[Michael Tyldesley]

The Panopticon (revision 1)

You watch me with a penetrating gaze;
its low beam dazzles like the winter sun.
(Intrusion or delusion, who’s to say?)

I pace in geometric lines for days
like observations haven’t yet begun;
impassive to an ever present gaze.

My nights are screened by dimly lit displays
of dancing eyes that lamp and ghost for fun.
(Intrusion or delusion, who’s to say?)

The watchdog at the centre never strays,
self-censor or you might offend someone.
I’m watching with a self-inflicted gaze

A message sent to one has many trays,
I push delete but part of me has gone.
(Intrusion or delusion, who’s to say?)

The dark conceals in self-exploring ways
yet light can track a shadow on the run;
I shelter from the judgement of your gaze.
(Salvation or seclusion, who’s to say?)


*************************************************

The Panopticon (Original)

You watch me with a penetrating gaze;
its low beam dazzles like the winter sun.
(Intrusion or delusion, who’s to say?)

The law had line of sight in the early days,
on Gallows Hill, the Pendle witches hung;
they yielded to a devastating gaze.

Their faces haunt in dimly lit displays;
they lamp me, hound in packs and ghost for fun.
(Intrusion or delusion, who’s to say?)

The watchdog at the centre never strays,
self-censor or you might offend someone.
I’m watching with a self-inflicted gaze

A message sent to one has many trays,
I push delete but part of me has gone.
(Intrusion or delusion, who’s to say?)

The dark conceals in self-exploring ways
yet light can track a shadow on the run;
I shelter from the judgement of your gaze.
(Salvation or seclusion, who’s to say?)

[W T Clark]

I imagine that the Pendle Witches would have faced many "devastating" gazes, not a singular one; but I also imagine that if they were said to have yielded, it would have been to the continuous torture sessions and then the final throatcrushing constriction of the noose, not to any gaze, singular or plural. I think to boil it down to some metaphorical or allegorical gaze for the sake of a rhyme fractures the moral responsibility between the artist and the dead, especially if the artist is attempting to rope the dead into his poem as a quick, symbolic referent to be passed over in the course of a couple stanzas. Does torturing old (mostly) women make them "yield"? or does it simply agonise, then kill them? I can understand "yielding" to death out of a sense of relief; but "yielding" to their torturers (which gaze I suspect figuratively stands-in for here) seems to me to give the victory, moral and aesthetic, to evil.

Hope this helps.

[Joe Crocker]

I too didn't quite get how the Pendle witches fitted into the panopticon, being a couple of hundred years earlier than Jeremy Bentham's invention. But I think you could do a really good job extending the original panopticon, to cctv, mobile phone footage, ai facial recognition and the whole issue about self-censorship. Some famous comedian said that he would never really trust a man who, left alone in a room with a tea cosy, wouldn't try it on. Lots of material there.

[Michael Tyldesley]

Cameron, I understand the Pendle witches largely informed on each other and there was probably torture and a lot of psychological pressure involved. This is not a poem about the witches although they are part of the fabric of law, order and injustice in my particular area. It's poet's prerogative to draw on local palatine history whether that's to your tastes or not. The inclusion of witches has nothing to do with the controlling constraints or rhyme and meter and that would be an absurd reason to include them. Thanks for explaining why you didn't like it.

Joe, the witches were incarnated and tried at Lancaster castle and executed on nearby Gallows Hill. Some years later, the female penitentiary at Lancaster castle was designed as one of the few genuine examples on a Bentham panopticon.

[W T Clark]

Michael, I did not say anything of the witches' use being inspired by rhyme and metre. I said:

Originally Posted by W. T. Clark

I imagine that the Pendle Witches would have faced many "devastating" gazes, not a singular one; but I also imagine that if they were said to have yielded, it would have been to the continuous torture sessions and then the final throatcrushing constriction of the noose, not to any gaze, singular or plural. I think to boil it down to some metaphorical or allegorical gaze for the sake of a rhyme fractures the moral responsibility between the artist and the dead

It is your "devastating gaze" that is rhyme driven. And metrically driven given its lack of an article.
I did not explain in my critique either why I didn't like the poem; I made no value judgment on the poem at all: I commented on a single stanza and the morality and the responsibility of the poet. Rereading the poem such thoughts occur this time over the connection of the torture and death of many women to cancel culture which has never indulged in torture or death in twenty-first century England. There seems to be a certain egotistical pulling in and manipulation of suffering to suit the poet's own, lesser worries there. What do you think your responsibility is to the dead Michael? You summon them and their suffering your poem, do you think you can simply use them, like little symbolic building-blocks?
Hope this helps.

[Michael Tyldesley]

Cameron, thanks for coming back and explaining. I could see you had a strong negative reaction to the poem so I assumed you didn't like it.

I did give the yielding line a lot of thought and you're right that it's missing an article. I can fix that so thanks for the spot. As you can tell, that line has been a difficult one and I appreciate your poking at at.

