How Zoe Skoulding and Peter Riley use

Form and Language in Relation to Ecology

that acknowledge the economy of interrelationship between human and non-human

realms?” (Gander, 2008) If there were any anthology containing poems that explored this

question, it would be The Ground Aslant. In The Ground Aslant, there are many poets’ work,

however two in particular stood out to me: Zoe Skoulding and Peter Riley. In this essay, I

shall be discussing how they both use language, sound, and form to create effects that help

the reader understand the connection to ecology in their poems.

Born in Bradford in 1967, Zoe Skoulding has worked in poetry, music, and

translation. She’s also worked as an editor and co-founded the (North) Wales International

Poetry Festival. She’s currently a professor at the University of Bangor and has worked on

recent projects exploring lost rivers in Bangor and Paris.

As a poet, Skoulding states that she focuses on sound and ecology in her poems and

uses them to explore the relationship between language and environment (Skoulding, n.d.).

Many of Skoulding’s poems in The Ground Aslant also use shape and layout in particular to

emphasise the meaning of the poem.

Skoulding’s poem The New Bridge uses form to great effect. The New Bridge reads

as a melancholy poem to me, the scattered line starts contributing to this interpretation.

Compared to her poem In the forest where they fell, where all lines start at the edge of the

page, or Gwydyr Forest, where lines indent in a pattern, the lines starts in The New Bridge

have no set pattern or distance they begin at. It makes the poem feel less structured and

more authentic to Skoulding’s feelings. The scattered beginnings of lines also add to the

feeling of wildness in the poem, much like a wild riverbank where plants have just grown

where the seeds landed and paths have been forged out of convenience.

The use of sound in The New Bridge also affects the mood of the poem. Not only

does Skoulding choose melancholy sounding words (“fragile…pulse…shriek…blood” (Tarlo,

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2011)) but she also uses many words beginning with “r”, such as “runs”, “river” and “rose”

(Tarlo, 2011). Since “r” creates a soft sound, the alliteration not only draws attention to the

lines that use it but also create a quiet atmosphere in the poem, like the lack of sound away

from large gatherings of people. While the letter “r” is the most common in the poem’s

alliteration, there are also several uses of sibilance with phrases like “sight lines shriek” and

“the shadows slipping” (Tarlo, 2011). The repeated “s” sound replicates the soothing sound

of the river the poem is about. However, given the already established sad tone of the poem,

the sibilance can take on a most sinister sound, more akin to a snake’s hiss.

In The New Bridge as well as most of her poems in The Ground Aslant, Skoulding

uses enjambment and a lack of punctuation in her poems. This makes many of her poems

fast paced and more akin to thoughts than speech or prose. This effect is amplified by the

lack of punctuation, too, as it seems like the meaning of a line can change in the middle of a

sentence. The fast pace and unpredictability of the poems tie to nature as they emulate the

rush of a full river or the lack of planning that goes into the undergrowth of a forest. They

encourage wild thinking in the reader, linking them to the wild spaces Skoulding writes

about.

Skoulding makes a point of how she likes to explore ecology in her poems. She has

said she likes to explore the relationship between language and ecology (Skoulding, n.d.).

The New Bridge is also a very good example of how she does it. The poem is about a bridge

and the river it crosses. Not only does Skoulding use sibilance to emulate the sound of the

river but she also make comparisons between the river and the human body, calling it a

“vein” and “the blood” (Tarlo, 2011). Skoulding makes a point of connecting the river to the

narrator and who they’re talking to. “Runs through me” and “we are water” (Tarlo, 2011) are

examples of this and help connect the river as a part of nature just like the comparison to the

cardiovascular system of a body. It creates a new view of a river as something not separate

from the reader, but intrinsically and holistically linked to them, like we’re all part of one

organism: the world.

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 Skoulding is also very careful with word choice in other poems of hers. In From Here,

Skoudling uses both natural and scientific words to contrast nature with humanity. For

example, the third stanza contains the lines “…every sparrow every/shadow falling in

parabolas” (Tarlo, 2011). In a poem collection about place, the different word choice like this

can create the effect of a different location. Skoulding uses this well, using words like “seed”

and “clay” in In the forest where they fell to create a more natural scene while From Here

has a more urban feel due to words like “glass” and “grid” (Tarlo, 2011).

In her other poems, ecology is equally as important. Another way language is used in

In the forest where they fell is personification. Line such as “Specific histories don’t fade but

circle in a constant outward movement” (Tarlo, 2011) personify things like tree rings and

remind the reader that while they may not always appear so, plants and smaller animals are

actually alive. She also uses the more scientific language in some of her poems to draw

connections between the natural world and the inherent way the universe works, such as

with “lattices of molecules” (Tarlo, 2011) in Gwydyr Forest.

