He spent many years as a teacher. He never left his native Cornwall. Ah, yes. During WW2 he served in the Navy. When he wrote of a fellow-rating ‘His passing knell was a six-inch shell’, we recognise somebody at home with everyday speech and the grim humour of men sweating it out in metal boxes on the world’s oceans.
Causley bridged the gap, the gap, that is, between mainstream (highbrow, recondite, allusive) poetry and the poetry that belongs to Englishmen (monosyllabic, earthy, with a lilt.) He takes us back to Betjeman. Causley’s poems have much of the ballad about them, together with the kind of simplicity that Emily Dickinson favoured, a simplicity that deceives the unwary.
He has received his due share of honours but the most penetrating tribute came from a former Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, who said of himself that if he could write a line as perfect as the one that closes this poem (Eden Rock), he would go to his grave a happy man.
Causley reminds us of another poet, the independent-minded Cornish incumbent Robert Hawker who wrote the words of ‘The Song of the Western Men’ with its refrain ‘Here’s 20,000 Cornish men /will know the reason why’. Since 1826 it has been the unofficial Cornish anthem; we may yet hear more of that as the UK recognises and welcomes regional identities.
Causley did what poets do. He got under the skin of things and found the right words for much that he found there. This is uncommonly like what we discover in the Sermon on the Mount. It is part of the mental furniture that we bring to all that we do. Causley has no poems in the Oxford book of Christian Verse. Other anthologies are more generous.
And, of course, we follow the poet. We bridge the gap – maybe with everyday speech and with grim humour. Whatever.
IS IT TRUE?
‘And is it true? And is it true?/This most tremendous tale of all/Seen in a stained glass window’s hue/A Baby in an ox’s stall?’ (Sir John Betjeman, 1906-1984)
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