John Moat
Last week, a Great poet and dear friend of mine, John Moat, sadly passed away. I only came to know John in the last few years of his remarkable life, but I think how fortunate I am to have known him at all. He was quite simply an extraordinary man and artist. Each time I met John and his wife, Antoinette, I was restored with peace and hope and reinvigorated with determination to pursue life as an adventure; to be curious and creative above all.
The finality of John’s death shocked me. I was unprepared for the silence. For the full-stop to our conversation. There was no ellipsis insight.
And then I received his last book: Anyway…
His voice had not been buried. It’s alive in each of his poems, in his art, in Welcombe itself (his home in North Devon). It’s deep and steady and chuckling in his choice of words – in his careful punctuation even – anticipating the reader’s response as if he is talking across the kitchen table to you, reading the confusion creased into your forehead and that wonderful moment of clarity, relaxing into understanding as you catch up with his large thoughts and ideas.
The conversation is not over. John writes in Welcombe Overture 21 that
The Lark Ascending
How when identity is most clear often
We are singly not alone, and how then flesh –
Its definition – is transparent, inapposite (Moat, Welcombe Overture 21, lines 11-13)
Dialogue does not cease in death. The conversations I had with John I want to continue and take further as I explore his work. Work that was, and is, at the forefront of what poetry can be in the twentieth first century. Work that through the Arvon Trust brought young and often disadvantaged people into a world of literary possibilities. Work that challenged our philosophy of the Imagination.
It was a joy to know John, and it will be a joy to continue knowing him through his art.
Zoe May Wiles 