BRISTOL FASHION: REVIEW BY MATT SIMPSON

BLUECHROME ANTHOLOGY 2004
edited Ronnie Goodyer, 114pp, £7.99
THE RIDICULOUS NESTS OF THE HEART
by Gary Bills, 134pp, £7.99, bluechrome publishing, PO Box 109, Portishead, Bristol BS20 7ZJ

If only the editors of bluechrome publishing had kept quiet about their achievements, this anthology, representing the three winners of bluechrome's 2004 competition and the twenty-seven runners-up, would be been a straightforward recommendation. But the book is primarily an advertisement. Of the one-hundred-and-fourteen pages only fifty-six are devoted to the competition poets. Most of the rest, frankly, is over-enthusiastic advertising of forthcoming single-volume collections by seven bluechrome poets, with two-poems-each appetisers and some rather embarrassing editorial comment. This ÔforthcomingÕ section purports to contain poetry 'created by some of the brightest talent in the UK today.' Well, maybe. But to call the forthcoming volumes 'Major Collections' is really tempting fate. It goes hand-in-hand with the intrusive self-congratulatory tone of the editors in their Introductions and their back-cover blurb, which talks of bluechrome's 'best-known poets chipping in a couple of their finest pieces of work' to 'this stunning collection.' What is being asked of us is that we recognise and admire editorial fine judgement as well a degree of exclusivity. Anthony Delgrado, bluechrome's editor-in-chief, tells us the book is a 'collection of some of the finest work we have seen in many years'. I don't think it would be too immodest of me to say that I have seen lots just as good and much that is loads better. This anthology contains 'some of the great names of poetry today.' Well, I'm sorry, that's just OTT and does the poets listed no great service beyond possibly dangerously feeding their egos. I would claim to be a moderately experienced reader of contemporary poetry and I can only say that I recognised three names. What I'm saying does not necessarily undervalue what is actually there in the collectionÉ but more of that in a minute.

Delgrado's enemy, oddly, seems to be the vanity presses. In bruiting the launch bluechrome's 'sister press', boho, he says the aim is to combat 'the vanity trade that blights poetry in the UK today.' Well, does it really? It's too obvious and easy a target. Isn't the best way to ignore it? The real enemy is the bad poetry vanity presses so easily exploit. And, yet, don't competitions do something very similar? Make money from no-hopers. Where does the money come from for the hugely ambitious programme of publishing that we are told is going to come from bluechrome/boho enterprise? I have judged enough poetry competitions to know that nearly all the hopefuls, who pay good money to submit their work, don't stand a cat-in-hell's chance of winning. Ronnie Goodyer, poetry editor, tells us that 'some eight hundred entries were received.' Were any of the no-runners given their money back? Shouldn't some kind of declaration be issued about competition organisers' experience of poetry and their expectations, something that makes it clear to entrants how to be in with a chance? (Who, by the way, were the judges of this 2004 competition? Their names are not given). Indeed, Delgrado is simply abusive: he talks of his enemy as the 'over-priced, poor quality anthologies these scumbags purvey.' Yes, but aren't there more serious things to combat? I will confess I do get angry when I hear of the inroads into schools these people sometimes make, deliberately and cynically exploiting the pride of parents and grandparents. But those adults I have met who have paid to be in a vanity-published anthology are usually pleased with themselves. A word like 'scumbag' is playground language and gets no-one anywhere.

It would be churlish not to admire the enthusiasm and energy that is clearly going into bluechrome/boho. I applaud Delgrado when he tells us that '2003 has been a fantastic year' (there's a substantial fiction list too) in which 'we are proud to have been able to work with some great authors and poets.' There's no way I'd want to denigrate any of this. In fact, the competition poems make for a good read. And, yes, I feel that the three winners do deserve their podium positions. That said, I can't help worrying that the poetry world is just too obsessed with competitions, like the commercially-driven world generally, where everything is constantly being graded and valued in money terms. What, in all seriousness, makes any poem worth say £1000 and another, from the same set of submissions, £500... and hundreds of others worth nothing at all? (What were
the prizes awarded by bluechrome? There is no mention of this either in the book). We've got to the point now where well-known poets actually proudly state that they were somewhere 'shortlisted'. It's a bit like 'B.A. Dehli (failed).'

What may be churlish is to point out is that the twenty-seven runners-up all get grouped together in a section misnamed 'anthologists'. Oops! An anthologist is a compiler of anthologies, not somebody represented in one. (Wouldn't you just hate the word'Ôanthologee' if it were to exist?)


Gary Bills'The Ridiculous Nests of the Heart is ­Ðsurprise, surprise – a very impressive collection. I came to it, after reading the Anthology, with a degree of suspicion, expecting to find something portentous. I have to say it grew on me and, as it did, my admiration grew: I came to the realisation that Bill's is quite an exceptional and accomplished poet. Bluechrome can certainly be proud of having published this collection.

A casual reader might think that there was an old-fashioned air to the poems, a rhetorical quality (I was often reminded of tones of voice you find in Yeats), a formal poise which in a less-gifted poet would sound portentous. The criticisms I began marshalling Ð that there was too much trust put in adjectives, that there was a generalising tendency in the language which was making the poems seem opaque – these began to fall away as I grew more convinced that this poet was technically very well-equipped and knew exactly the effects he wanted. I am tempted to say that he is restoring to poetry something that went missing when laissez-faire attitudes took hold: a proper seriousness, a genuine respect for craft, the feeling that poetry is more than mere self-expression. Bills may perhaps reconnect us with the powerful tradition and the still-available techniques of English poetry. The biographer of Alexander Pope, Maynard Mack, wrote 'Particulars Ð ephemera Ð the flotsam and jetsam of experience all are fascinating but have value for the artist only in so far as they can be organised in a patterned whole.' Bills is not just a poet, he is an artist. He controls an enviable range of forms – from haiku to ballad, from sonnet to free verse Ð and his measure is that he is comfortable in all of them, using them (not being used by them) to tell us interesting things about the world.


        © Matt Simpson 2004