Where Stands A Winged Sentry by Margaret Kennedy

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Writing in the period between the fall of France and the Blitz Kennedy gives a particular view on the Second World War, from that moment when Allied Victory was not just uncertain but unlikely.

She talks about the way BBC news reports mix the news of the war in with other items so that the bad news does not come at you full in the face, until …

“But the day of reckoning came at last.

Ever-increasing gravity. Anybody could understand that. Forty million people gasped and woke up.” (p13)

Comparing UK and USA she reflects that “The explanation, I suppose, lies deep in history. On our side we think of liberty as something which, in theory, we have always had. Our whole progress has been to… build constitutional walls around it which will enable us better to cultivate it. On their side they think of it as something whole and indivisible which was won at one stroke, and which dwells in their Constitution.” (p118) Our laws protect rather than create our liberty.

Slightly in pasting in a discussion of Nanny’s somewhat jingoistic views Kennedy notes that even Nanny “said herself that we must try to get a United States of Europe” (p158) – it is interesting to find this phrase in use in 1940 when tend to think of it as a more recent coinage by those wishing to attack the EU project.

Kennedy, for all of her progressive views writes from a secure position of privilege – when they go down from London she is pleased to be without maids, but still has Nanny with her, and the family take lunch each day in Hotel, this simpler existence is not entirely simple. And some of her views are problematic, down-right offensive, she talks of gypsies in the manner that has got Enid Blyton black-listed by many, and then thinking about potential for Nazi invasion on neutral Ireland in attempt to encircle the UK she is extreme “...we shan’t be one little bit sorry for the Irish. A taste of the Nazis would open their eyes, after all the song and dance they have made about English oppression.” (p101) Like so many writers we have to handle their complete work with some care, and not simply airbrush bits we dislike.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible by Jonathan Goldstein

 Out of print, but buy it from abebooks.co.uk  

These witty retellings of Bible stories help you to look again at what actually is within the text and what is received as an interpretation handed down alongside the text.

Adam and Eve is probably the strongest, maybe because it is perhaps the most familiar tale and so the playfulness resonates most easily, but also perhaps because the Biblical account is slight – there is the most room for the imaginative – both for Goldstein and indeed for “tradition”.

Creating in Crisis Polari Anthology No.1

This collection of prose and poetry is rich, with COVID in the background but shaping the work. 

 

I found Rachael Llewellyn’s Rebecca Left Her Body particularly affecting as Marcus comes to terms with the death of his sister, the pain of loss and the pain of having to face the darkness that lead to someone taking their own life. 

 

My Anxiety Lives as an Acorn in My Stomach by Thomas Stewart is powerful in its personification of anxiety - “A cold, almost silent, whisper. Saying that it will always be there.” and captures the sense when asks...

“Do you ever have that feeling

where everything is really good and therefore

you feel terrified?”

 

Thinking more directly on COVID David Woodhead in Fortunate to Survive “But some of us – in fact, many in my social circle, myself included – have lived thought a pandemic before. In truth, we are living through a pandemic still. HIV/AIDS took hold of our friends and lovers and killed them, brutally, violently. That pandemic changed our identities and our politics as gay men, our relationships and aspirations. The mothers who lost their sons and the men who lost their lovers still bear its consequences, day in, day out.” When treatment has removed the power of HIV to be a death sentence, so I have friends living with HIV not dying from AIDS, and PREP proves effective prevention – a liberation but also with each pill a reminder that the pandemic is contained not eliminated.

What the Living Do by Marie Howe

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This is a collection of deep intensity…

Extract of The Boy

…

What happened in our house taught my brothers how to leave, how to walk

down a sidewalk without looking back,

I was the girl. What happened taught me to follow him, whoever he was.

calling and calling his name.

Extract of The Cold Outside

…

Soon I will die, he said, and then

what everyone has been so afraid of for so long will have finally happened.

and then everyone can rest.

What the Living Do

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.

And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.

It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.

For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those

wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.

Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want

whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,

say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:

I am living. I remember you.

And the most beautifully painful of them all – in a state of grief we don’t understand just like that silly Buddy.

