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Annie Freud's latest
offering starts with aubergines and ends with an omelette, though it is
called The Remains there may
not be much left by the time the reader places their order, considering the
relentless demands of the poet's taste buds. 'Beauty. beauty, beauty' she
writes in the title poem, beauty is what captivates Annie Freud, whether it's
found in a Constable painting or a starter of prawn crackers and jasmine tea,
beauty is what she craves and subject wise, it is what constitutes the orange
to red glow on her poetry's heat map.
Being a keen admirer of Annie Freud's first two collections, The Best Man
That Ever Was (2007) and The
Mirabelles (2010) it was a
pleasant surprise to find her third collection in the reviewers goody bag I
received from the satanic monkeys that rule Stride Towers. Annie Freud is
excellent. It is a great pleasure for me to attempt to explain precisely what
makes her excel.
One of the two chief inspirations for The Remains were pieces of broken china and other trinkets
Annie Freud found on digging her garden, these items spoke of histories and
identities long forgotten in the shuffle of time's footsteps. The remains, as the title calls them, are not directly
referenced in the poetry, instead they work as triggers for the poet's
imagination. The other main inspiration, according to the blurb, was a
viewing of masterpieces from the Sung Dynasty. This visual prompt is evident
in the poem 'Once a small pavilion', which is short enough for me to include
in its entirety:
Once a small pavilion
stood by the Canglan pond.
(The waters still lap its
empty railings.)
Here there is always wind
and moon for the fishermen.
(I notice the tears on my
cheeks have dried.)
Rivers and lakes fill the
whole land, enough for my enjoyment.
(See how the ripples rock
the boat.)
The poem is simple and could just be the description of a painting, except
for the line 'I notice the tears on my cheeks have dried' which inserts the
human source of the poem into the poem. The pond is where she goes in
sadness, but her sadness is short lived, notice how the water of the natural
world lasts longer than the water that falls in the form of tears, even
outlasting the small pavilion.
The world of Annie Freud is one where the senses dominate, taste, touch and
smell are all heightened. In the aforementioned opening poem 'Aubergines',
her post-pub snack is the 'unpromising, deceptive, truncheon-like, rubbery,
sexual' vegetable which she slices up and devours decadently:
I slid
six fine cut slices from
the board into the smoking oil
I was Scheherazade,
wielding my spatula in ecstasy,
telling stories to
myself, eating discs of melting gold.
Most people, and perhaps poets, would probably be eating chips after the pub,
Annie Freud is carving up aubergines. This may seem trivial, but its one of
the keys to understanding her. She is a tasteful aesthete, her delights are
epicurean, picking out words at random from her list poem of chosen subjects
brings up 'rubies, fires, debaucheries, teeth, vases, vampires', her world
would be Baudelairian (another of her chosen subjects) except it is much too
pleasant. Fruit, flowers, paintings and parties are frequent features of her
poems.
The first line the reader is offered on opening The Remains is: ÒAnnie Freud is a poet and artist.Ó That she
is both a poet and an artist is informative, for Annie Freud has been a
visual artist much longer than she has been a poet, since 1975 she has worked
as an embroider and a tapestry artist. Annie Freud came quite late to poetry,
she started writing in the late 1990s after bring 'electrified' by an Anne
Carson reading. Her first collection appeared when she was 59 and at the
tender age of 66 she became, somewhat ironically, one of the Poetry Book
SocietyÕs Next Generation Poets. There are certain sensibilities which come
from being an artist that can be found in the way she writes, in particular,
a certain painter-like attention to detail:
That night they sat and
drank a liqueur made of oak leaves
and listened to the
hoopoes hooting
in the eucalyptus trees.
[from ÔJe
N'aime Pas Beaucoup Les Gla•eulsÕ]
The delicate arrangement of objects could equally be the setting for a
painting. Another boon from her artist background is that The Remains features wonderful illustrations from the author,
which add an extra aesthetic element. Of course, when discussing Annie Freud
and art, the elephant in the room is that her father, Lucian, was the most
famous British artist of his generation. However there's no need to dwell on
this, it's not as if she's Sylvia Plath with a dominating 'Daddy' figure
looming over her work. The one poem dedicated to her father is called,
mischievously for a man rumoured to a fathered forty children, 'Birth
Control'.
As previously mentioned Annie Freud's subjects are usually light, there are
poems about horses, gladioli, a visit from the Queen. There is no violence,
hatred or fury here, the biggest tragedy in The Remains seems to be the loose lid of a salt cellar causing
an excess of salt to fall onto an omelette (this happens in closing poem 'A
Memorable Omelette'). The unabashed revelry in the good times suggests
something of a Georgian influence, for whom the green grass of home and the
songs of the singing birds were the chief delights. However though Annie
Freud may be a Georgian in her sense and sensibilities she does not write
like a Georgian, the majority of her poetry is not rhymed, her metres are
loose, she's not afraid to underline words or CAPITALIZE THEM, she is
also fond of found poems.
Annie Freud also looks further than England's green and pleasant lands for
her inspiration, its clear from her poetry that she's something of a
Francophile. Two poems in The Remains have French titles and one of them 'Les Sauces, le Ballet, les
Actrices' is, as its name suggests, simply a list of French sauces, ballet
moves and actors. Her passion for all things Gallic aligns her poetic outlook
with a woman who once lay down on Baudelaire's tomb to confirm they were the
same size. Annie Freud and Rosemary Tonks are both highly sensual writers, as
Tonks once declared: 'The main duty of the poet is to excite Ð to send the
senses reeling'. Where this comparison loses ground is the subtlety of Annie
Freud, Rosemary Tonks is a declamatory poet, an exclamation mark is never far
away, Annie Freud is much
quieter, her craft is to paint a picture and to leave the reader space to
admire it.
The Remains is another
confident and competent outing from a late blossoming literary talent. The
ingredients are an eclectic mixture of nouns, verbs and adjectives. Slightly
continental in taste, it goes well with any wine and should be consumed cold.
Don't try to microwave it.
©
Charlie Baylis 2015
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