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In his splendid new collection, Chris McCabe merges the
London of the Jacobean and Elizabethan stage with the here and now in
language which spits and fizzes with a dark eloquence both demotic and
high-art. The furious energy of Barry MacSweeney and Francis Bacon are
referenced here (among others) under the umbrella of the collection's curious
title, which highlights the role of the female spy and points towards the
dark recess of the police state:
You're so
dark your clowns clone tears for future downpours
down St.
Paul's Churchyard You're so dark you want
the
cathedral's bosom realigned phallically
on Ave Maria
Lane You're so dark your hymns bass thrum
to seventies
porn and even in the May sun the City cloaked
its white
silence was too dark to riposte
(from
'City of London Dark Hymn')
It's McCabe's precision and his relish of language itself which makes this
collection such an enjoyable read. Consider, for example, the exactness of
imagery in the following line from 'A Human Face' - 'Swallows sail leadbolted
down wires of air', which takes you into the intimacy of a vignette which is
refreshingly strange while at the same time appearing perfectly natural and
real.
'My Mouth is an Elizabethan' hints at Samuel Beckett in the tautness of its
rant,
a high-wire performance which is as angrily playful as it is splendidly
mangled:
a night hook
to hang desires on, a dawndamp wench that o-blows, a
ditchdog that
salivates for kiosk sallets, smooths over pickledevants,
shuns the
rules of peccadilloes, hey ninny-ninnies to the night-time
hours with
wounded secrets, plays naughty nuncle to a crate of
Stellas, a
carafe of warehouse shiraz, hurricanoes the smoke of
Class Bs,
perpetuates the faux mistakes bookmakers pretend to
closet, .........
The central texts of the collection use as their starting point a number of
plays from the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, a practice which facilitates
great play between
the politics and mores of the respective periods and our own. Darkness is at
the heart of this collection, betrayal and violence are everywhere as is a
sort of excessive revelling in the chaos of breakdown and madness:
They will rebuild the same lines to walk
us down
these dead concocting dictionaries
defining madness
We could have this
conversation
at the door of any tavern at any time
but it's tonight in this
thirst this first
--------------------------------------------------------------------
combustion
(from 'The
Changeling')
'Teenage Riot, Daydream Nation' brings in a contemporary note - 'FIRE
IN SHOPFRONT IN TOTTENHAM HALE' - while 'Subjective Knitting'
has a more lurid, theatrical glaze which reeks of dark glamour:
Subjective
Knitting
in radical
lace . Polemical
strapless in
contentious
corset .
Inflammatory
glimpse in
conjugal silk.
Restive
straps in purple
fishnets .
Agitative susp
ension in
first time red .
Pointed heels
in Argento
gloss .
Pinched elastic in
woven threads
. Frayed
string in
slippy hooks .
Obsidian
stockings in
breathless
gauze . Latex
belt in
ribboned lengths .
Laced boots
in Saxon black.
. Frayed
poppyhead
ripped pink
to the core.
Apart from the nods to Barry MacSweeney and Tom Raworth, both in terms of
form and content, I'm also thinking Sean Bonney, Niall McDevitt and Andrew
Jordan here, as more fully contemporary British poets who deal with the
subjects of place and politics in an adventurous and experimental manner.
McCabe's exploration of the nooks and crannies of London also owe something
to Iain Sinclair, of course but there's an eloquent rawness to his work which
somehow combines precision with an emotional directness which is unusual and
full of impact.
© Steve
Spence 2015
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