From Skoulding’s poems, I mostly learned about the effects changing the layout of

poems and how this can affect the impact and meaning of the poem. From the messiness of

The New Bridge that creates a fast paced and thought-like effect to the strict columns of

Through Trees that evoke trees and create a more ordered feel, Skoulding’s poems use

many different layouts and shapes. She uses these expertly to connect the reader to nature

no matter where they may be. I plan to use some of the techniques I’ve learned in my own

poems, like my poem “Neon”.

The New Bridge in particular also taught me a lot of combining different sound

techniques to amplify the same effect. I don’t use many sound techniques in my poems but

Skoulding’s writing has shown me how effective and enjoyable they can be.

Peter Riley is a British poet born in 1940 and known for his connection with the

Cambridge Poets and his work as an editor. He’s been described as “observant,

philosophical, meditative” (Calder Valley Poetry, n.d.) and describes his own poetry as

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“describing, rather than defining” (Doward, 2000). He was born near Manchester and grew

up in a working class community, going to university in part thanks to the post-war economy.

Peter Riley’s poems are both similar and distinct from Skoulding’s type of poetry. Like

Skoulding, Riley uses enjambment and minimal punctuation to create flowing and fast paced

poetry, though Riley’s poems are more classical and don’t have the wild element that

Skoulding’s poems have. While Skoulding’s use of enjambment makes her poems feel like

free flowing thoughts, Riley’s, while feeling free, are more like speech than thoughts. Rather

than resonating with the reader, this makes them feel more like they’re addressed to the

reader. This distance makes the poems feel more distinctly Riley’s, like a letter or story

written by him, as well as more distinctly addressed.

Shape in Riley’s poems are also quite standard. All his poems in The Ground Aslant

have lines beginning at the edge of the page. This also feeds into the feel of the poems

being written for someone to read rather than feeling like more internal thoughts. However,

Riley does vary how he uses stanzas. In The Ground Aslant, it varies from a single, long

stanza, to couplets in Western States. The use of stanzas helps to emphasize the subject of

each stanza. For example, in Western States, stanza eight is about the canyon while stanza

nine is about a deer. This in particular helps separate out the environment Riley is writing

about into singular vignettes, making it easier for the reader to understand and identify.

Another use of stanzas Riley uses is to add emphasis to certain parts of his poems.

In both A Map of Faring and Vertigo, there are stanzas that are much shorter than the

others. The shortness puts and emphasis on them as they draw more attention. The shorter

the stanza, the more intense the effect. For example, the single first stanza of A Map of

Faring, “Open land, then forest, then air” (Tarlo, 2011) draws more attention than the six line

last stanza of Vertigo. Riley uses these to draw attention to the most important parts of the

environment: the core components in A Map of Faring and the most important description of

“the great void” (Tarlo, 2011) in Vertigo.

For the content of his poems, Riley writes very similar to prose. All of his poems in

The Ground Aslant feature very prose-like descriptions of locations. However, Riley makes

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use of assonance and rhythm to include poetics. For example, in Roofwatch, many of the

lines have a similar syllable count and beat to them, ending in short syllabled words like with

“from the dark wooded edge fan / over the farmed land and at / night the plethora of stars”

(Tarlo, 2011). Those lines also include an example of assonance in that poem with “fan”,

“land” and “at” (Tarlo, 2011), which helps to emphasize the meaning and beat of the poem.

The short and simple words used also help to emphasise the simplicity of the sight the poem

is describing: farmland framed by a woods and the starry sky.

In many of Riley’s poems, they are written almost like prose but Riley still formats

them to make them interesting to the reader as a poem. A large part of this is how he uses

rhythm and how he lays out the stanzas of his poems. While I already use stanzas in my

poem, experimenting with new styles of stanza to enhance the effects of my own poems how

Riley does in his would likely improve my work.

Riley’s word choice has also given me insight into how to more securely portray the

tone and meaning of my poems. Using simple or short words to keep up a simple feeling or

a fast pace more effectively helps the reader feel the same.

Both Riley and Skoulding write in very different ways to portray the environments

their poems centre on, but both do so very effectively and captivate the reader. Through their

uses of form, both stanza and shape, and the careful use of their words for effect and

meaning, Riley and Skoulding add extras layers to their poems that capture ecology

brilliantly. In answer to Gander’s question, Riley and Skoulding prove that yes, poems can

be used to acknowledge the relationship between human and non-human aspects of the

world around us. By reading their work, I have been able to create guidelines on how to do

so in my own poems.

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University, B., n.d. Prof Zoë Skoulding | School Of Languages, Literatures And Linguistics | Bangor
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