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Added to the Mix
A Haunting, Nathan Thompson (Grafton
Street Irregulars)
Love / All That / & OK,
Emily Critchley (Penned in the Margins)
Icarus Was Right, Christopher
Brownsword (Shearsman)
Of Whales, Anthony Caleshu
(Salt)
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Nathan Thompson is upfront about his procedures in this
collection of twenty-six sonnets and in that sense is in a long tradition of
modernist poetics. It's no coincidence that there are twenty-six letters in
the alphabet, and each of these poems leaves out the appropriate letter,
though as Thompson also indicates in a brief introductory note, these rules
do not necessarily apply to the titles. The fact that the sonnet form itself
- whether the rules are strictly applied or not - has survived so long and
was initially developed as a form of intellectual game, highlights the artificial nature of language and also an essentially playful
aspect which could appear to be at odds with, and subversive of, its
functional mode. What is astonishing though, in Thompson's exemplary poetry,
is the way in which the foregrounding of aesthetic method in no way
diminishes its emotional impact.
These poems are patched together in bite-size phrases, individual,
self-enclosed lines - which nevertheless appear to cohere semantically due to
a judicious use of conjunctions - and near-sentences, which may run over
several lines. There is a lack of punctuation and capital letters at the
beginning of each poem which puts the emphasis firmly on the musical and
sonic aspects of the writing, allied to a desire on behalf of the reader
(this reader, at least!) to make connections between apparent disjunctions
and discontinuities. There is nevertheless a quite smooth - not seamless -
sense of ongoing musicality, which is at once soothing and slightly
provocative; 'provocative' in the sense that the regular syntax implies
semantic content. This poetry is not sonically abrupt or intentionally
abrasive yet the energy of the writing seems to come primarily from the
tension between its form and content.
The actual material of the compositions, its 'stuff', appears to originate
from a variety of places and you can never be sure how much of the writing is
taken from 'pre-existing' sources. I like the open-ended ambiguity of this,
the fact that some of these phrases or 'sound-bite' lyrics may or may not be
the poet's own daydreams or reported echoes of echoes from elsewhere.
Certainly there is a richness, a resonance in Thompson's lyric cadences,
which at times come from 'reported speech', conversational titbits or high-art
lyric references, of which there are certainly plenty. In 'x' for
example, we get: 'the room filled with suddenly and passing', which seems to
me to echo MacNeice's 'Snow', while in 'why and wherefore' the opening lines
encapsulate a centuries-long history of literary (not to say theological and
scientific) endeavour in a manner which is almost throwaway:
to begin
again shall I
compare
an apple and
a rose so simple as
to be
affected
neurological
firings below
the head membranes
a web of
construction I
tremble at
the touch of
rough knives on white china
pricked
sounds of the Marie Celeste
(from 'why and wherefore')
Are we talking creation myths here, or Gertrude Stein, or simply the writing
of the poem? All three, perhaps. This casual referencing across time (and
space!) implies the speed and 'spontaneity' of thought processes yet is
questioning and aesthetically pleasing at the same time. I'm thinking Robert
Creeley and Tom Raworth here, quite a trick to pull off. I thoroughly enjoyed
reading these poems and hope you do too.
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Although Emily Critchley has previously published a number
of chapbooks this cracking collection - Love / All That / & OK - appears to be the first full compilation of her
poetry. While her background is in academia - she completed a PHD at
Cambridge in American women's experimental writing and philosophy - her work
seems to have incorporated influences from popular culture and from a
more-streetwise feminist critique. Certainly there is a critical faculty in
her poetry, which is combative, intellectual and probing but this seems
tempered by an upbeat and more popular sense of engagement, which makes her
unusual and interesting. I'm thinking John James here and despite the
gender/generation difference it's good to see the barriers between 'town and
gown' can still be transcended, hopefully in this case, leading to a genuine
form of public-poetry, which can embrace both pleasure and critique without
being either chic posturing or a sell-out to the market, such as it exists
within poetry publishing!
The thing I most enjoy about Critchley's poetry is the way in which she
manages to suggest an ongoing sense of 'self-dialogue' within her writing.
Whether she's talking about love (and as the title suggests, there is a lot
of material about relationships) or politics or art or academic work, there's
always an inner-dialogue going on, a self-assertiveness questioned in the
light of a relationship to the 'public sphere'. This is enhanced by the
euphony of these poems, a sense of conversational flow, which the Americans
generally seem to manage much better than us 'Brits' though I'm thinking of
Lisa Robertson here, and she's a Canadian. Perhaps the best example of this
feature is in the poem 'When I Say I Believe Women' from which this is an
extract:
Whenever I
write you it blends and morphs
into
so many
others. That's what comes from being
informal I
guess. Or not cool. Or erotic. When
I get respite
from absence, when I think about
SPACE -
annihilating all that's madeÉ I don't
know about
presence (metaphysically), I never
felt any. É..
When
I say I believe women & men read
&
write
differently I mean that women & men
read &
write pretty differently. Whether this is
biologically
'essential' or just straightforward
like when you
left the toaster burning or
because women
have a subordinated
relationship
to power in their guts I don't
know. Is this
clear enough for you to follow. I
don't
know. É
In' Honeymoon After Tikrit', there's a more rhythmically expressive sense
of purpose, playing with repetition and possibly the popular song lyric:
Won't you
clip my wings & post them home, won't you melt my
ways, then
go out & buy yourself a telephone? Won't you live
with me
& be my love,
&
won't you harvest me & all my pleasures prove?
