''Briggflatts'' is a long poem by Basil Bunting published in 1966. The work is subtitled "An Autobiography". The title "Briggflatts" comes from the name of Brigflatts Meeting House (spelled with one "g" in Quaker circles), a Quaker Friends meeting house near Sedbergh in Cumbria, England. Bunting visited Brigflatts as a schoolboy when the family of one of his schoolfriends lived there, and it was at this time that he developed a strong attachment to his friend's sister, Peggy Greenbank, to whom the poem is dedicated. It was first read in public on 22 December 1965 in the medieval Morden Tower, part of Newcastle town wall, and published in 1966 by

Fulcrum Press Fulcrum Press (1965 – 1974)
quoting Rathna Ramanathan, "English little presses, book desig ...

."A Basic Chronology"
''Basil Bunting Poetry Centre''. Accessed 2006-12-01. Bunting also wrote another poem with "Briggflatts" in its title, the short work "At Briggflatts meetinghouse" (1975).
''Jacket Magazine''; accessed 2006-12-01.
, accessed 2006-12-01. Brigflatts

The poem

The poem begins with an epigraph reading: "The spuggies are fledged". The text contains a note explaining that the word means "little sparrows" in a north-east dialect.Davie, Donald. ''Under Briggflatts''. University of Chicago Press, 1989, p. 40. The poem itself has a five-part structure. The first part has a regular structure of 12 stanzas each containing 13 lines. In the following four parts the stanzas vary in length from couplets to quatrains to stanzas of more than 20 lines. The rhyme scheme also changes throughout the poem as the bulk of the text appears in free verse while other lines do contain rhyming patterns. The poem is noted for its use of sound. Bunting believed that the essential element of poetry is the sound, and that if the sound is right, the listener will hear, enjoy and be moved; and that there may be no need for further explanation:

Critical response

The poem was hailed as the successor to

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...

’s ''Cantos'' and T.S. Eliot’s ''Four Quartets'' by influential critics, including

Thom Gunn Thomson William "Thom" Gunn (29 August 1929 – 25 April 2004) was an English poet who was praised for his early verses in England, where he was associated with Movement (literature), The Movement, and his later poetry in America, where he adop ...

and Cyril Connolly, and in the US it was taken up by a younger generation of poets, such as Robert Creeley and Allen Ginsberg. However, the positive reviews did not immediately translate to more general recognition by the wider reading public. Mark Rudman suggests that ''Briggflatts'' is an example of how free verse can be seen as an advance on traditional metrical poetry. He cites the poem to show that free verse can include a rhyme scheme without following other conventions of traditional English poetry. To Rudman, the poem allows the subject to dictate the rhyming words and argues that the "solemn mallet" is allowed to change the patterns of speech in the poetry to meet with the themes discussed in the text.Rudman, Mark. "Word Roots: Notes on Free Verse". ''Conversant Essays: Contemporary Poets on Poetry'', Wayne State University Press, , p. 153155. In 2009 Bloodaxe published an edition of ''Briggflatts'' that included an audio recording Bunting made in 1967, and a DVD of Peter Bell’s 1982 film portrait of the poet. Faber and Faber published the first critical edition in 2016, marking the poem's fiftieth birthday.
The Poems of Basil Bunting
', ed. Don Share (2016)

Reviews

Nicholson, Colin E. (1980), review of Basil Bunting reads ''Briggflatts'', in '' Cencrastus'' No. 4, Winter 1980-81, p. 45,

References

External links

''Briggflatts'' recording
Read by the author ( mp4).
Review of ''Briggflatts''
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160311015747/http://www.eldorsodelascosas.javiersanchezarjona.com/briggflatts-basil-bunting/ , date=11 March 2016 (in Spanish).
Brigflatts Quaker Meeting House homepage
1966 poems English poems Poetry by Basil Bunting