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This is the fourth in an ongoing series of anthologies
from Carcanet and what is so encouraging about this anthology is that the
eleven poets in this collection are widely travelled both intellectually and
geographically and reference not only the richness of their cultural
traditions of their countries of birth, but language and perspectives that
travel far beyond an insular view of what constitutes 'British' poetry.
There is enough variety here to please most tastes and with eleven poets each
contributing several poems, it may suffice to pay closer attention to those
who come closest to my own preferences.
Each poet has a short introduction concerning their background and
literary success - some of which is considerable. Some of them have gone on to Carcanet's poetry list, so
the bar is set pretty high. In
order of appearance:
Christian Campbell draws a great deal on his multicultural experiences and
his language incorporates his West Indian background in an engaging and
rumbustious style. 'Shells for Sonia' is indicative of the more light hearted
nature of his poems, albeit with a twist. 'You ten, I six, and jujube/ now in season. I monkey up/the tree's weak bones and
call/down to you, not Wilsonia, that/big people's name. I does call you
Nita...' and further on '...My/Miss Biggety, with your little red self./ Yes,
you. You who is hum for the trees/always and play ringplay and pinch/the boys
that get too fresh...' 'If I did know/you was going with your
Daddy to leave/me for true,...I would make you learn me/to run fast and sing,
if I did know New York/was far-far like the moon.'//.
In 'Whalesong', an initiation into deep sea diving, the '...froth of humanity
misplaced, lost and found in the wrong element, light bending
incorrectly...' indicates Andrew
Frolish's facility to translate this experience into lyrical poetry. His rueful admission of missing the
moray, and nurse shark, distracted by the brilliance of comical parrotfish
'...I let the hawksbill pass through me like a breeze through a ghost./ In his admission of trying and
failing to hear the Humpbacks
'...My nodding hides the secret/ of the silence. I lied. I failed./ I could never hear
the whales. //.
His ability to transform such an event into a personal revelation, is shared
in this selection by a vividly dramatic poem, 'Hailstones in Texas' '...We
howled and danced our way to the veranda, soaked and raining like human
clouds./ Someone made a fire while our socks clung to radiators.../.
Two very fine and moving poems about his father are included and a truly
visceral poem 'The Apple Peeler' which in its construction and compass is
breathtaking.
'The first attack is swift/between the raising of the glass/ and the
sip,/leaving a flap of skin/beneath the eye/ bringing to mind my grandma with
a sharp knife/peeling an apple/within an inch of its life.../ and further on 'Her control of the
knife/taking none of the white/sliding under the skin/gliding over the
bone/revealing the marrow/and bringing the blade/all the way home.// And in the last stanza '...In the
porcelain sink/where he washed away his face/there is a teaspoon of blood..'
and more alarmingly: '...I wipe it on the front of my jeans/where it will steal
its way/into the fabric/putting down roots/and passing on the stain.//
Beatrice Garland demonstrates an admirable ability to cast herself in a
series of diverse roles, every one of them convincing, but her most
compelling poem is 'Undressing', a sensual delight of a poem, which is hard
to extract from, as there's a unity to its development, it begins: 'Like
slipping stitches/ or unmaking a bed/or rain from tiles,/they come tumbling
off: green dress, pale stockings,/loose silk - like mown grass/or blown
roses,/subsiding in little heaps/and holding for a while/a faint perfume -
soap,/warm skin - linking/these soft replicas of self.//
'Gitanes' is a great poem. A vivid description of the gipsies is followed by
a sense of unease and discomfiture: 'I am afraid to swim in case/they steal
my folded clothes, my rug, my watch, my good book. My good life./ And the
prince comes closer, smiling in a way I cannot read./Tu veux danser?/I
am white, timid,/Disapproving of their litter./ He takes the money I hold out
silently/and tears it in pieces/ And they are laughing./ They are laughing at
something.//.
Emma Jones, an Australian poet, deals with the mysterious and the strange, in
tightly crafted lines; language chosen for its musical qualities, and
assonance, most apparent in 'Farming': 'The pearls were empire animals.
They'd been shucked from the heart of their grey mothers/which is why, so
often, you'll find them /nestled at the neck and breast./It stood to
reason./The sea was one long necklace,/and they often thought of that
country.// In the third stanza: 'Rolled to
create circumference./ Opened to accommodate/the small strange 'foreign
irritant'/ that hones itself to a moon./ The oysters say/it's a lulling
stone, that outside heart/turned in, and beating.//. Most notable is the echoing
repetition of the 'i' sound in the final stanza 'Do the fish know/ their glint, those inward birds/ in the
fields of the Pacific?/It's a singing bone,/the indivisible pearl./ It's a bright
barred thing. And pearls/are empire animals./ And poems are pearls.//
'Berlin Fugue' is intriguing and has for me, echoes of Futurist poems. 'Now
the shopfronts move through the evening/and the people move through the
evening/and take themselves in from the glass.//. A wonderfully inclusive
image in a cleverly worked out poem.
Moving on then, to Gerry McGrath.
