‘It is not anyone's dream’: C. H. Sisson's Utopias

Abstract

C. H. Sisson has proved a notoriously troublesome poet to position, or to ‘pin down’, and has been the subject of various ideological jousts among critics. While critical disagreement is, of course, a symptom of artistic longevity, in Sisson's case it is also – or, arguably, mainly – symptomatic of English cultural-political contestation in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. His work has not received a great deal of critical attention, though recently there have been two special editions including essays on his work: an Agenda in 2010, and a PN Review, commemorating the poet's centenary last year in 2014, as well as a scholarly study due to be published by Carcanet. These indicate new stirrings of interest in Sisson's work, with a desire to evaluate it with the benefit of critical distance, apart from the ideological tugs of war which dominated writings on it in the last century. However, where Sisson's work is concerned, ideological contexts are rarely too far away. A prolific writer of literary and political essays, Sisson has been described both as ‘radical’1 and ‘reactionary’2 by crucial interlocutors in the debate on his work. Taking the measure of such conflicting characterisations, this essay will argue that it is precisely this indeterminacy, rather than a particular political or ideological position, which animates, complicates, and implicates Sisson's work.