|
|
Alasdair Paterson is a relatively new name to me though he
seems to have something of an impressive back-catalogue, which could surely
do with being re-promoted! A job for an enterprising publisher, one would
have thought. This new collection, his first for some twenty years, is
loosely themed around the notion of 'empire', as the title would suggest, but
is as much to do with the way 'we' utilise language in order to empower,
control, rationalise and mediate the world and the mess this often leads to.
I was immediately struck by the cover design, purely typographic but neatly
balanced in terms of type-size and colour, slightly discordant, with the word
'empires' filled in with a pattern which is part-Pollack, part Schwitters and
part composed of 'the blood dripping from the palace walls'.
If the 'empire' of the title is at once the empire of the self and the
individual attempt at self-regulation, as well as being Empire with a capital
E, suggesting the long history of human invasion and rule - with all the
implications of colonialism (benign or otherwise!) this suggests, then Paterson's somewhat gloomy prognosis
is also one filled with fun, witty invention and a delight in language that
simply can't be controlled, even where the author is clearly battling to
retain some sort of order amid chaos.
As a librarian by profession, Paterson is clearly interested in notions of
classification and of giving definitions, which both limit and clarify, by
such definition, yet he's also a great fan of Luis Borges, which suggests a
creatively anarchic response to the whole business. In on nomenclature, for example, we get this:
what I've
learned I think is
how everything
under language
slips and
slides and bites
and how in
the end
language
makes its excuses
and leaves
for the beach
where every
wave is new and gone
It's pointless trying to paraphrase such metaphors and any attempt to replicate
the 'meaning' is reductive and likely to be less lively than 'the original'
but we get the gist, all the same, which is surely one of the functions of
language! The last two lines,
however, are elegant and richly suggestive.
Some of the shorter poems provide such brilliant encapsulations of a 'world
view' that it's almost easier to quote in full to give the prospective reader
a flavour of the whole:
following
inundation infestation invasion
measure
countermeasure and scorched earth
crops
officially pitiful and stores covertly emptied
here is an
announcement from the ministry
let them eat
roots
thank you
here is an
announcement from the military
I wouldn't
dig
just there
if I were you
(on civil war)
Leaving aside the possible allusion to Mary Antoinette, the absurd precision
of this poem is wonderful, combining the minimalist news-report approach that
Adrian Mitchell could be so good at, with a more humorous yet
oh-so-devastating wit.
on taxonomy continues to mock
our attempts at regulation and control by giving a poetical list of the
contents of a feast - 'remember/let the dishes come/in their proper order' -
revelling in the displacement of 'fish, flesh, fowl and vegetable' and the
rituals involved in their preparation as food, hinting at the accumulated
wealth implied by such preparation and the grandeur and spectacle of the
feast. This is a ravishing sight, filled with hierarchy and 'controlled
excess' yet the final lines undermine the whole caboodle in fine comic turn:
'now/unleash the forked animal.'
Some of the poems appear to have been written with performance in mind and
have a slightly manic quality to them, such as on the library, where we get a series of improvised similes:
it shone like the wicked queen's
smile
it shone like
the necklace left in the laurel
it shone like
the ring spilled in the reeds
it shone like
a god's pursuit sandals
it shone like
an autumn arboretum
it shone like
a pirate's night sweats
was one I particularly relished. I really enjoy this
mad-escapade-type-of-poem and only wish they would become madder, something I
think I may have said about Jeremy Over's work a while ago. Nevertheless, I
loved this one. on verbs
employs a similar sort of process in its early stage - 'we strung up the
gaolers/but we hung onto the keys', for example - but slips into something
more grammatically complex and suggestively ominous before the conclusion:
we have not
learned their language yet
we are
learning their language now
our spies are
almost fluent now
they have
been writing almost secret reports
they report
that we have changed the world
they beg to
inform us that we are changing with the world.
This reminds me of the exploratory nature of Giles Goodland's poetry, where
the reader is forever being pushed to challenge him/herself in following the
line between abstraction and 'realism', where the play between language and
world is forever stimulating and rewarding, even irritating, at times, but
in a very positive way, in the sense perhaps that the grain of sand is what
forces the oyster to produce the pearl. How's that for a glorious cliche of
a
metaphor, grounded in 'reality'. I loved this book and look forward to
reading more of Paterson's work when a Collected or substantial Selected
comes out!
© Steve Spence
2010
|