The Sister ArtsとEmily Berry: ～Stranger, Baby (2017) の“Sleeping”を読む～

抄録

Emily Berry (1981-), acclaimed London poet, issued her first awarded collection Dear Boy in 2013. In February 2017, her second collection Stranger, Baby was published and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. Stranger, Baby contains a poem called “Sleeping” in which Berry begins by mentioning “after Paula Rego”, a reference to her poetical inspiration source. The poem draws on the work of painter Paula Rego (1935-) and Rego's “Sleeping” inspires Berry. Interestingly, in 2012, Deryn Rees-Jones (1968-) wrote a long poem, also, in a referential style to Rego in a similar way. The title of the poem is “Dogwoman” in her Burying the Wren, a collection shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2012. In 2015, Owen Lowery (1968-) attempted a series of poems under the influence of Rego, entitling his own book Rego Retold: Poems in Response to Works by Paula Rego. It is actually 50 poems intended as textualization of Rego's works. The concept of ‘The Sister Arts’ is helpful for the present discussion as it is shown in Jean Hagstrum's pioneering study, The Sister Arts. Here, the attention shall be focused upon this relationship which can be re-defined as the pictorialism in poetry. The present article will discuss how Berry as the poet understands, and signifies, Rego's “Sleeping” in her own poem “Sleeping”. I place my own particular emphasis on the possibilities of how much we can apply the idea of the Sister Arts for the investigation of the poem. As the ultimate aim, I will demonstrate how, in particular, the images of “a desert” and “the sea” are related, and integrated, within Berry's “Sleeping”.