Jim Aitken introduces Sapling and Wood by David Betteridge, available here

A sapling, as we know, is a young tree. If this young tree manages to grow further it will be because it has been nourished by water and by light. Patrick Geddes once said by leaves we live and this comment recognises the relationship we have with Nature – it is a symbiotic one. This is something that Betteridge also recognises when he has spoken about the integrated view of things.

A sapling is also an individual young tree. However, its journey to maturity means that it may one day be part of a wood. This dichotomy is absolutely crucial to Betteridge’s overarching, integrative vision. He has little time for individualism and seeks after the collective instead. In the poem Like Young Barley, he says exactly that when he states a preference for the we rather than I.

Yet David was once a sapling himself. He takes us back in time as he recalls his grandfather telling him about Walt Whitman and William Blake. He passed on books of their poems to him. The radicalism of these two writers worked on him as he grew to maturity, realising that his place was with and for others. His subsequent work in teaching was for others and his politics too was for others. This is apparent throughout the pages of Sapling and Wood.

Though it could be said that Tories are with and for others too, the others they see themselves with are the few and David is for the many; the many on the receiving end of what he calls the carnivals of evil down the years. And this ‘carnival of evil’ has been constantly directed by the few against the many so that the few can have their yachts and limousines which David derides as the trappings of a wasteful Few.

The integrative vision of Betteridge is in clear contrast to the quotation he uses from the Book of Psalms – where there is no vision, the people perish. David laments the lack of vision for the many and he asks Will we ever get out of here? His solution is not to hide in some ivory tower honing his craft but to take on the words of Blake – I will not cease from Mental Fight/ Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand.

This is yet another expression of the integrated view of things that David holds dear. His writing, like the rest of his life, has been for others, for the many. His writing has been put in the service of the emancipation of the many. He would like to see’ the world’s people rise/resist, rethink, and organise’. 

Just as Nature should be loved and cherished and constantly noted, so too should Culture be seen as something that elevates and grows to maturity just as trees and people transform into greater versions of themselves. This is why culture matters for David. It is another aspect of his integrative vision to change the nature of what he calls our poor conflicted humankind.

Poetry is also a key element in what David has called a rounded truth. This truth includes nature, culture and politics and it is through the medium of poetry itself that David integrates his rounded truth. Poetry is his outlet, his wider voice, his chosen form of communication. Poetic forms enable the transmission of values that are the antithesis to the prevalent and prevailing norms of capitalism and what Betteridge calls its heaped contaminants.

To challenge these ‘heaped contaminants’ requires both diligence and discipline. If you see ‘the whole world’ as your ‘wide frame of reference’ then the poetry had better be good. It would have to be able to express itself in a variety of forms and be careful with how the words fall on the page. Betteridge manages this challenge superbly well. One example of this is in the poem called Wonders, a poem addressed to Marjorie Stevenson and in memory of Ronald Stevenson, the composer. There is a line that reads ‘in Nature’s never-ending mind’ and Betteridge could so easily have used the word ‘everlasting’ rather than ‘never-ending’ since it would have retained the same number of beats. However, had he chosen the word ‘everlasting’ he would have lost the alliterative presence in the line where all the n sounds reinforce the importance of Nature.

This is but one example that shows Betteridge considers his words carefully and wants to maximise their impact. He inherited this importance of the word in the right place from all those he read. As well as Whitman and Blake, David has spoken of his debt to the work of John Berger. He has also said that his one-time college tutor, Maurice Levitas, stressed the importance of choosing the correct word. It was Levitas, a veteran of Cable Street and the Spanish Civil War and a lifelong Communist, who possessed real genius as a reader who could see in a single word an entire world of meaning. A careful writer therefore prefigures a careful reader and in this way Culture itself becomes the beneficiary by being enhanced.

Sapling and Wood uses many quotations from other writers and there are a number of poems addressed to close friends. While the sapling was Betteridge as a boy, the grandfather who introduced the boy to literature was a sturdy oak tree. The collection is an actual wood but also an imaginary one. In this wood stand all the writers who have influenced him. Blake and Whitman, Berger and Burns, Brecht and Edward Said and so many others besides. They stand like tall poplars with their arms reaching ever-higher. His friends over many years are the silver birches who have stayed with him and with his writing. It is their comradeship that has kept grief at the world’s harms/ from swamping me, as he says in Nearing the Hive. In this number a special mention has to be made for his illustrators Bob Starrett, Tom Malone and Owen McGuigan and their work can be seen throughout this collection.

To the left of the wood can be found two trees that seem at odds with all the silver birches and the poplars. One is a beautiful copper-red acer and that is Rosa Luxemburg, and near to her is a giant redwood and that is Karl Marx. These writers and thinkers wanted to change the world in favour of working people and that is exactly what Betteridge has sought in his own writing. His work is not linguistic or literary decoration but a serious attempt through the serious use of word and verse form to aid the process of nothing less than the liberation of mankind.

Of course, we can all feel ‘swamped’ by the world and the tyranny of Capital but there can still be joy. The grandfather’s words resonate in this regard – Whatever you decide to make – let there be joy in it. Sound advice indeed. There is an underlying joy in this collection precisely because it is given in joy to all those who have influenced him and all those friends who stayed with him and, above all, to a future world that is immeasurably fairer than we one we have today.

As seeds grow into plants of all kinds including trees, so too the seeds of writers’ ideas can grow inside minds. And poems can aid that growth and lead us into kinder, wiser ways as Betteridge says in The Dear Place. Sapling and Wood can surely be a companion on that joyous journey.

Here's a sample poem from the collection:

Another Proverb of Hell
After William Blake; for Murdo Richie

The experience of defeat is bitter.
Too often borne, it can make us quite forget
what sweet is; conversely, it can educate.
It can be a school for victory.

Marx knew this.
Down the long battlegrounds
and graveyards of our forebears’ history,
he saw the People felled each time we rose,
our status reaffirmed as soon as we contested it.
Back we went to being slave or serf
or proletarian; but each time we learned,
and sometimes made some lesser gain,
some lesser good than gaining power.

Never must we forget it:
both gains and goal are our sweet heritage,
equally with the gall that is defeat.

For Marx, student of ancient history,
Antaeus stood as the best example
of this ancient truth: Antaeus,
that Titan wrestler, no sooner downed
than springing up, renewed,
like a Green Man, with fresh vigour
and keen cunning, ready for ever
to fight back.

 Green Man image by Tom Malone

 Sapling and Wood by David Betteridge, £14, is available here