Regarding, my responsibility to the dead. They are no longer with us, generations after generations have passed for 400 years. My heritage is local so I might even be related. Why can't my narrator's suffering be connected in some way to theirs? I've not stolen, cheapened or glorified the reference.

There seems to be a certain egotistical pulling in and manipulation of suffering to suit the poet's own, lesser worries there.

Putting aside for a moment the fact that poet equals not narrator, I'm alive today and the Pendle Witches are long gone. I don't think they are worried about anything but maybe in the after life they appreciate attention being drawn to their plight and the effects of an overly controlling, nosey and snitching society or even just the attention to symptoms of mental illness. In this case we're talking paranoid psychosis, which I understand it's likely one of the witches suffered from too and she died before she made it to trial.

Your interpretation of the poem as being about 'cancel culture' is an interesting one but it wasn't the intent of the poem. I know enough about your politics to see why you've responded to it that way though and it's a very intriguing and genuine gut reaction that I can respect. Something about the language and imagery has made you uneasy, I need to think about whether that's something I want from other readers with a similar perspective.

[Yves S L]

Hello Michael,

I respect you for putting your own villanelle on the table. I think you nailed the ending, and should reconstruct the poem from there. I am not quite convinced by the way the witches are included in the material, with the phrase making (partly if you are going to use slant rhymes and change the repetend, then I expect the extra wiggle room to allow the poem like the rhymes are being landed with less effort), with the movement, and think the idea of writing a modern poem about the modern phenomena of being subjected to people's gaze might make a more easily coherent poem, because at the moment it feels like two themes, the witch motif, and the modern telecommunications motif are in conflict within the small space of the villanelle ( there is not enough room and time to connect them properly).

[Michael Tyldesley]

Thanks Yves,

I've got two villanelle on metric board. The other one was called A Narrow Escape and was posted back in late July I think. It has no repetend variations, I've never tried one with variations before. Since then, there has been quite a few posted by other people. I'm not saying I started it, there was probably hundreds more before my time and, despite the public execution here, there will be many more to come.

I'm pleased to hear you like the ending because the last stanza is always an important one.

I'm not going to pretend I deliberately set out to offend Cameron with the accused. I thought the historical reference would be interesting for the bookish and people in the modern world frequently talk about witch hunts without necessarily thinking about the details.

Slant rhymes are isolated to those caught in brackets or L5. I had another look at them and to me they read naturally. Which rhymes came across as forced to you?

I know about line 6 being awkward. I guess the confessions were forced too but that line could be improved.

I could draw solely on modern surveillance. I wanted to write that surveillance has been around for a long time; as long as there has been centralised power. In my region the symbol of centralised power of old is Lancaster castle and it happens to be infamous for executing witches. They were ultimately answering to London I suppose.

[David Callin]

A villanelle on the panopticon? You don't make life easy for yourself, Michael.

I have one question that I'm almost embarrassed to ask, for fear of exposing my ignorance (or inattentiveness): who is the "You" of L1? I can't quite make that out.

Perhaps the Pendle witches might best be left for another poem, although I don't think your handling of them is as crass as Cameron seems to suggest. Sensitive territory, though.

It must be SS4 and 5 that rise the spectre of cancel culture, and they're probably an unnecessary digression. I'd be happier if you kept the whole thing more historical (and panoptical). I realise this goes against Joe's advice, which is not really a good idea. But I'd like to see more of the castle.

That "you" is back in S6, isn't it? I can't seem to make much of this section, but I like the way you transform one of your repeating lines here.

Not sure how helpful that is! But I'm trying.

Cheers

David

[Michael Tyldesley]

Thanks David, you've helped me a lot with this poem and the question asked about 'you' in S1/S6 shows very attentive reading.

Originally Posted by David Callin

I have one question that I'm almost embarrassed to ask, for fear of exposing my ignorance (or inattentiveness): who is the "You" of L1? I can't quite make that out.

'You' in the poem is the watching and judging authority. That could be God, Santa, local law and order, security services or you the reader if you feel you're acting on behalf on those things (even if you're not really acting morally). The people who condemned the witches did it in the name of the King or God but that didn't make it right or just. I wanted to draw on an example of miscarriage of justice

I hear what you are others are saying though, I've got a lot a complex themes crammed into one villanelle so it doesn't satisfactorily master any one of them. My early draft of the poem last weekend has a stanza on Bentham at UCL and one on panopticon architecture. I replaced them with human condition stuff like the final stanza because I was trying to pare down the distractions.

I think most of the people who have commented have recognised there's a good idea in this, which is encouraging. I'm now wondering if I should cut it back to a shortened poem and either leave it as a mini-vin or rebuild from there. I did like using the verb to lamp though, I don't get to use that one often but it's better to have lamped and lost...


The Panopticon

You watch me with a penetrating gaze;
its low beam dazzles like the winter sun.
(Intrusion or delusion, who’s to say?)

The watchdog at the centre never strays,
self-censor or you might offend someone.
I’m watching with a self-inflicted gaze

The dark conceals in self-exploring ways
yet light can track a shadow on the run;
I shelter from the judgement of your gaze.
(Salvation or seclusion, who’s to say?)