Buddy

Andy sees us to the door, and Buddy is suddenly all over him, leaping
and barking because Andy said: walk. Are you going to walk home? he said.

To me. And Buddy thinks him and now, and he’s wrong. He doesn’t
understand the difference between sign and symbol like we do–the thing

and the word for the thing, how we can talk about something when it’s not
even there, without it actually happening–the way I talk about John.

Andy meant: soon. He meant me. As for Buddy, Andy meant: later. When he
was good and ready, he said. Buddy doesn’t understand. He’s in a state

of agitation and grief, scratching at the door. If one of us said, Andy,
when Andy wasn’t there, that silly Buddy would probably jump up barking

and begin looking for him.

As Far As You’ll Take Me by Phil Stamper

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There is a lot going on in this book, and I am not sure if it all holds together – it is an enjoyable read if perhaps you avoid pushing the narrative too hard – for example Marty suffers from anxiety and yet does all these things with an ease that 17 I certainly wouldn’t have found, also there are some layers of the back story that never get unpacked - like what is the real issue behind Marty’s Mum’s seeming rejection of the UK - these are left hanging in the air and for me this resulted in a lack of a properly rounded sense of the people and events.

Go Went Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck

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Telling this tale through the eyes and voice of Richard, who had lived most of his life in GDR, and overnight seen the Berlin Wall and then GDR itself disappear, shows us, without being bombastic, that borders and nations are inherently fictions – and the decisions about who is allow to cross them therefore arbitrary.

I read this alongside Borders & Belonging by Pádraig Ó Tuama & Glenn Jordan – which explores the Book of Ruth and one of the prayers they include at the back begins

God of bodies,

if it is true that the earth is yours

and all within it,

then yours are the rocks and grasses

on every side

of every border…

The consequences of this for our treatment of asylum seekers, and migrants of all kinds, should be profoundly different from the current attitude of the UK and most other countries.

Richard reflects at one point that “The Africans probably had no idea who Hitler was, but even so: only if they survived Germany now would Hitler truly have lost the war.” (p50) And we can say the same about the UK.

These echoes of Germany’s past give a particular punch – but it is one we should not pretend we can side step.

Seeing an excessive police presence outside the place the refugees are staying, for Richard it “is already clear to him – the newspaper will report on the high cost of this deployment, and this country of bookkeepers will be aghast and blame the objects of the transport for the expense, as used to happen in other periods of German history, with regards to other transports.” (p209) Clearly we also blame the migrants for the costs we create for ourselves because of our lack of hospitality.

“...it occurs to Richard – it’s occurred to him many times now – that all the men he’s gotten to know here (these ‘dead men on holiday’) could just as easily be lying at the bottom of the Mediterranean. And conversely all the Germans who were murdered during the so-called Third Reich still inhabit Germany as ghosts, sometimes he even imagines that all these missing people along with their unborn children and the children of their children are walking beside him on the street, on their way to work or to visit friends, they sit invisibly in the cafes, take walks, go shopping, visit parks and the theater. Go, went, gone. The line dividing ghosts and people has always seemed to him thin, he’s not sure why, maybe because as an infant, he himself come so close to going astray in the mayhem of war and slipping down into the realm of the dead.” (p222)

The happen-stance of life and death, or being born a citizen or born a migrant, are so much the roll of the dice – we need to really on check our sense of entitlement, the congratulations we give ourselves on our essentially undeserved passport.

There are also reflections on Richard’s own grief, and the childless Richard thinking on beyond his own death “The old farmhouse cupboard missing a piece of its crown molding [sic] surely won’t share a household after his death with the cup in which he always makes his Turkish coffee in the afternoon…” (p9) our lives are a collection of meanings, memories, and things pieced together as a unique jigsaw – even if some of the pieces endure they will never be fitted together the same way again.

