One of the interesting dynamics of Twitter is the way that it encourages imitation and development: predictive text games, variations on memes, daft hashtags etc, not all of which are designed to get you to reveal personal information that can then be applied to hacking your bank account. It’s one of the more joyful aspects of a platform that can at times be very depressing.
I think this explains why I sometimes have a similar response to things on Twitter that aren’t actually posted to provoke imitation; someone does something incredibly cool and thought-provoking, and I just want to have a go in the same spirit as I join in with #AddALetterRuinASong or whatever, without thinking that this might look like showing off or stealing thunder or trying to trump the originator. At least with Andrew Reinhard’s musical-archaeological music project, he did expressly make the files available for anyone who wanted to have a go at remixing a track; I just could have waited a little longer before leaping in. In other cases, which I won’t draw attention to, it’s been a case of me getting over-enthusiastic without any such invitation.
So, I feel a bit nervous about posting this… Will Pooley at Bristol has a fascinating research project, Creative Histories of Witchcraft, that combines exploration of the history of criminal cases involving witchcraft in France from 1790 to 1940 with experimentation in historiographical representation, collaborating with creative practitioners. His latest blog post, Fact… Possibility… Imagination…, explores one of these court cases, in which a man is accused of killing his neighbour, supposedly because he thought he was a witch, by setting out the summary and short discussion in the form of a vers libre poem.
This new form offers the opportunity to differentiate the historical material from the historiographical, partly by putting the recorded facts in bold and partly by pushing different types of material towards different sides of the page; there is also the communication of different speeds in the narrative and discussion, according to the length of lines, and the impression of hesitations and uncertain pauses on the part of the historian.
It’s a fascinating exercise, even if Will’s comment on the Twitter suggested that he didn’t think it quite worked. My two immediate reactions were, firstly, to be reminded of Henry Reed’s wonderful Lessons of the War (most famously, the first poem, Naming of Parts), as an exercise in making poetry out of very dull prose (or at least in appearing to do so), and, secondly and most unhelpfully, to think: yes, and this is how I’d do it…
And, as I had a long bus journey (and can’t read on buses) so couldn’t do anything more constructive, that’s what I did. I think this is a much less intellectually coherent product than Will’s poem, as I’m mucking about rather than doing serious thought about historiographical representation; it’s also more of a commentary on gaps and limitations in the historical record than one on historical analysis, as I don’t know the first thing about C19 witchcraft cases beyond what I’ve read on Will’s blog; and it’s definitely a pastiche rather than a poem. But within those limits…
28th April 1886
The date is not disputed.
28th April 1886. A Wednesday.
Around noon, as the men returned to work from lunch.
The weather that day is not recorded; perhaps it could be gleaned from another source,
But the date is not disputed.
Two men, reduced to bare facts
Which may or may not be essential facts,
Met. Joseph and Jacques, A and M, 66 and 29,
Which may or may not be essential facts.
Joseph married; Jacques not, or not specified.
Workers in the same factory; neighbours.
The last of which, at least, is surely relevant.
“So I see you’re still hounding me,” Joseph said,
Or is said to have said, to be precise.
“Fuck off, you old idiot,” replied Jacques
According to his own report, as it was later quoted
And set down in the record.
Two shots were fired. One account is offered
By the man who died,
Who walked as far as the mayor’s house to give it,
Telling others along the way.
The man who fired,
Who could have told his story many more times due to not being dead,
Remained silent
At least as far as the record is concerned.
Sphinx 
Not bad, I’d say. One, Iago’s “Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. / From this time forth I never will speak word.” Two, this and/or the form are reminiscent (or vice-versa) of Auden’s “In Memory of WB Yeats.” Also, tonally, perhaps Geoffrey Hill’s “September Song.”
Great post 🙂