Introduction

Citation

Evans, S. (2006), "Introduction", Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Vol. 19 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/aaaj.2006.05919baa.001

Introduction

Introduction

As I write this, the sun is filtering through the tree outside my window and lighting the covers of hundreds of poetry books, and companion volumes on how to write poetry and how to read it. Behind and beside me are other shelves where the fiction and non-fiction works also have their complement of books on how to write and read in those other genres.

The range of texts there reminds me how complicated it can sometimes be to find the best language to express ourselves, and how we often need training in methods to create and understand it. Of course, our sheer variety of tastes and needs means that no single text will satisfy every person at every moment (there are times when I need to hear Vladimir Horowitz playing Chopin and others when I need to hear the Sex Pistols). Accounting and auditing reports do not display greatly varying literary styles; they tend to be much of a type – and that type often wears a bland, academic uniform. In a curious way, however, they remind me of a debate in literary circles about the use of metaphor.

• •

  The American poet, Wallace Stevens, once wrote:

  The words of things entangle and confuse.The plum survives its poems (from The Comedian as the Letter C).

In his poem, “A sort of song”, William Carlos Williams wrote the often quoted, “no ideas but in things”, which echoes Stevens’s lines above. Do these quotes acknowledge the limitations of language (and, implicitly, art and other human expression), or celebrate the transcendent nature of the world itself – or both? There has been much debate about whether it should be sufficient to write of the concrete things in life, letting readers follow those signs in order to arrive at more abstract interpretations. This seems to elevate the virtues of simplicity, relying on the inherent meaning of objects themselves. It is up to the writer then to arrange the words that stand for those objects and their attached meanings in the best order, without resort to elaborate description or philosophy. Ernest Hemingway, too, was a fan of writing that did not editorialise or over embellish but which left more room for the reader’s own discovery.

Where does accounting sit in this argument, in the world of literature? If all art is metaphor, acting as a sign for something else, then perhaps we can regard accounting in a similar way – as not just a surface message dealing with mundane events and objects, but a complex series of allusions to readers’ values and needs. Logically, then, accounting also happens to be an art that embraces simplicity of expression and the power of metaphor. Wouldn’t it be nice, nonetheless, to have an alternative on occasions? Now the challenge might be to turn a trading statement into an overtly poetic statement! Some days it may be just what we need.

In this issue, Özgür Özmen Uysal treats us to an excursion through a wonderland very much like Lewis Carroll’s; one in which the landscape is definitely about things and ideas!

If you are interested in reading more poetry about work, with a bias toward accounting, please have a look at Poetic Accounts: An Anthology of Accounting and Business Poetry. The anthology is available as a free download from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants website at www.accaglobal.com (just search for “poetic accounts”) or in print.

In closing I would like to mention the passing of Ray Stuart whose poem “No barter” appeared in the AAAJ a couple of issues ago. Ray was a man who valued words and plums, and he will be missed.

Please feel free to send me your poetry and prose dealing with aspects of the working life, especially (but not narrowly) those related to the professional interests that inform this journal.

Steve EvansLiterary Editor