There are questions about what we actually mean by a “free” society - “Is the only freedom the fall of the Berlin wall brought him the freedom to go places he’s afraid of?” (p25) “One morning, he himself became the object of these tearful welcomes: the East Berliner who’d lived on this street that had been cut in half for twenty-nine years, crossing over on his way to freedom. But he hadn’t been on his way to freedom that morning, he was only trying to get to the University, punctually taking advantage of the S-Bahn station at the western end of his newly opened street. Unemotional and in a hurry, he-d used his elbows to fight his way through this weeping crowd – one of the disappointed liberators shouted an insult at his back – but for the very first time, Richard got to school in under twenty minutes.” (p33)

Richard is no saint, and that is part of the power, it is a slow process of befriending that opens him up, and there is some deep pain in his own life as well as the men that he tries to help. Richard says I realized “that the things I can endure are only just the surface of what I can’t possibly endure.” (p283) It is sometimes in dealing with one trauma that we bury an other more deeper pain.

Pricks in the Tapestry by Jameson Fitzpatrick

 Out of print, but buy it from abebooks.co.uk  

The phrase that came to mind reading this collection was “exhaustingly brilliant” - it is so so good, the intensity, so many of the poems felt like they were giving voice to my own feelings, my own life …

From Scintilla, Star, which seems to speak of taking control of the terms of your exclusion.

…

I found it was better,

if I could not be no one,

to be someone. Small, but

particular. Specified, which was

an apprenticeship for special.

Cold, another word for cool.

The Last Analysis; or, I Woke Up begins “and it was political.” and lists a range of ordinary things, which are, or can be, deemed “political” acts – living an ordinary life as a queer person can become a subversive political act, and that can be tiring…

Short Essay on the Lyric-Conceptual Divide talks about addiction – and it made me cry.

How to Feel Good is a witty look at some of the advice you get for combatting depression, and I especially love the line:

“ I tried exercising

but I liked not exercising too much.”

A Poem for Pulse contains the line

“Love can’t block a bullet

but neither can it be shot down,

and love is, for the most part, what makes us.”

Craigslist Ode reminds me that sex does not have to be “true love” for it not to be shameful, despite so much else that tells us that it is a binary choice.

The Book of Queer Prophets Edited by Ruth Hunt

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Although each contribution is short this gathering is so rich, definitely greater than the sum of the parts, it is so good to hear these voices – not ignoring the pain but not raging with anger.

From Lucy Knight “what if churches didn’t see gay couples as a slightly different ‘version’ of a straight couple, but instead fully celebrated the breath of diversity in people…?” (p155)

This is an awkward reflection about some of the “inclusive” spaces, it is inclusion on their terms not yours, and given how few spaces that manage any kind of inclusion at all we often uncritically grab hold of them, and maybe celebrate them more than is actually healthy.

From Jarel Robinson-Brown “ Perhaps I should have lied. Perhaps I should have cared less about truth, about honesty, about being real. Perhaps God (and the Church) would have honoured my silence...” (P104)

This speaks of the challenge of vocation conversations, the way that somehow it is your fault for mentioning your sexuality rather than the Church’s discrimination that has stopped the process.

From Keith Jarrett “Perhaps it is time to be vocal, to provoke… years ago, silently slipping out of the pews and away, having neither the strength nor self-esteem to advocate for ourselves.” (p215)

This image of those who are missing, who went away from the church because the church had made it clear they were not really welcome – that is not just an LGBT+ issue, it is about race, and disability, and too many other “differences”.

From Jack Guinness “All were welcome. Instead of clear distinct memories, for those early years, I have this warm, fuzzy feeling of chaotic community. … It was only later that I started to think about the Church , with a capital C, as a distinct, faceless institution. For the first ten years of my life, it was indistinguishable from the faces of Floss… Gloria… Fanella… They were the church. All of them. All of us. Together.” (p78)

This image of growing up in a vicarage really spoke to me – it would have been Joan Kay that would have been top of my list of faces

The Forward Book of Poetry 2009

 Out of print, but buy it from abebooks.co.uk   

I put tabs on the following poems

Boy on the Bus by Allison McVety

Handbag Thief by Kathryn Simmonds

Eat Me by Patience Agbabi

The Widower’s Button by Pat Borthwick

Peeling by Angela Cleland

Replicas by Stephen Dunn

Please Hold by Ciaran O’Driscoll

Housewife by Angela Readman

Origin of Species by Michael Symmons Roberts

Safe Home by Micheál McCann

 

The honesty of this small collection, matter of fact yet beautifully crafted images, is really good.

