BERESFORD, Anne (Ellen)

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Nationality: British. Born: Redhill, Surrey, 10 September 1929. Education: Studied privately, and attended Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art London, 1944–46. Family: Married Michael Hamburger, q.v., in 1951 (divorced 1970 and remarried 1974); one son and two daughters. Career: Stage actress, 1948–70, and broadcaster, BBC, 1960–70; drama teacher, Wimbledon High School, 1969–73, and Arts Educational School, London, 1973–76; teacher at the Poetry Workshop, Cockpit Theatre, London, 1971–73. Former committee member, Aldeburgh Poetry Festival; member of editorial board, Agenda magazine. Member: General Council, Poetry Society, 1976–79. Address: Marsh Acres, Middleton, Saxmundham, Suffolk IP17 3NH, England.

Publications

Poetry

Walking without Moving. London, Turret, 1967.

The Lair. London, Rapp and Whiting, 1968.

Footsteps on Snow. London, Agenda, 1972.

Modern Fairy Tale. Rushden, Northhamptonshire, Sceptre Press, 1972.

The Courtship. Brighton, Unicorn Bookshop, 1972.

The Curving Shore. London, Agenda, 1975.

Words, with Michael Hamburger. East Bramley, Surrey, Words Press, 1977.

Unholy Giving. Knotting, Bedfordshire, Sceptre Press, 1978.

The Songs of Almut from God's Country. Oxford, Suffolk, Oxford Publications, 1980.

Songs a Thracian Taught Me. London, Boyars, 1980.

The Sele of the Morning. London, Agenda, 1988.

Snapshots from an Album 1884–1895. London, Katabasis, 1992.

Charm with Stones. Germany, Verlag Claudia Gehrke, 1993.

Landscape with Figures. London, Agenda, 1994.

Selected and New Poems. London, Bellew, 1997.

No Place for Cowards. London, Katabasis, 1998.

Plays

Radio Plays: Struck by Apollo, with Michael Hamburger, 1965; The Villa, 1968.

Television Play: Duet for Three Voices, 1983.

Other

Translator, Alexandros: Selected Poems, by Vera Lungu, London, Agenda, 1974.

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Manuscript Collection: Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin.

Critical Studies: "Anne Beresford" by Judith Kazantzis, in Agenda (London), 34(2), summer 1996; "Judith Kazantzis and Anne Beresford" by Michael Tolkien, in Agenda (London), 37(1), summer 1999.

Anne Beresford comments:

I don't like to comment on my own work or, for that matter, on other poets—I like to read other poets and hope that they might like to read my work. But I will quote from something David Storey wrote about my poetry: "The finest of mystic poets, her work is pitched on the very edge of perception: celebratory, frightening, elusive—meditative—and unique."

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Ezra Pound wrote that "Our life is, in so far as it is worth living, made up in great part of things indefinite, impalpable; and it is precisely because the arts present us these things that we—humanity—cannot get on without the arts." Much of the subtlety of Anne Beresford's poetry stems from her attempts to define moments and states of mind of this nature, those aspects of consciousness and daily life that are most impatient of words. Beresford's "Heimweh" is short enough to give in its entirety:

   a thrush sings
   every evening
   in the ash tree
 
 
   it has been singing
   for as long
   as I can remember
   only then
   the tree was probably
   an oak
 
 
   the song
   aches and aches
   in the green light
   if I knew
   where it was
   I would go
   home

Beresford seldom overstates but is reticent and elliptical. This gives her work an impersonal quality that is rare. At its best her writing expresses an imagination (not fancy) unlike that of any other contemporary poet. This is connected with humor and satire in a strange way. Her irony succeeds because it is not obvious.

A fault present in some poems is a tenuousness of rhythm, where the emotions do not seem strong enough to generate sufficient rhythmic energy. But this is sometimes offset by a clarity and simplicity of imagery that are highly evocative, particularly if the poems are lived with rather than read quickly: "outside, high on the mountains/is the great plain with wild flowers/wild flowers and air so fresh/one's head goes light" ("Eurydice"). At times the imagery is menacing: "You have come to a tower of slate/crumbling into grey sky./Don't climb, not there &" ("Half-Way"). This is not poetry that strives for immediate effect. Hence, a first reading often misses much of the meaning Beresford's usually very simple words contain.

Beresford never uses dream and myth as an ornament or literary device but rather to express states of mind that are real. Her later work makes use of dramatic monologue and shows a historical consciousness that raises her poetry above that of contemporary writers of the short poem, who seem to be incapable of embodying subjects other than the personal and the incidentals of everyday life. "Nicodemus" can serve as an example:

   Keeping a sense of proportion
   lip service to what is considered correct
   I have brought what is needed to bury the dead.
   Once again I come to you by night.
   This time to take away all visible proof of my understanding.
   In secret I have applied myself
   to seek out wisdom
   to know what is before my face—
   the inside and the outside are reversed
   that which is
   has become that which is not—
   displaced, troubled
   I live naked in a house that is not my own
   and the five trees of Paradise evade me.

Later books of Beresford, such as The Sele of the Morning and Landscape with Figures, show a new depth in exploring human relationships, both love and friendship, by using a hard-earned simplicity of language. As the Scottish poet W.S. Milne has written, "Rarely today does one find such calmness and sanity, such an understanding of life's gifts, in art."

   Despair stands aside
   prayer is the answer
   in this house
   where a baby is soon to be born
   in the upstairs room.

Landscape with Figures closes with a particularly fine sequence, "Fragments of a Torn Tapestry," and although the poems concern the past, it is their "nowness," to use a word of David Jones, that will make them live. "London" is short enough to quote in its entirety:

   In the great city
   is much noise and stench
   of business here
   I can say little
   for in these hard days
   no man is to be trusted.
 
 
   Our masters tell us:
   "Make yourselves friends of Mammon"
   therefore many are betrayed
   Alas! it is true that
   Judas does not sleep

The novelist David Storey has written of Beresford, "The finest of mystic poets, her work is pitched on the very edge of perception: celebratory, frightening, elusive—meditative—and unique."

—William Cookson