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When I first met Andy Brown he was a militant
experimental writer, recently moved to Exeter. He, along with Tony Lopez, my
MA tutor at the time, were in the main responsible for me grappling with
ideas of language, content and confession and coming to terms with the result
of that. Twenty years on, I find myself writing post-confessional narratives,
whilst Andy is busy bringing process and form to the lyric, having edited an
anthology of new lyric poetry (The Allotment, Stride, 2006) and collaborated with John Burnside along the way.
Exurbia is
full of nature, description and music, which the narrators of Brown's poems
face head on, embracing complexity, poetic and natural forms, and beauty. Brown's
vocabulary is diverse and
intriguing, wide-ranging and often unexpected Ð without being the
slightest bit awkward or affected. Interestingly the 'I' in these poems is
often absent altogether, or for the majority of the poem; the focus is on
what is seen, not who is describing or engaging with the subject of the poem.
This is refreshing in lyric poetry, and gets one away from the idea that the
poet or the narrator knows more than we the readers do and will share his
epiphany and knowledge with us; here, the narrator is sidelined and the
subject foregrounded.
Brown has not abandoned experimental forms either, but they are now
subservient and used by him, as compositional tool and/or formal device. 'The
Last Geese' reflects the last words of each line back from its centre, just
as geese fly in formation, but also helps with the idea of the geese honking
and 'echoing back'; elsewhere there are villanelles, prose poems, sonnets and
translations. The latter, gathered as a sequence entitled 'The Outskirts', also indulge in a kind of
directional sleight-of-hand, for not only are these versions rather than
translations, they are also as much about Brown's father, and his mourning
for him, as the original subjects of Borges' poems.
Exurbia means the very edge of suburbia, and whilst these poems come from
there and then move out into the actual countryside beyond, they are also on
the edge of lyric poetry whilst remaing strongly rooted and firmly anchored
in it. Brown is quietly renewing and subverting the lyric and pastoral,
through importing Oulipian and other word-games and forms, by changing the
expected contents and points-of-view, by the disappearance of the self from
many of the poems. It feels a long way from the excitement and buzz of twenty
years ago, but this is warm, confident, assertive and human poetry that may
not have shock value, but does have plenty of longevity and gravitas, not to
mention serious poetic impulse.
© Rupert Loydell
2014
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