Summer School 2012
The 8th Tower Poetry Summer School for young poets aged 18-23 will be held in Christ Church, Oxford from 28-31 August 2012. The tutors will be Alan Gillis (University of Edinburgh, Scotland) and Kevin Young (Emory University, Atlanta, USA).
Tower Poetry,
Christ Church,
Oxford, OX1 1DP
Tel: 01865 286591
or contact us >
| Oration in 2004 |
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In speaking of the late Christopher Tower, it is only fitting to begin with some lines of poetry – melancholy lines, perhaps, but lines which express something of his affection for a youthfulness lost in the toils of adulthood: We had friends in those times. Where are they now? Walking ‘midst red poppies, walking alone. We had tunes and glad rhymes. Where are they now? Buried by grey coppice, entombed for good. We had joy in those days. Where is it now? Pining on lone beaches – no self-same mood. We had light in those days. Where is it now? Banished where none reaches: where none is known. The author of these lines did not see through this rather glum programme in the rest of his writings – for Christopher Tower’s poetic output was enormous, and the many fat volumes of verse which he produced, whatever else, testify to his determination to record an imaginative life every bit as full as the life which, in the world of international affairs, he himself actually lived. The Christopher Tower we celebrate to-night was Christopher Thomas Tower (9th), and he read Modern History at the House between 1934 and 1937. He was, in fact, Christ Church’s third Christopher Tower; for his father, Christopher Cecil Tower (8th), studied here between 1903 and 1907, and died only eight years later in action at Vermelles, near Loos, three months after the birth of his son. Christopher John Hume Tower (7th) was an undergraduate at the House between 1860 and 1863, and lived until 1924, a dedicated and well-respected owner and manager of the family estates in Essex and Buckinghamshire. When Christopher Tower came up from Eton in 1934, the ‘friends’, ‘tunes and glad rhymes’ of Oxford were already being overshadowed by an increasingly threatening world. Since school, Christopher had been devoted to poetry, but also to the delights of archaeology, and it was at Oxford that his archaeological interests began to concentrate themselves in the ancient Middle and Near East. After a showing in Schools which disappointed him (like Auden, who had been up at the House less than ten years before, Tower did not impress his examiners), an opening in the Middle East provided an opportunity which turned out to be decisive. In 1938 Tower, who was already busily learning Persian and Arabic, and growing ever more deeply interested in the Greek and Roman Near East, became Assistant Private Secretary to Sir Basil Newton, the British Ambassador in Baghdad. Tower’s war was spent at the centre of things in the Middle East. In 1941, he became Personal Staff Officer to General Glubb Pasha, in charge of the Arab Legion in Transjordan in 1941-2. Tower’s own regiment was the 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards, which he joined in Cairo in 1942; he fought in the Western Desert, and gained the rank of Captain. During this time, Tower’s special knowledge and abilities marked him out as a man of particular value in the region, and he became the Military Government in Libya’s Advisor on Arab affairs, as well as the Commandant of the Tripolitania Sahara Administration, a post in which he remained until 1949. With a CV like this, it is tempting to see Tower as a latter-day Lawrence of Arabia; and indeed, it seems likely that he did in fact serve in a Libyan camel corps in 1948-9, dressing in Arab robes and conducting secretive, daring operations. It all seems a long way from Oxford; and it’s a thought which must have occurred to Christopher himself when he put together his humorous poem ‘A Sheikh at Oxford’, ‘Lines to Sheikh Hamoodi, the author’s host at Carchemish (Djerablous) when he was serving as a member of the British Security Mission to Syria.’ ‘Sheikh Hamoodi,’ Tower’s prefatory note explains, ‘had accompanied T.E. Lawrence to Oxford before 1914.’ The poem has fun with all this: Good Hamoodi, when you were Long ago in Oxford town; Did you, when you sojourned there, Still retain your flowing gown? If you did, no doubt the chaps When they saw what you had on, Must have whispered: ‘This, perhaps, Is some oriental don.’ Did you, with your tribal lads, Camp I some secluded quad? If you did, the undergrads Must have thought it somewhat odd. Did the Canons show surprise As they wandered round about, Hearing the barbaric cries That your followers let out? Did those ancient walls resound? Did you agonise the Dean, With your henchmen all around Pounding up the coffee bean? Did you circulate that brew, With its strong, exotic scent, ‘Mongst the more courageous who, Made the entry to your tent? There is an element of wry autobiographical fantasy here, as Tower imagines the quads of Oxford filling with Arab ways. In 1950, Tower became Chief Advisor and Secretary to the Emir of Cyrenaica, and the British Foreign Office entrusted to him the complex task of setting up a monarchy in Libya. Once King Idris was installed, in 1951, Tower served as his Chamberlain and Comptroller, a post he held until 1958. After this, Tower devoted himself to the intellectual pursuits which had been his life’s passion – to the history and archaeology of the region in which he had been so deeply attached, both personally and professionally, and to the other great passion of his life – poetry. He moved to Athens in 1977, and spent the rest of his life there, with frequent visits to England, and in particular to the New Forest; and it was in Minstead, in the grounds of its beautiful church, that Tower chose a last resting place; he died in 1998, and visitors to Minstead, in search perhaps of the grave of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, now see the imposing, classical memorial which commemorates a figure of whom they are