Under the Rock by Benjamin Myers

The Poetry of a Place

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Under the Rock by Benjamin Myers takes us to a hamlet near the village of Mytholmroyd in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, England. More specifically, and in reference to its title, we visit Scout Rock, ‘a sheer slab of crag’ which, to some, is unremarkable (p3). It calls to Myers, however, because the Rock is on his doorstep so to speak, and it shades his home from the sun for much of the year. Having recently moved from London, to a rented 17th century cottage in the area, Myers familiarises himself by exploring the Rock and surrounding countryside.

This is the second book I’ve read by Benjamin Myers and I like it even more than the first—The Gallows Pole—which I found fascinating. The Gallows Pole is a superbly told tale based on fact; it looks back in time, to a group of people who turned to crime to feed their families. The story of raw poverty and human enterprise (albeit illegal) is both heart-wrenching and entertaining. And it’s been turned into a TV mini-series, recently aired on the BBC—I highly recommend it if you have the chance to see it (more info below).

Under the Rock is different though; it’s not fiction based on fact but a mix of place and memoir. Myers opens the ‘Introduction’ with: ‘Picture a hill…’ and by addressing the reader directly, he seems to expect a certain amount of participation. Written in the present tense, the prose offers immediacy. Occasionally, though, this choice feels odd to me and a little contrived. For example, I had to read the following extract, in which Myers takes a tumble, several times before I could fully comprehend it:

‘Once I fall sideways down a bank for eight, nine, ten feet, twisting into a reverse standing position, then give myself a full row of tens and take a bow for the imaginary crowd. They offer a standing ovation. I walk on, garlanded with imaginary bouquets’ (p65).

In this quote, Myers gathers a provocative concoction of words and it was the opening few words that threw me, metaphorically speaking. Yet, there is a deftness in the putting together of this sentence and I applaud it, even if I found it tricky initially. Certainly, I had to smile as I imagined this comical scene.

Storm Walk: a field note in Under the Rock

Field notes appear within the text; these are extracted from Myers’ pocket notebook. It’s a neat idea to carry such a handy accessory to record musings on the hoof and I have tried this method myself. It doesn’t suit me because sitting outdoors with pen and paper, especially in a cold climate, isn’t conducive to my own creative writing. Instead, I scratch notes on odd pieces of paper as reminders, or I record a voice note. Then, my attempts at poetic prose are possible when I’m back at my desk. Myers’ field notes, however, indicate a process of sensitive and imaginative thought in-the-field. Collections of these notes are inserted at a few points in the narrative and the reader has to stop mid-flow to pause and take stock to read them. Myers also intersperses the narrative with photographs, which can be difficult to ‘read’ as they are printed in charcoal tones—the colours, I imagine, of the Rock itself. I think that if the book were published sans field notes and photos, it would nevertheless stand as a strong piece of work.

Benjamin Myers: photo taken from the book jacket of Under the Rock

Myers’ love of words is clear; he has an idiosyncratic (free, casual?) way with sentence construction, and allows himself one word sentences when he wishes. By reading some of the passages aloud, I appreciate his use of vocabulary all the more. This extract from the chapter entitled, ‘Earth’, is a good example of prose packed with alliteration, assonance, and imagery:

‘By the Widdop waters the wind whispers through the swaying grass and an occasional shriek might ring out. Time stumbles and then slips away; the clock melts into a gloop and for a moment life in the crowded cities seems like an unfathomable fever dream of the future, a Bosch painting brought to life in luminescent technicolour in contrast to the dun, muted tones and disorientating perspective afforded by all this space’ (p106).

You just cannot read this quickly, you have to savour the words. If I had written this, however, I’d have included commas here and there to break up the sentence, and I don’t think I would have put a comma after ‘dun’. But I like the fact that what I see on the page is free of visual shackles, and the vocabulary is richer when sentences are strung together like this. ‘Dun’ is an unfamiliar word to me and I had to look it up. Dun is a dull brownish colour, a kind of house-mousy grey-brown. And, having looked it up, I realise I do know the word—it’s the way Myers uses it that made me think I didn’t.

This might be an opportune moment to mention Myers’ references; he frequently drops names into the narrative. In the above passage he mentions Bosch, and we’re expected to have an idea of the artist’s style if we’re to understand the ‘contrast’ with the ‘dun’ of Widdop waters. But it doesn’t spoil our reading if we don’t know Bosch’s work. Myers challenges the reader’s wider knowledge; this might be considered annoying, yet it is a chance to learn something new. Illuminating the text with names that I feel I ought to know gets me looking things up. One in particular keeps cropping up—English poet and writer, Ted Hughes. He was Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death in 1998 and, in his younger years, was married to American poet, Sylvia Plath. Hughes was born in Mytholmroyd and grew up in the farming community of the area and, naturally, he wrote about his home. Myers is heavily influenced by him and quotes him often:

‘In his essay Hughes describes Scout Rock first as a sublime structure possessing almost mystical power in his young eyes, a monolithic mystery towering over his entire short existence, and then on closer inspection as a place of danger and death’ (pp58-9).

