(re)-encountering multiple ideations of home through Elizabeth Bishop

James Howell is an AHRC-funded PhD student at the University of Sheffield.

 

Confined to my childhood bedroom, the small matter of a global pandemic upending the usual university experience, Elizabeth Bishop first arrived on my desk with her poem: ‘A Prodigal.’ The poem reimagines the famous Biblical parable of the same name as Bishop meditates on ideas of sanctuary and shame. Here, self-isolated of his own volition at an unknown distance from home, Bishop’s prodigal son offered an absorbing counterpoint to the kid forced to remain in his hometown.

 

 

Today, I find myself in the first year of an English Literature PhD researching the relationship between misinformation and fiction. Following five years of study, Bishop still looms large within my research practice. After all, in my final year, I joined a project about the postcards written by the mid-century poet and became immersed in Bishop’s life and writing. I combed through biographies, searching for fragments of scholarship about Bishop’s correspondence, her relationship to visual art, and references to postcards. In keeping with the Biblical theme, it was like a unique version of the synoptic gospels: each biography ostensibly one and the same but also engagingly idiosyncratic. I also searched for collections of Bishop’s postcards, seeking small yet enchanting pieces of ephemera hidden within library archives across the globe.

 

Throughout my involvement in the project, I couldn’t help but return to ‘A Prodigal.’ Now, living away from home, the poem seemed to spark new insights: student housing is grotty, yes, but rarely ‘plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung.’ Whilst university might have familiarised me with ‘mornings after drinking bouts,’ I dare not compare my experience with Bishop’s eponymous figure. But, in returning to her effortlessly witty and charming writing, I seemed to be (re)-encountering multiple ideations of home.

 

Of course, there were Bishop’s textual contemplations on the idea. I was also melancholically reminded of my childhood home. But, perhaps most crucially, the poetic project began to reiterate the feeling of being at home in the process of research: a feeling that inspired my post-undergraduate aspirations.

 

The project became central to several PhD applications. Whether I needed to emphasise my ability to work towards deadlines or as part of a team; whether I needed to showcase my capacity for hard work and extra responsibility, the project was a versatile symbol for my passion in researching English literature. Fortunately, my application was successful, and the project remains influential within my current research. Exploring historical examples of misinformation, the correspondence of Charles Dickens and his staunch propagation of spontaneous combustion has already been a valuable analytical tool. In examining Dickens’ belief in pseudoscience, his letters have been essential in fortifying my current argument and,

without my participation in the Bishop project, I would certainly not have been so quick to discover the vitality and expediency of such a line of investigation. Not only did the Bishop project immerse me in exciting research, but it encouraged my passion for literature and continues to shape my own thesis today.