The Chinese Nativists on the mainland
thought the Taiwanese Modernists responsible
for their own peripheral status, marginalising
themselves by their poetry and failing
deliberately to engage with the daily life
of ordinary people by adopting obscurantism
and difficulty. The soil is broken with a plough
not a University Professor. I’ve often wondered
if Jeremy Prynne had been permitted eleven
lines, once a week, in a national newspaper
would he have refused those strictures
or conformed to reach more readers? I believe
the best of us are curious, would prefer
a plough with antlers, wings, and rumours
beyond the accepted bounds of what is thought poetic
we will not own all meanings
.
By Steven Taylor
Jeremy Prynne died yesterday (22 April 2026)
JH Prynne is a poet I’ve reading for the best of twenty years, coming back to him every few months and trying again and failing again. I always felt I’d found something when I read him, but I’d be fibbing if I said he was easy. He made me think differently, come at poetry and world outside poetry differently.
I wrote this poem about my experience of his work.
.