About the literary works of Philip Goddard

When written?

Most of the poetry was written from 1973 to 1976, with only occasional pieces written since (up to 2006, and then one in 2022). The short stories date from 1981 onwards, and the novels from 1990 to 1993. A sixth novel was half-written, but because I'd been concentrating on my music composition work from 1995, and then more recently, had other priorities, I didn't expect to return to it.

Then in 2015, when I self-published all my completed works, I was moved to revisit that sixth novel. I still felt blocked from 'completing' it in the way I'd been intending, but then came to realize that, instead of roughly doubling its length by adding a whole lot of material in the middle, it would likely work even better as a short and concise work. Most likely, at a deep level my original block over completing the work was because of an awareness that the intended middle part wasn't necessary and would have weakened the work.

Thus in 2015 I added in just what was necessary to tie together the earlier and later part of the novel in a seamless fashion, and then, using my 'symphonic' approach to structure (of which more further below), arrived at a hilariously hard-hitting and meaningful end of the narrative — i.e., prior to the Epilogue, which latter remains largely as originally written.

Overall distinguishing features of the literary works.

The works are exploratory in various ways. Usually there is an underlying quest — away from the restrictions of religious belief and towards genuine self-actualization. However, at the time I didn't really understand the crucially important distinction between the latter and what people call 'spirituality', which I later on found out the (very) hard way to be a seriously harmful can of worms with no redeeming features. It's therefore necessary for me to publicly distance myself from various religion- and spirituality-related details in my works.

You can read about that important distinction on my Clarity of Being website, which latter includes eyebrow-raising (and indeed at times hair-raising) detailed accounts of the main aspects of what I dropped myself into through getting involved in 'spirituality' and 'spiritual healing'.
A strong satirical element: many aspects of 'normal' everyday life (including sexual mores, taboos and people's blindness to their own personal responsibility) are held up to the light, often in entertaining and challenging ways, which will occasionally 'shock' the uptight and the squeamish.
A pervading sense of humour, which is at times described by readers as 'black' or Monty-Pythonesque, which greatly eases the flow and avoids heaviness in the darker and more serious parts.
A degree of dream-like surrealism. Most of the works flow rather like dreams. There is always a logic about that flow, however, so that the impossible easily becomes the simple everyday reality. However, the works don't degenerate into unreadable 'modernist' gibberish. In fact, in a much better informed retrospect, I recognise much of the 'dream' element as reflecting not so much genuine dreams as astral realm experiences.
A structure and development based on symphonic music compositional techniques rather than any particular literary tradition. In many of the poems, one of the short stories and all of the novels, ideas, images and even mere turns of phrase (the latter especially in the poetry) are treated like melodic motifs in a complex symphony.

The sort of symphony I'm thinking of is like late Sibelius or Holmboe, in which the structure of the work is more a process of organic evolution and metamorphosis rather than the more traditional 'classical' structures. Particularly in the novels there are many cross-connections of ideas and images, which can imbue what would otherwise be trivial details with considerable power.

The reader doesn't have to know about all this, of course; the point is that this approach to structure and internal cross-references means that each work has a much greater and more profound effect than the simple sum of the narrative elements, just as a good symphony is something far greater than the sum of its melodic elements. In fact in many respects I regard my six novels as being my first six symphonies.

What are the works about?

I've always winced when asked this question. I don't regard any of my works, literary or musical, as being 'about' one thing or another, because that is a very limiting view that excludes the broader, multidimensional nature of what I communicate in my works. They are about many, many things, and I know that underlying much of what I write — in my literary writings as much as my music — are powerful scenarios from what some people would regard as previous lifetimes of mine — though my best understanding is that I've had no previous soul incarnations (being what I call a no-soul person), and so any previous lifetimes would thus presumably haven't been my own. I wasn't aware of such past life scenarios at the time of writing the works, but they nonetheless show through and direct the particular images and scenarios that emerge in my works.

The Poetry

This was the field in which I developed the compositional techniques which later flourished in short stories, novels and eventually symphonic music. The poetry has received both bouquets and (sometimes heated) brickbats. Notable people who wrote to me praising my work (when I was very amateurishly self-publishing my poetry in the mid-1970s) were Sir John Betjeman, Brian Patten and the late Danish composer Vagn Holmboe. Rightly or wrongly, some people have gone as far as claiming that in some of my poetry (and indeed fiction) I have invented an altogether new genre of literature.

Particular distinguishing features of the poetry, in addition to those noted above for all my literary works, are:

Any resemblance to regular rhyming verses is rare, the rhythmic element certainly being present but usually having a flowing, evolving character, like melodic elements in a symphony. Some but by no means all people, however, have great difficulty picking up the intended rhythm from certain of the works when they read them from the printed page, but the rhythm becomes apparent to them when I read them out.
The echoing and often metamorphosis of phrases or sounds from line to line (not necessarily adjacent lines) is a commonly used structural feature, which is more versatile and potentially more powerful in effect than regular end-of-line rhyming. Again it's more like what occurs with melodic elements in many symphonies.
Sometimes considerable liberties are taken with the English language. Phrases are often telescoped into one another; with various puns and multiple meanings and occasionally a feel of a sort of pidgin English. Despite this, the works are not really of the inaccessible 'modernistic' type.
For the most part, these poems are of high-energy, high-profile character (a few could even be described as volcanic), in marked contrast with the hushed and precious nature of so much popular poetry. They are generally cosmic and universal rather than intimate in their view, and were written not to please poets or poetry groups, but to touch the deeper aspects of people and play some part in opening new horizons of consciousness for them.
The subject matter of certain of the poems is particularly strong, occasionally touching on matters about which some people get very hot under the collar — especially as they expect poetry to be more or less 'nice'. You have been warned! The purpose of including occasional taboo subject matter here is empathy, and therefore I'm totally unrepentant about it. Complainants merely demonstrate the very sort of inhuman unawareness that my work seeks to counter.
That there is often a slight rough-edgedness in the feel of my poetry does not necessarily have anything to do with lack of craftsmanship. There are many poets who turn out marvellously crafted pieces — much slicker than mine — but very often if you look carefully at what they're communicating, the strongest part of their message is look what a clever poet I am!, which to me is quite a turn-off and indeed in my view is a serious squandering of their talent.

With my 'organic' approach, I allow the potentialities of the initial idea(s) to determine the form of each piece, rather than any preconceived notion of what a poem should be like. There is thus always a sense of treading dangerously, breaking out into the unknown with directness and even urgency.

In the same way, narrow minds have compared the music of Beethoven or Sibelius unfavourably against that of Haydn, Mozart and their various sound-alikes, not understanding that a more outward-looking and exploratory approach can produce tremendous masterpieces despite and indeed sometimes partly because of the apparent flaws that are inherent in that modus operandi.