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Simon Curtis describes himself as coming from 'the
formalist end of the poetry spectrum' and this is true insofar as he has a
deeply ingrained sense of traditional verse forms as encapsulated in English
poetry over the centuries. His engagement with modern poetry is chiefly with
the Hardy/Auden/Larkin/Betjeman lineage and a liking for light verse is
tempered by a strong melancholy streak, a nostalgic yearning for a better
past which can be seen as small c conservative - as in the 'Orwell-inspired'
'Spinster and Push Bike' where we get - 'O would it were so and could be
believed,/With spinster and push-bike Orwell conceived.' There's certainly an
interest in the minutia of domestic suburban life, as in the charming
'Goldfish', which details the 'Darwinian' conflict between home-owner with
small pond, and the gull, heron, or was it the neighbour's cat?, which
finally decimates the goldfish. Yet there's another side to this celebration
of the rural and the urban which could fit neatly into the culture and
society tradition within literary studies, as exemplified in Raymond
Williams' later and more exploratory yet polemical book The Country and the City. In 'Crunch', for example, we are given an understandably confused
yet angry response to the near melt-down of the banking system, which
combines satire with a plea for an 'old-fashioned' sense of good husbandry,
dear to the green movement and to anybody concerned with the state of the
planet and with the effects on individuals of global capitalism:
Ask
laissez-faire free marketers
Why Alan
Greenspan, taking stock,
Expressed
his disbelief and shock?
I try to
fathom how it's turned
To fuck-up
on a whopping scale -
Deregulation's Holy Grail
A grand
illusion. Verdict: fail.
Who could seriously disagree with that?
Despite having met some of the key innovators of mid to late twentieth
century poetry during his time studying at the University of Essex (Ed Dorn,
for one) Simon Curtis' poetry has remained resolutely uninfluenced by the
'wild excesses' (or formal devices!) of both modernist and post-modernist
movements and tendencies. Which is fair enough and although his approach to
poetry is not one that I could embrace in terms of my own writing, I can
still find things of interest here, not all of which deal with nostalgia or a
desire for things to be other than they are. He has a nifty interest in
aspects of popular culture - 'Plymouth Vignette', for example, in praise of
Beryl Cook - and the surprising 'Satie at the end of Term', where the music
of the innovative modernist composer comes to the aid of a protagonist
struggling with an over-burdened literary syllabus. I'm not sure I'd describe
Satie as a 'clown' but I can see the point being made clearly enough.
There are other poems which deal with aspects of the modernist tradition
which surprise by the boldness of their content - 'Kurt Schwitters in
Ambleside', for example, which suggests a sneaking regard for the master of
montage and 'found materials': 'Dark skeins, odd blues and eerie whites,
sharp fleck/And scumble-whorl - the fire! The restless drive!' There's a
similar tone in 'Picasso, Late Drawings, at Geneva', where the
'conservatism', if I'm reading the poem correctly, is turned on its head:
Where, as
the dancer, it shines. And those prim words
Of
jealous, self-righteous, primitive hate
Scald in
the air-conditioning.
Who said that we'd progressed, of late.
I was also taken by 'In Dunham Massey Park', mainly I suspect, for its
unusual choice of subject and vantage point. Succinct, empathetic and
reflective.
In black
leather jacket and pale blue jeans,
On her own, unconcerned, in half-sun,
She was
walking the broad grassed deer-park ride -
As a man on his own might have done.
To go for
a tramp and be by themselves,
Among oaks and
head bare to the breeze,
Unanxious,
unharassed, quite unremarked,
And equal and really at ease.
(from 'In Dunham Massey Park')
This is effectively, a collected poems, featuring work from Simon Curtis' two
previous substantial collections, Devil Among the Tailors (2011) and Reading a River (2005) plus a short, prefacing section covering
more recent work. There's a wide array of subject matter, ranging across
sporting activities, bereavement, country matters, city life, travel, the
evils of literary theory(!), and of course, cosmic meditation. He has a fine
eye for detail and the rhythms are as traditional and sturdy as a
well-constructed house.
©
Steve Spence 2013
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