Won't you do
all this, & more, for me,
Won't you,
darling?
Her mixing of the high literary with the colloquial is also very
entertaining, especially when performed live and Emily Critchley is a very
fine live reader. Don't miss her if you get the opportunity.
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The cover of Christopher Brownsword's Icarus Was Right features an incongruously calm and lush
photographic illustration of the said Icarus, either reaching for the sun or
possibly falling, just at the moment after the wax has melted and his descent
begins - it's hard to be sure. He seems to be clasping a wing and displays an
almost ecstatic facial gesture, eyes closed and right arm outstretched
vertically. The background texture has the feel of a tapestry in blues,
greens and pinks and there are dark blue birds in the top-hand corner of the
picture. The book's title is taken from a 'one-off Dada journal of the same name' and as George Bataille
features in the end-notes and seems to 'underwrite' the themes and
preoccupations of Brownsword's
work, it's fair to assume that the illustration also refers to his early
essay on Picasso, The rotten
sun, a critique of the limits of
enlightenment thinking which revolves around the theme of Icarus.
The book is split into three sections, each titled and each prefaced with
what I take to be a sound/visual poem, centred on the page in capital
letters. These are too minimalist to be compared to Bob Cobbing but they seem
to add to the overall theatrical and ritual resonance of the text, which
appears to be an important aspect of this impressive and somewhat disturbing
collection. Many of the titles of the poems originate from other texts,
including works by Alesteir Crowley, H.P. Lovecraft, Jean Genet, J.G.
Ballard, William Burroughs, Clive Barker and A.C. Swinburne, which gives the
reader some indication of Brownsword's areas of investigation. So we have an
interest in the occult, in magic and in ritual, in dystopia, in surrealism,
the visceral and in the extremities of horror and nightmare visions. These
preoccupations are allied to a modernist poetics which includes, I'm pretty
sure, elements of the cut-up and montage - though these are finely-tuned -
with a reduced yet slightly skewed syntax which creates an overall distancing
effect and yet adds to the dark ceremony
and power of the work. This isn't late symbolism though, as the techniques
are up-front and naked, sceptical perhaps. I'm thinking here of A.C. Evans
and perhaps early Andrew Jordan as reference points:
Bandaged out
that's how these things are done
keep knives
in back
of throats
for
unit per capita. Wax
lymph stream,
brine run slowly
through the
column
(drawn by
blotting paper by capillaries). Tallow
on the quick
assemblage; one hand wash
flame
pulled
down
on flap of skin, washed timid
like gristle
(from
'Quadrant of Pythonesses')
Of course there is a playful aspect to this writing and it's the way that
Brownsword manages to 'texture' his various vocabularies into an overall
sense of organised chaos that makes these poems so interesting to engage
with. Some poets working within a framework of experimental techniques (I'll
mention no names) simply bore the pants off me because their work appears to
offer little in the way of fun or pleasure for the reader. Half the enjoyment
to be gained from reading a decent poem comes from whatever the reader is
able to bring to the process so it's a two-way thing and I guess the material
I most enjoy these days is that which enables me to get lost in the work and
find my own way into producing its 'meaning'. I don't know what this hidden
quality is but Christopher Brownsword (is this a pen name, I wonder?) has it
for sure, even allowing for his preoccupation with 'dark materials'. Try
reading these poems fast, working with the line breaks and listening for
their sounds and resonance.
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Of Whales, Anthony
Caleshu's most recent poetry collection, is a story of one man's obsession,
with Herman Melville, for certain - Moby Dick was J.G. Ballard's favourite novel and this
massive tome has an abundance of contemporary admirers - but perhaps also
with the sea and the idea of THE SEA, and with the idea of storytelling and
the structuring of fiction. Caleshu uses quotations from Melville and others
to preface many of these poems, epistles and prose pieces, a device which
Melville himself used to create a sense of the multifarious nature of his
subject, an epic topic, a quest in every sense. He writes his way into the
narrative by making himself a subject in the poems and as a narrator telling
the story of the whale to his young son. This is one of those books you can
read through at a sitting then come back and dip in again at random, so
perhaps the best way for me to express my sense of pleasure is to do just
that:
Men in our family sail for the same
reason men in others flyÉ
until there
is no land in sightÉ.
until the way home is
unknown but
to the seabirds who scavenge their scraps. If one
day you
manage to catch a seabird and threaten to eat it for
lunch, I can
tell you now it will not talk.
('Lunch', from 'What makes thee want to go a whaling, eh?')
It's that idea of the mystery of the sea and the life that exists therein
which fascinates us and the further notion that one way of dealing with this
mythic subject - even given our present state of information - is to build
our own stories and areas of
knowledge which can be added to the mix:
I sailed with
thee along the Cornish coast last voyage and,
carefree as I
am, you taught me how to tie a rope.
The whales we
followed were white waves
breaking over
hues of blue.
(from 'First Voyage')
This is both a personal history and a more general story, an experience
shared by many and encapsulated here in crisply lyrical exactness. This book
is filled with information, with experience, with storytelling and with
anecdote. It's a triumphant celebration of a subject, which is at once
mythical and vast and yet as real and 'earthy' (sea-bound would be a better
phrase!) as it is possible to be. The way Caleshu works around his subject is
a just tribute to both Melville and to the act of storytelling yet the
concluding line in his final poem - 'Still Song' - has humility as well as
pathos:
We remind
ourselves that it is just a book: even if it tells the
story of our lives.
Wonderful stuff.
© Steve Spence 2011
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