Treacle � An Analysis

'Treacle': a poem that does anything but what it says on the tin

'Treacle' was mostly written in the basement of Kensal Library in West London, I think over the summer of 1996; certainly, it was finished by the late autumn of that year, because I'd sent it out to The North magazine. I mention the geographical setting because I reckon it's important; the way sometimes we can write about places better when we're not there, when we're supposed to be doing something else. The days had a strong sense of routine. I worked one hour on, and one hour off, an enquiry desk, and during my time off I'd slope downstairs to work on the poem that became 'Treacle'. During my lunch breaks I'd print out the latest version, and go for coffee and sticky custard tarts in one of the Portuguese cafés on Goldbourne Road. Re-reading the draft of a poem even a short distance from the place it was written is one of my writing rituals: a little 'instant detachment' from the work, if you like.

So this is what was going on while 'Treacle' was being written. All the other stuff – why it was written, what occasioned the poem – is trickier. But I think the following information could prove useful.

In our childhood kitchen cupboard in Liverpool, there was always a tin of Tate & Lyle treacle (and golden syrup too). It hung around for years. I remember turning it over in my hand, studying its metallic label: the dead lion, the swarm of bees, the legend 'Out of the strong came forth sweetness' straight out of the Book of Judges. This was the early seventies, the era of the instant  snack, powdered soup and dried noodles; next to all this, the treacle tin seemed like a bit of a fossil, something brought from 'the old house' when we'd been moved out to our new council estate home. I also remember one summer prising the lid off and finding it had been flyblown: it was seething with maggots. These never found their way into my poem, but must have helped the tin become something indelible.

When I was older, but before I'd left Liverpool, I discovered Carl Jung's account of his dream of my hometown. Though he'd never been there. Liverpool formed the focus for an extraordinary dream account of coming upon the centre of the mandala. It happens in a dark city at night with a river and an island, upon which stood a luminous magnolia tree. He called Liverpool 'the pool of life'. Something of the dream's quality of description – 'dirty', 'sooty', 'black', 'opaque' – also proved indelible. It both chimed with an idea I had of 'old Liverpool', the city centre I knew from childhood, but also the more sanitised, cleaned up version coming into being as the city reinvented itself. I probably first read Jung in the big Picton Library, which in itself seems significant to me now.

Without either of these two factors, I doubt there would ever have been any 'Treacle'. I wouldn't be the first poet to believe poems often start with two perhaps unrelated phrases or images or memories: many writers have described this 'sperm and ovum' effect, or the necessity of leaning two things against one another to make a poem stand up. What I'd add to all this is the need for further catalysts to make the reaction occur, some accelerants to make sure the two parties hit it off together. In the case of 'Treacle', there were several nudgings. One came from an essay (originally a radio programme) by Ted Hughes called Capturing Animals. Hughes starts talking about how words, if you're not careful, can kill each other, and alights just for a moment on the word 'treacle'. With hindsight, I think this was significant  – the gentlest of nudges! Another came from the poet Simon Armitage, who I'd been reading around about this time. In his poem film for television, Xanadu, we get this simile:

And all day Sunday, out came the people
like bees from the lion on the tin of treacle…

As well as prompting that empathy which comes about through shared recognition, I could also have been anxious. I wanted to have my own say on the matter. And in a way, Armitage was giving me permission to do so, while at the same time throwing down the gauntlet.

In retrospect then, these are some of the things which may have provoked 'Treacle': a combination of memory, crossed with reading (not just of poetry), together with the routine of a dull job and a need to psychically survive this by falling back on imaginative resources. More difficult to convey – but important to relate – is the actual sense of excitement and anticipation. One day during that summer, the pressure must have given way to words, and I had to get writing.

Regarding the actual act, all I'd say is it's important to stay attuned and open to the possibilities of what's appearing in front of you, line by line. For me, a poem will usually find its feet and shape fairly early on, perhaps in a vowel chime, alliteration, the length of a line, the decision to break a stanza, and so on. I like the idea of the 'given line': with 'Treacle', I think the first line is fairly obviously it. Generally, I reckon we have less say in the matter than we'd like to admit, though the best poems seem to point towards a kind of self-knowledge: the totality of who we are and what we've experienced becomes available and accessible, and if there is a mystery associated with poetry, then it's the way things manage to slip out under our conscious radar. I think writing is analogous to being very drunk: you usually find your way home, but it's difficult to recount  each  step of the way you came. The drafts would tell their own story.

Even though I wrote 'Treacle' years ago – and it has felt, for a long time now, like it was written by somebody else – I still re-visit it when I'm asked to give readings. Many poets would agree that they produce 'signpost' poems every now and then (often years apart), poems that reconfigure and recalibrate what they do; poems that point the way to new places. The French have a term in cinema, 'testament movie'; and in a way 'Treacle' is my 'testament poem', in that it contains lots of my themes and preoccupations as a writer, far more than I could ever have imagined a decade ago. That it was written under some duress, and that it was neither the result of a writing exercise nor any recourse to literary theory, makes it all the sweeter and stranger.

If you're in any doubt as to the way poems can exist without our full parental consent, let me finish by telling you a story about what happened to me at a poetry reading some years ago. When it was over, a member of the audience approached me to say how much he'd enjoyed the reading, and especially 'Treacle'; wasn't it clever, he said, the way I'd slyly alluded to the book's title using this poem (by now 'Treacle' had appeared in my first collection of poems – which was called The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You). I agreed, if only to get rid of him – what the hell was he on about? – but the incident bothered me enough to go looking into the etymology of the word 'treacle'. I discovered that it comes from 'triacle', a substance first appearing in Middle English apothecaries that was used as the base for antidotes and ointments. Healing treacle. Any medieval boy from the chemist would have known all about the stuff.

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