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I love Ian Seed's poetry. His strange dreamy 'narratives'
which are also non-narrative have a vague yet crystal hard precision which is
not easy to encapsulate or describe. Take this extract from 'Phantom Limbs - After
Maurice Merleau-Ponty'- , where the
phenomenological preoccupations of the philosopher tie in with the teasing
enticements of the poet:
If we break a
stone, we can feel its pieces, but once
a picture is
torn, it no longer exists. Yet if I look
or remember
long enough, a constellation emerges,
pregnant with
texture. É.
(from
'Phantom Limbs')
You think about those phrases, imagine them visually and in terms of their
ideas, then move on to the next puzzling statement, embracing an overall
lightness of touch which is so central to Seed's writing. His shifts from the
abstract to the concrete, his flitting between world and idea, language and
image, are superbly constructed and so pleasurable to read, ponder,
experience and luxuriate in. Yet there's often a melancholy undertone,
hinting at the sinister, which splices an evasive non-descriptive quality
with a taut lyricism, which combines late surrealism with something more
contemporary:
The
path
loses itself
in the trees. Faces
fade, so that
in the end you have to
invent new
ones, made up
of bits and
pieces of those you knew
and loved, or
couldn't, before.
(from
'Absences')
There's an element of game-playing about this writing which is constantly
puzzling and elusive, always implying a 'somewhere else', a location or a state
beyond that which is being
'described' and yet this poetry is as material and of the 'here and now' as
it could possibly be. I suspect there is also a degree of autobiography going
on here, a flash of memory - 'Why, lad, are you here?' (from 'Vein') which
is embraced in a general onflow of lyrical exploration which is both specific
to
the poem and has a more 'universal' communicative effect which speaks to a
wider audience, even though we will all take away a somewhat different
experience from our reading.
Seed also has a knack for commenting on his own thought-processes which is so
smoothly achieved that it feels perfectly appropriate to his method, despite
the fact that he's anything but a 'naturalistic' writer:
In an age of
oval-shaped romance pictures,
dumb letters
as downloads, should we scrap it all
for
'authentic' writing, like a bloody cleft
washed by the
waves, which carry torn up
messages away
in the fringe of their flood?
(from
'Plot')
The direct address of 'should we scrap it all' has a disarming charm, which
implies a sense of being 'in the know' and qualifies the darker and more
energetic imagery which follows. What are these 'oval-shaped romance
pictures'? - a suggestion of fading sepia prints, perhaps? your guess is as
good as mine - but the poem's grappling with the process of writing anything
'original' is humorous and self-deprecating as well as enabling the use of a
somewhat lurid imagery which becomes appropriate and acceptable. This is
clever writing, playful and ever open to possibility but it's also the
genuine article which comes in a lovely pocket size edition, handy for use
when travelling light, which is what I think Ian Seed does best!
© Steve Spence 2015
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