|
|
This is a collaboration between two of this country's most
prolific and energetic poets, Reed, now in his mid-to late sixties, I'd
guess, while McCabe, still in his thirties, is a librarian at the South Bank
Poetry Library. Both writers have published extensively, both are at odds
with 'the mainstream' of British poetry (a way of saying that the mainstream
has failed to catch up) and with the status quo of political and cultural
life which prevails in these islands.
Their approach is more-or-less psycho-geographical and their location is
London, its geography and history, a mixing of past and present, an immediate
presentation of the here-and-now, telescoped through a critique of received
historical traditions yet fused with a skewed erudition and an angry response
to the aftermath of the war in Iraq. There's a short introduction by Jeremy
Reed and the first poem, by McCabe, is followed by one by Reed. This
juxtaposition is followed throughout the collection. All of the poems appear
to have been produced during a four-month period in 2011 and a follow-up
sequence is envisaged.
Insensitive as a mortuary
fridge,
a jackal's
asymmetrically
psychopathic grin
like killing's chutzpah,
meltdown's fun
people like stuck eggs to
a pan
fried by depleted uranium
under a radioactive
desert sun
neon-red as a traffic
light.
Blair's the
hipster-suited super-killer
the cool czar monetising
war
into personalised futures
capital.
The burnt, the mutilated
don't move now,
nor bacon-rashered Iraq
amputees.
......
(from
'The Right Hon. Jackal Blair' by Jeremy Reed)
Reed's mixing of relish and dark testament has rarely been so evident, almost
incongruous, but it holds together and is most effective when he melds past
with present, as in 'Norton Folgate' where Dick Turpin's 'bandit dude'
embraces a murderous outsider glamour which is the other side of legal
mayhem, an uneasy contrast which pitches the gangster against the politician
and the banker. There's a Brechtian concern with thuggery here which appears
to have conflicting and complex sources. As an essay on late capitalism, it's
a sobering text, even as its jaunty, aesthetic despoilation provides thrills
and spills:
Dick stick-up Turpin's
parish, bandit dude,
no plastic, only bling
and flash,
a leather wristlock
grabbing cash,
a gun snouting the
carotid's
blipping quasar, he'd
strip them nude
if they resisted force. .......
His dealing room's his
killing field;
spread-betting while
thunder slams in
as fizzy atmospheric
dialect,
a black slash over Spital
Square,
breaking that moment into
violent rain.
(from 'Norton Folgate')
In 'Execution Dock' Chris McCabe combines grim humour - 'de-vowelled pirates
at Execution Dock' - by way of an exploration of the gallows at the side of
the Thames:
his gibbeted corpse
cindering for twenty years
by the river in an iron
cage
evoking a harsh historical pageant - 'this is no joke' - which is juxtaposed
with an up-to-the minute commentary on the cost of renting property in the
capital:
CINNIBAR WHARF 695 PER
WEEK
TOWER BRIDGE WHARF 495
PER WEEK
HALCYON WHARF 500 PER
WEEK
(from
'Execution Dock')
While this is in some way related to Conrad's narrator in 'Heart of
Darkness', reminiscing about the capital's dark yet glamorous-sounding past
(ironic in relation to the journey's end), there's a more fractured, abstract
aspect to McCabe's poetry, which manages to combine a delicious playfulness
with a sharp, scrutinising gaze. Each writer has a different approach, Reed's
dark gothic glam compared to McCabe's
sharper, more descriptive yet skewed
intelligence and this produces a rich mix, a fruitful contrast which
pulls the reader in.
Reed's 'Death Tango' appears to hint at both Paul Celan and a more brash,
poppy, visceral lyricism which also suggests song:
Jeremy, poetry's your
death tango
cellular addiction
(dopamine receptors)
the moment turns on
language that the street deletes
you'll
die wearing a black highwayman's coat
a repro, pills to OD as a
last saliva tango
it's you
Jeremy who
watcha gonna do
do baby blue
Chatterton rubs shoulders with Pete Doherty and William Blake, psychedelic
blues with punk, located variously in Holborn, Soho and Whitechapel, a mix of
celebration and edgy, streetwise poetry.
In 'The Chelsea of Wilde & Thatcher' McCabe quotes from 'The Ballad of
Reading Gaol' in a breathlessly delivered clash between deviant culture and
stockbroker money:
Bladder flicks a blade in
consciousness. I size up
the Lady's baize-green door. The coward does it with
a kiss, the brave man with a sword. Don't fancy either.
Put back my cock. No milk-snatcher's worth your piss.
David Caddy has called this work '(a) wide-eyed, X-rayed Cubist vision of
London' and I know what he means. This is an attempt to 'take it all in', to
embrace different perspectives and to encompass movement and shift, to create
out of complexity and multiplicity a sort of 'cobbled together' overview
which makes sense of the madness. This book is both a celebration and a dark
critique, appropriate for the dark times we inhabit. Intense and
uncompromising and I'm already looking forward to reading Part Two!
Steve Spence
2013
|