Here is a voice that relishes words, the chimes of rhyme and
presumably his Scottish accent would add a further dimension. Very short poems
are apt to be inconsequential, not so with McGrath they have a life of their
own, and make connections on many levels, nature allied with skin, with
longing, with memory with loss and inexpressible feelings.
The
Language of Pines
Here again,
yes here, touched,
yes, but the
future. Let me say
how we
progressed down the hill
stepping from
fog to visibility.
Listen, these
eyes, heat, more-
than-blood
warmth, feel
the minute
forgiveness of rain,
unconfessable
love, salt,
hear the
language of pines,
soft bleating
as of a child
all
the
painstaking increments
of our
descending.
Kei Miller's work turns racism on its head in 'How we became pirates'. A
woman in a pub imitates the Jamaican accent: '...And what a thing to mock -/the way we shape words
differently./ But maybe it's the old colonial hurt/of how we became the
pirates, dark people/ raiding English from the English,/ stealing poetry from
the poets.../ Miller raises the history of slavery, but turns it around to
suggest the once subjugated are now challenging and, even, could it be,
surpassing their 'masters'. 'Lady,
if I start a poem/ in this country/ it will not be yours.//. All of his poems are masterly and the kind of
poems that make a deeper impression at each re reading.
Christopher Neild has on first acquaintance, a somewhat cool withheld style,
but on closer study his use of traditional forms are adroit and
compelling. His facility with
language and his subject matter seems to parallel classical values, as for
instance in 'Aphrodite', it begins:
This throat
is white as the water's fur -
The long
white stretch to the tethered skull -
the bare
white pulse -
Open to the
outcast stare -
That life -
That beating
there.'
and further on:
The simple
humanness
Of something
So opaque to
sense:
The fleshy
screen
That hides
all signs
Of being
close
To us...
Unusual to see capitals beginning each line, not so often seen in
contemporary poetry; they somehow add to the formality.
Joanna Preston - another Aussie poet in this collection, has a gift for
transforming events with her remarkable narrative drive. There's something biblical about a
tale of the murder/sacrifice of a boy in 'The Parable of the Drought'. '...the
line/of fenceposts that shimmered west.' The black cockatoo that flew overhead. '...Heat smashed
against the gibbers...' The menacing nature of his final kiss on the boy's
forehead. 'He slid his fingers
into the boy's hair/just like a wether, he thought, just like a ewe -/ He watched until the boy's eyes/lost their
brilliance - the same brittle blue/as the sky that even now/refuses to
cloud.// Great stuff rather
brought to mind Fleur Adcock; perhaps the landscape and the menace.
Edward Ragg's poems juxtapose irony and a cynical humour. 'Narco' is narrated
by a restless and insomniac character. There is something elusive and
suggestive in the language. His
is uncomfortable and challenging poetry, sometimes opaque and distinctly
restive. His twin, his
doppelganger, his alter ego, wanders around at night, writes a poem about an
insomniac whose '...Sleep, as his wife lay breathing, was a poetry/Awake, yet
dreaming of sleep.../ The poem has really to be read in full to get a handle on
it. Whereas possibly John Burnside would make the evanescence of the poet
into a wraith, Wragg makes rather heavier weather of it; interesting
nonetheless.
Philip Rush on the other hand has a way with him that is somehow elegant and
infinitely easier to relate to.
His poems are pervaded by a lightness of touch and a humorous take on
life. His poem 'Percebes' (the
gooseneck barnacle) combines a feast of description: it looks like a fist of
witch's fingernails. 'You tear away a finger, peel it back, crack it/open and
there like an untanned ring/beneath your real ring, the pinky bit...'/ The poem is full of sea images, the
fog coming ashore in the kitchen, the fishermen of Galicia dangling from the
rocks in oilskins, ...'you try to
taste the danger they're enjoying...you breathe the smell of the sea, its
iodine air./Their body language conveys how much of a treat this is... / In the denouement, the cook looms out
of the sea-fog of the kitchen
'...gently drifts the beads of water from her breasts,/ and stands tall
there, in the kitchen, her hips dangling seaweed.' //.
And so to the final writer in this collection. Saradha Soobrayen, a young and very accomplished
poet. Only two examples
here from some fine, passionate poems, but it was hard to choose, her range
and ability are impressive.
...So much was
up your sleeve: the birth of books,
musing on
whether a rhyme equals hard work
and the art
of disappearing. A sleight of
hand and I am left
under a
spell, with some minutes not yet uncoiled,
making you
more precious. These hours are
written
while the
air's thick with thinking errors.
A fleeting chill;
a moth dashes
across my eyes, back and forth...
[from 'Questioning the Invisible Stitching']
Written in just two fourteen line stanzas, the second a perfect reversal of
the first is perfectly achieved in this passionate and questing poem which is
concerned with the complexities of a relationship. Other poems, more playful
in tone such as 'Xx', explore letters and language, '...This time I have made
you in the lower curve/of the letter S and taken the top part for myself,/ or
if you prefer we could turn over on our sides/ and both be touching the
bottom line.../ A clever, witty poem, its emotional pitch is achieved
effortlessly.
Much to recommend, much to enjoy, a very substantial collection.
© Genista Lewes 2008
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