Poetic Forms & Existentialism in Tom Leonard s access to the silence : poems and posters , 1984 2004

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the later poetry in Standard English which will be discussed in this article. Rather It can be argued that Leonard's poems in Standard English are not analysed in depth because they deal less overtly with issues of working-class aggression, language and power, and instead embrace topics such existentialism and mental illness, as in the poems 'who wants to', ' access to the silence' and nora's place, which will be discussed at length in this article. Few acknowledge Leonard's flexible aural range or his application of contemporary poetics; again because he is seen primarily as a writer who provides political and social commentary rather than as an experimental poet. This article analyses Tom Leonard's reflections on existentialism in the collection access to the silence: poems and posters . The poster poems and sequences experiment with spacing on the page, font size, shape and form in order to express the human desire for freedom. Some of the poems also explore basic concepts of existential freedom; topics which are an unstated but recurring concern in these collections. The poems express an idealist desire for individuals to attain access to the silence: launch and critical reception Leonard 16 Existentialists also believe that, ideally, human freedom should not be limited by external factors. Aho continues: 'That means whatever our factical limitations -whether it is our genetic code, our socioeconomic backgrounds, our religious or family history -they do not ultimately determine who we are. We are self-making beings responsible for the meanings we give to things through our own choices, the totality of which makes us who we are.' 17 Leonard's poems reflect and question these ideas in their exploration of the self in relation to their environment. A concern with the freedom to define one's self beyond social conventions and established authority manifests itself in the poems ' coffee, cafe and the paper', 'who wants to' and ' access to the silence'.
It would appear that many of Leonard's existentialist poems question whether it is possible to be 'free' in one's own estimation of one's identity, as well as the possibility of being free within relationships, in urban or domestic environments.
Some existentialists argue that though freedom is quintessential to existential living, man is never really free. Hegel's theory of freedom contends that a person is only free if he is not dependent on anything outside of himself, and that ' a man is only free when he knows himself to be free.' 18  Leonard's poem ' coffee, cafe and the paper' appears to explore the tension of being free in a public space. David Cooper's suggestion that alienated persons can struggle with objects in their surroundings chimes with Leonard's poems which deal with the relation of the self to objects. Cooper speaks of the tension between a person and the objects in the room: 'The alienated person, however, feels that objects "dominate" him, and that he is a "victim" of his sensual, "anima" desires. Hence, the attempt to overcome alienation is one with the urge towards freedom.' 21  These two short and fragmented stanzas hint at Sartre's idea of responsibility, which is a continuation of his declaration that ' existence precedes essence'. Sartre explains that due to their shared space on earth, humans are responsible for each other: 'Thus the first effect of existentialism is to make every man conscious of who he is, and to make him solely responsible for his own existence. And when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men.' 34  The 'silence' Leonard describes is the existential freedom to reflect mindfully and free of familial, societal or political limitations. Existentialist freedom is best understood as freedom of 'intention', where one has the freedom to choose how one thinks. As Solomon notes, 'it is our inescapable ability to interpret the world, to give meaning and value to our situation on the basis of our own choosing.' 38 Notions of 'being' are essential to the poem, as the narrator searches for acceptance for all that he is. This particular sequence of poems, then, proceeds from the desire to create an existential community but can also be seen as a form of protection against criticism. As Leonard chooses not to be ' attacked at an ontological level', he also distances himself from mainstream society, though only within his own mind. Leonard's aspiration of gath- The third principle is that one perception is connected to the next perception. As Olson explains in his essay 'Instanter, on', each line of poetry must be directly related to the previous, perhaps part of the same thought. Leonard's use of field poetics calls to mind a specific energy with which to project a particular mind frame. This depiction of a precise mind frame is achieved textually, with the aid of a word processor.
In Charles Olson' essay 'Projective Verse', he sees the typewriter as the liberator of the voice: It is the advantage of the typewriter that, due to the its rigidity and its space   and 'hear' and 'SILENCE', 'REALLY', 'LISTENING' and 'WAITING'. 47 In the ninth variation, words are replaced by a series of parentheses. Here, Leonard has used the parentheses as a semantic ' code' to express the words which are missing, as well as a sense of human silence. The pairs of brackets correspond to the words of the text and perform the anticipated silence, allowing the poem's theme to play out. By collapsing, dispersing and removing the text, Leonard enhances the importance of breathing and breath in voice as means of distinguishing us as human: These narrative characteristics imply that the each step of the sequence is not only an independent poem but part of a process. Leonard's work is canvas-like; his use of the page's white space allows for engagements with text and shape to intersect in a codified presentation which expresses a shared moment between two individuals.
'Nine Variations on Larry's Poem' can be seen as re-shapings of an existential encounter. Leonard voices the separation and tension in the moments between 'silence' and 'song'. In reference to the book's title access to the silence, the narrator in the poem encourages his companion to embrace the silence before the song which appears to be a metaphor for mindful thinking. In the re-ordering of verse which contains a specific moment, the sequence functions as a short textual experiment typical of Leonard's oeuvre. Though the gradual changing and re-arrangement of words we see new words form which have political significance: the former statement of "mingled" become "manglad", signifying a dig at the opposite gender; and colours becames "call ours", which can be read as a feminist reclaiming of space. The re-ordering of words has the same general purpose as 'Nine Variations', which is to allow the shifting of language to create new meaning.

Field Poetics in 'Hesitations: monologues for dancing'
Leonard's sequence 'Hesitations: monologues for dancing' describes a character who feels estranged from his environment and who is angered by the social perceptions of his working-class Glasgow accent. This sequence describes the narrator's existential journey from estrangement and isolation to an external release of anger. By the close of the sequence, the narrator learns that he is responsible for his own identity and that it is up to him to carry out the necessary changes in his life. As Cooper states, 'Human beings are prone to experience estrangement from the world in which they live, and it is this sense of estrangement which has long inspired philosophical attempts to locate human existence in relation to the order of things. Similarly, Peter Manson contends that since 'Hesitations' is a dramatic monologue, the lines and arrows are 'silent gestures' which Leonard re-enacts in performance.
Following an existential line of thinking, it is conceivable that the arrows symbolise the narrator's release of tension, his movement from a previously stagnant place of isolation to one of self-identity.

Leonard's poster poems
The They invented the concept, and then they invented the concept of their own ownership, of it. They invented the institutions from within which they lent out things to see if others could replicate their fitness-to-own. Fitness to own, they said, resided in their ability to say why and how a thing was or was not a thing-within-the-concept. 60 The poster poems relate to existentialism in that they explore the human's position in society and protest against any kind of criticism against which infringes on a person's sense of self. As Kevin Aho states, existentialist freedom means 'whatever our factical limitations -whether it is our genetic code, our socioeconomic backgrounds, our religious or family history -they do not ultimately determine who we are.' In  The second panel contains the same phrase but is obliterated by spiky triangular shapes (Fig. 2).
In the last panel the phrase is almost entirely blocked by a large rectangle, suggesting the complete transformation of the narrator's gradual alienation from mainstream society (Fig. 3).
Though based on paper, the processural nature of the 'Triptych' has its primary roots in the certain techniques of electronic poetry, in that images and words are treated as disjointed materials, which morph through dynamic processes. Leonard's triptych is a self-contained object confined to paper and the reader must engage in a material process.
access to the silence marks the peak of Leonard's integration of existential philosophy into his poems. In these works, Leonard aspires for like-minded individuals to locate and identify opportunities for existential freedom in their daily lives. access to the silence is unified by the developed link between the title poem and the collection's overall theme of an individual's right of choice.