Differing Opinions


The ButcherÕs Hands
by Catherine Smith
[
60pp, £6.95, Smith/Doorstop Books]

Recent reviews IÕve come across of The ButcherÕs Hands have been far less enthusiastic about the book than The Independent reviewer quoted on the jacket with: ÔEach of these poems is startling and original. They are enigmatic, unpredictable: reach the end of the piece, and you need to re-read it immediately.Õ This is a world away from ÔcompetentÕ, which seems to be the best Alan Dent can say, or William OxleyÕs Ôa volume depressing in every wayÕ and Andrew NeilsonÕs conclusion that the collection Ôleft me coldÕ.

Why such a difference? In general it may be that the national press and the poetry magazines are looking for different things. ÔHer scary, unsettling voice seems unexpected in poetryÕ comments
The Times on the jacket blurb Ð and thatÕs exactly what makes good copy for non-poetry readers, yet that same material is Ômorbid and pathologicalÕ for Oxley. The national press reviews were of a pamphlet-sized collection (which is subsumed in this book). Perhaps a small dose of work which is Ôintense and even at times grotesqueÕ (the jacket blurb again) is novel, whereas a whole bookful wearies?

More particularly, there is agreement about the subject matter that Smith tackles: unsettling / disturbing / weird / loveless / bloody, often violentÉIÕve taken adjectives from both camps here. Smith writes in the voice of an obsessive who is fixated on the bellies of pregnant women, in the voice of an executioner, in that of a werewolf. Imaginative? Or unreal and not especially interesting since their voices are the poetÕs voice, the same voice of the rest of the book, the voice going for the sinister undercurrent at every turn?

We expect to dwell on Ôthe fine musculature of the throatÕ with the executioner or on a neck that Ôtastes of vanilla under my tongueÕ with the werewolf, but I think that we may be already saturated with the violent turn each piece is going to take by the time we come to a poem where it would otherwise be both surprising and effective. Smith writes in the motherÕs voice of a game of ÔMonopolyÕ her son is winning

     Almost bankrupt and recently released from jail,
     she owes her ten year-old
     four hundred quid in rent

and deftly mixes board game and capitalism. I think she just about gets away with the commentary here:

     Éthey could come to some arrangement
     over her arrears. She thinks how

     this is what capitalism does to children,
     Ð brutalises them, makes them worship
     five hundred pound notes, little red boxes,
     encourages them to sniff out the weak,
     and charge them exorbitant rent

The mother watches her sonÕs Ôfingers fatten on his stashÕ, the small domestic moment cut open to reveal a vicious undercurrent. But with so many pieces mining this seam, ÔMonopolyÕ is much less striking than it would be in another context.

The same is true of ÔBreatheÕ. Here is a poem of experience rather than invention, one of a small number of more grounded poems which touch on childbearing/rearing. ÔYou fucking breathe, smug bitch. I breathe enough to last / a lifetime, a lung-time of blue breathÉÕ ItÕs a poem of visceral power, or would be if we hadnÕt already had so much viscera already. You can have too much of a good thing.

I wonder too whether a thread of similarity in the style of writing, not just the approach to the subject, isnÕt what made Alan Dent say that ÔYou wonÕt find anything here that isnÕt replicated in the work of dozens of contemporary poetsÕ. I was surprised that the writing didnÕt surprise me: often I sensed the movement in the poem, particularly the line break, before I got there. There seem to be many occasions when a verb ended the line Ð okay, this gets you some pacey writing when you really need it, but felt formulaic in ÔWondersÕ:

     twenty-seven rescued freaks. Prodded
     by ignorant children, theyÕve proffered
     limbs and faces, caused women to faint.

I can flick though: there are many examples. In fact, thereÕs a lot of it about at the moment. Why donÕt the words of a unit of sense sit on a line together more often than not? So that variations on this are all the more effective, and to a particular purpose?

What these reviews and the jacket blurb havenÕt said is that so much of the violence Smith writes of is directed at women. And hereÕs her strength: she can face it. When her own experience is brought into play as well, she is capable of strong writing. With an increasing range of subjects, ideas and styles as her writing develops, those strong poems will stand out for what they really are.

The ButcherÕs Hands is reviewed by Andrew Neilson in Magma 28, Spring 2004, by William Oxley in Orbis, 128 Spring 2004, and Alan Dent in The Penniless Press, 18 Autumn 2003.


            © Jane Routh 2004