sympathy.
Blow, blow thou harder, thou inspirer of wishes, Blow, O, Blessed Friend that consoles, Blow thou on, until unspoken wishes are scattered as a cloud, Blow, till more pass on, ere they shall drop or not as thy force increases: Blow, blow until they shall fall on some unwatered field. Blow thou on, thou wind, Inhabitant of heaven and earth. Thou that canst appease the suffering and yet augment: Blessed still art thou, thou unembodied spirit.
Blow thou Consoler of prisoners: Blow thou envy of freedom, Blow that the bitterness of the thoughts that are towered within, May be shattered. Then shall the fragments be covered with the weeds of the earth, The bramble shall twine around and bear fruit; The gorse shall bloom and become the golden symbol of friendship; The nettle shall shelter the home of the brown hedge-sparrow.
Blow, blow thou great Consoler. Rise and curse the fate which runs through this sad and battered earth. Blow, blow and stir the emotions deeper till men gather the truth and make bold in thought. Blow thou over the wilderness, then shall we see beyond; Clear thou the mists, so that sight may pierce the ether above.
Blessed indeed art thou,O Wind ! Scatterer of the wild desires; Appeaser of the desperate; Rousing the seas to anger, so that man's great brain is foiled While in thy might, joined with that of the waves, men become as autumn leaves. Play on them, play on them faster, Put fear about them, till they fall before thee, O ! thou Great Omnipotent Power. Winds of the fells and the sea, join and become one, so that man may tremble again.
Thou art the boon of my Spirit, the healing of my broken sores Thou Confessor ! How shall I tell ? I am a prodigal: with wishes that are intensified, but must be kept hidden; Whirl them further from me, O, Blessed Deliverer ! Toss them above me, disperse the belt of thought which follows. Bitter are the clouds of remembrance. Away with the despairable droppings of the rain, Hurl them away as thou wouldst that craft upon the water, Race behind them that they do not take dominion over me. Blow, blow for ever, O, Blessed Messenger of Heaven ! Blessed is the cry of the wind that fore-runs the rushing gales.
Copyright © The Estate of Philippa Powys 2010
Tangible life, How frail thou art – Frail as the gossamer webs That thread the upland grass, Below the pallid mists Of an autumn morning.
|
||||
|
This website is © The Powys Society 2010. Permission must be asked before using any material from this site.  |
WOLF SOLENT John Cowper Powys |
A Powys Society Meeting |
MR WESTON'S GOOD WINE T.F. Powys |
SOMERSET ESSAYS Llewelyn Powys |
|
|
U.K. Registered Charity no. 801332 • ©2010 The Powys Society |
|||||
.jpg)
.jpg)