Poetry and Archaeology as Earthwork: Geoffrey Hill’s Mercian Hymns

Christoph Bode

doi:10.23914/odj.v7i0.14335

Poetry and Archaeology as Earthwork: Geoffrey Hill’s Mercian Hymns

Christoph Bode

Abstract

This article analyses and interprets Geoffrey Hill’s collection of poetry Mercian Hymns (1971). In Mercian Hymns, Hill deals with the historical King Offa, Offa’s kingdom of Mercia, Offa’s Dyke, his coinage, rule and foreign relations, but in such a way that all these are connected to Hill’s childhood and youth, to his life now and to the region that once was Mercia. It is argued that what Hill achieves here can be read as a poetical transcendence of time and space. This essay also reveals a stunning analogy between Hill’s idea of the writing of poetry as work in the layers of language on the one hand and archaeology on the other: both can be seen as earthwork. The article is a slightly revised, but not updated version of Bode 1992.

Keywords

Coinage; historicity; King Offa; Offa’s Dyke; poetry and archaeology as earthwork; regionalism

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23914/odj.v7i0.14335