The Rock is ‘remarkable in the eyes of those who have decided it is so’, Myers says (p5). While using this geological mass as a point of reference throughout the book, we are nevertheless informed of many aspects of life being played out in and around the area, from the devastating effects of the nearby Asbestos Factory, recorded in ‘The Calderdale Asbestos Scandal’, to the benefits of cold water swimming, and the dramatic scenes of flooding in the valley (pp82, 118, 206). And the book is full of anecdotes and pen portraits of local characters—mini stories about people and place.

If you find this review of Under the Rock by Benjamin Myers interesting, and especially if you’re familiar with the book, I welcome your thoughts. Please respond in the comments section of this post.

Reading through some of the book reviews written at the time of publication, I note that Under the Rock is described as nature writing. But online, in The Scotsman, a review appeared in the Arts and Culture section in May 2018 by an unnamed author. It states, ‘This is a startling, unclassifiable book’. Then it goes on to say, ‘The merging of the industrial, the supernatural and the bucolic is what marks this book out as a new step in the “New Nature Writing”’. (For a succinct explanation of new nature writing, see below.) For me, though, I think this book sits clearly in the genre of Place Writing, and I am not alone. English novelist and journalist, Melissa Harrison, claims in the book-jacket blurb that this is ‘Place-writing at its most supple: both deeply considered, and deeply felt’.

Why is it Place Writing?

In my opinion there are several features of Under the Rock which help to categorise it as Place Writing. First, this is a personal account of experience in-the-field and of exploring this area. I think that being present in, and walking through place, is one of the identifying features of Place Writing. Second, Myers is a terrifically good story-teller; the anecdotal character-led pen portraits are skilfully drawn. Such noticing and recounting is only possible if the author is present-in-place and passages like these add authenticity to the writing, a critical element of creative non-fiction Place Writing. And, third, Myers is absorbed by the place and writes about it from many angles. Having completed his research, Myers draws on a reserve of knowledge that ranges widely from history, geology, newspaper archives, literature, art, and eco-politics. This many-faceted approach to writing about place is certainly a feature of the genre in my view.

‘Unremarkable places are made remarkable by the minds that map them’ (p3).

All in all, this is a moderately accessible book, and by that I mean it’s an easy read if you want it to be. Otherwise, you can spend more time with it and delve further into the references. I especially find the layout helpful. It has lots of space between the words and the lines, which make it feel as though the text is sitting in fresh air on the page. My copy is the hardback with the subtitle ‘The Poetry of a Place’, but the layout might be different in the paperback, which curiously has an alternative sub-title—‘Stories Carved from the Land’.

To round off this book review, then, I’d like to say that this is a story about humanity as it is lived in a tiny collection of houses in a relatively remote part of England. We get glimpses of domesticity in the cottage, we see seasonal changes in the landscape and fluctuations in the weather, and we gain an insight into the author’s health and wellbeing. All this while Myers effortlessly moves from the history of the land and its occupation to its geology and the industrial landscape that developed. There is much more to say about the style of writing and the content covered in this book but I think I’ll let you read it yourself. I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy it.

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Note:

From the abstract of ‘A Cultural History of the New Nature Writing’, Professor of English and cultural history at Liverpool John Moores University, Joe Moran, states: ‘The new nature writing focuses on finding meaning not in the rare and exotic but on our common, unremarkable encounters with the natural world, and in combining both scientific, scholarly observation of nature with carefully crafted, discursive writing.’

Reference:

Myers, B. (2018) Under the Rock: The Poetry of a Place. London: Elliott and Thompson Ltd.

Credits & Links:

• The photos are of my own copy of Under the Rock, purchased by me.

• If you would like to buy the paperback version of the book and support independent bookstores, you can do so via my Bookshop dot org account.

• Link to the Scotsman book review.

• ‘The Gallows Pole’ three-part drama series can be seen on BBC iPlayer.

• The book, The Gallows Pole, is available here.

• This post is one of a series—see my page Recommended Books. To my knowledge, no shelves exist in libraries or bookshops labelled ‘Place Writing’ and these books in my opinion are good examples of the genre. I see it as my mission to create more awareness of Place Writing. I hope that one day books like these will gain recognition as epitomising the genre and officially be categorised as such.