unlikely to have heard – the late Christopher Tower. There is a certain appropriateness, however, in Tower sharing a burial place with the creator of Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty. Tower’s life, though in many ways a consequential one, and one which mattered in terms of the affairs of the Middle East (and Britain’s interests there) in the middle decades of the last century, was led in a remarkable obscurity. Family and friends remember a man of great intellectual and artistic commitment: a dedicated student of archaeology, a lover of natural history, a collector of art, and a prodigiously productive poet. Of Tower’s professional life, so to speak, they generally know less, and remember a man of much reticence, if not indeed one with something of an air of mystery about him. Doubtless, this is as it should be; a man may decide where his ultimate priorities lie in such matters, and can expect others to respect his wishes: for Tower, his life’s most important aspects were those in the worlds of learning and art. In his later years, Tower published nine hefty books of poetry – much of this, of course, having been accumulated over the course of years. In terms of style, the poetry is out of step with virtually all that happened in the twentieth century – and perhaps with much even of the nineteenth; for Tower was completely Romantic in his orientation, and his verse seems never really to have recovered from its teenage crush on Shelley. It may be that publication was not the wisest step to take, though Tower possessed enough private resources to persuade publishers along routes they would not otherwise follow. What is remarkable, though, is the evidence of dedication and determination which Tower’s poetry presents; there is an unmistakable (though arguably in some respects mistaken) artistic integrity in this, which is, in its way, very impressive. At the end of his life, Tower set up the Christopher Tower Foundation to support causes which had meant much to him through his life. The family almshouses at Weald in Essex would continue to be provided for, and a deep love of the New Forest would issue, in due course, in the Christopher Tower New Forest Reference Library (which opened this year). But most importantly for own purposes, Tower decided to do something remarkable for both poetry, and the study of ancient Greek world, the two areas which had sustained so much of his own intellectual life, in conjunction with his old College in Oxford. In 1999, the first Christopher Tower Student and Tutor in Poetry in the English Language, along with the first Christopher Tower Junior Research Fellow in Greek Mythology, took up their posts at Christ Church – posts endowed in perpetuity by the generosity of the Tower Foundation. A national poetry competition for sixth-formers was also established in Tower’s name, which is now in its fifth year of successful operation; other resources were provided in addition, which have already made possible the provision of summer schools for young poets, and subsidies towards publication of new and important work. Later in 2004, the House will see the arrival of a second Christopher Tower Student, in Medieval Poetry in English. There is much that is remarkable about this – one might even say dramatic, given the scale of the Tower benefaction, and the comparative obscurity (as far as the wider world was concerned) of the quarter from which it came. Christopher Tower did not, in fact, revisit his College; friends remember accompanying him as far as Tom Gate, but failing to persuade him to enter. It may seem ironic, then, that Christopher Tower should be such a palpable presence in the Christ Church of the 21st century, should be so much with us in our daily operations, and in the front we present to the world. But perhaps this is just as it should be: art and humane learning, as Tower understood, are greater and longer things than our individual lives – their achievements, their failures and successes, their untold secrets – and the truest witness to their power in our lives is to demonstrate an unselfish trust in their power for the posterity we shall never know. No price can be put on such things, though we happen to live in a philistine educational culture where they are regularly priced, and even sometimes priced out of existence. Christopher Tower served the House well in the far-sightedness of his benefaction, and in so doing he did honour to the generations of Towers who had been at the House before him; but he also served the loves of his life, poetry and the ancient world, by helping to ensure that future generations can have the chance of sharing those loves. ‘We had youth in those days,’ Tower concludes the poem with which this speech began, ‘Where is it now?/ Gone where all loved things must go at last.’ This is true – all too true – of youth; but less true of those ‘loved things’ that can survive us. In its way, the House itself is a striking physical reminder of the longevity of those values – above all, the value of learning in and for itself – which brought it into being. Christopher Tower added to the long-term strength of this place by knowing the true worth of priceless things – of poetry and the past – in lives that will come after us. Certain loved things, as he showed, do not go at last: they last. |
About Tower Poetry
Tower Poetry exists to encourage and challenge everyone who reads or writes poetry. Funded by a generous bequest to Christ Church, Oxford, by the late Christopher Tower, the aims of Tower Poetry are clear: to stimulate an enjoyment and critical appreciation of poetry, particularly among young people in education, and to challenge people to write their own poetry. Creative writing should be a central element in literary education, and learning about writing poetry can help students to think about ways of reading poetry.
Publications
Poems from the 7th Tower Poetry Summer School 2010
Edited by Daljit Nagra and Jo Shapcott
The Twelve contains 56 poems from the 12 young poets who attended the Summer School.