Response to ‘As Above’
Andrew Riches

Having read a few of Don Paterson’s poems before meeting him, I was aware of his craftmanship with words and the careful selection and juxtaposition of the words he uses. For example in “The Sea at Brighton” I was quite taken with the image of “ The bird …… then skites over its blank flags, “ and in “The White Lie.” the examples used ; “ nor could I put a name to my own face.” and “ I have never opened a book in my life…..”. Having talked to him, I see that I was ignorant of the strategies for a poem’s construction – the rhymed monometers, riffs and pararhymes which to the initiated can be dissected out from these pieces or rather form the framework on which some of the poems are built.

Our meeting started in my laboratory in the Bute Medical School, where I introduced Don to the science, sorry no the art, of cell culture. By growing human cells in the laboratory, we are able to treat them with substances that induce cancer and can then try to discover the changes that have taken place as the normal cell is converted into an abnormal cell in a defined manner in our cell culture flask. I find growing cells very satisfying and I think Don managed to capture some of this enthusiasm. Don was particularly taken with the molecular analysis we do to try and find the mistakes occurring in genes in the cancer cells. There are very powerful techniques available now for investigating chromosomes and DNA and these methods give rather colourful and vivid images.

In the poem produced after the visit, Don has taken the ideas of strings of genetic code which then deviate from normal to give rise to mutations thus leading to erroneous replication – bad code as he describes it. From these general concepts, he has translated this theme into words using replication and erroneous replication in word form. He tells me this is pararhyme, where the consonantal pattern of the word stays the same but the vowels change, for example with burst and breast. Clearly the poem does not take a linear descriptive tale but rather captures images in short word bites. It also conjures up questions – who or what “ lapped her breast sky-blue.” – is it the reflected light through the “ naked skylight”. Why would I “ blink for the crow or rook “ am I waking up in the morning as the birds move and “the foursquare burst of the dark” heralds daybreak ? Perhaps I am trying to analyse too much like a scientist and should just breathe the word forms.

I very much enjoyed my day with Don and found it a relaxed and comfortable experience. Quite interesting to see we both suffer from fighting to meet deadlines on grant applications or preparing commissioned pieces of work. An imaginative idea to pair different disciplines and shake-up the thought processes.