A shorter life by Alan Jenkins

 Out of print, but buy it from abebooks.co.uk 

This collection was on Forward Prize short list, and the complexities of the relationship between Alan and his Mother shared within it are compelling.

LAUNDERETTE: HER LAST NIGHTDRESS

A cotton one with a few flowers and a bit of lace

At the neck, her name-tag stitched inside, it falls

From my bag of socks and shirts and smalls

And looks so innocent, so out of place

I see her again, hot and flustered in the ward

We took her to, and helpless, late at night

When even she admitted ‘something wasn’t right’

And I left her waving, and she sort of smiled

To say I mustn’t worry, must get on,

Get back, to sleep, to work, to my important life.

Next day, I went to M&S, I bought

The nightdress she had asked for as an afterthought

And took it in to her, and she put it on

And loved it – no more the sad, unreconciled,

Bewildered woman I had fought, no more

My father’s tetchy, disappointed wife:

Girlish almost. So it was what she wore

Until one day I walked in and found her lying

In a hospital gown, so starched and plain

and straitlaced, with strings that needed tying

While this pretty one had gone into her drawer -

The something that was wrong had made a stain,

A stench I took away with me somehow

To wash, and forgot about till now

I stand here in the warm soap-smelling air

But can’t remember why, and people stare.

Magdalene by Marie Howe

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Marie embodies Mary Magdalene in these poems, responding to the constraints that historical imaginations have placed around her, and showing us instead a lively and rounded person.

I have tagged so many of the poems, I can’t retype all of those...

On Men, Their Bodies is a clever poem, reducing the men to “One penis was...” in a way that so often society reduces women.

Calvary

Someone hanging clothes on a line between buildings,

someone shaking out a rug from an open window

might have heard hammering, one or two blocks away

and thought little of nothing of it.

What the Silence Says

I know that you think you already know but -

Wait

Longer than that.

Even longer than that.

The House of Thirst, Focus on LGBTQ+ Poetry – Modern Poetry in Translation

 

A great collection, two of the poems

Homeless by Azita Ghahreman

In my fist I take a handful of earth.

In a corner of my soul,

lies a landscape of lonely palm trees,

where the rain never stops falling

and the moon hangs upside down.

Is Home still a place

in the atlas,

green borders and turquoise veins?

When the wind has taken my house

my lands

my horse

my light,

when I had to flee barefoot, when I lost even the roof over my head,

my husband in a dark valley,

my sons entrusted

one to the Tigris,

the other to the Euphrates,

where, then, is Home?

Other than in the corner of my memory

in that ruined halo which – clapped out, collapsing, quiet

from those twisting, turning roads – you carry

half in your heart

half on your back.

Freedom by Azita Ghahreman

Even when you are no longer here

you sit there, opposite me,

the light burning beside you.

So how did those big white sails

become little paper handkerchiefs,

or change into bruised waterlilies?

Time hatched as a tiny yellow ant

and nibbled away at my fingers.

Oh, the scent of your tender young blush,

the colour of the raspberries

you picked, red, a searing red

and the books the fire consumed -

are ashes scatter to the wind.

Even when you are no longer here

you stand there, opposite us,

you hold up a light in the darkness,

and you call us by our names.

The Glass Closet by John Browne

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John Browne shares how the experience of being closeted and eventually forced “out” shaped his career, and his personal life – speaks honestly about the choices, which probably at the time of his early career were valid compromises, while pointing to the changed and changing world we now live in.

To compromise, yourself or your employees, is now simply self-defeating professionally and personally. But that does not make it easy, and particular in globalised business context when the openness of “western” societies is not matched everywhere – therefore businesses need to be proactive in supporting employees be their authentic selves.

Death Magazine by Matthew Haigh

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Matthew Haigh prefaces his collection with this quote from J. G. Ballard “How do we make sense of this ceaseless flow of advertising and publicity, news and entertainment, where presidential campaigns and moon voyages are presented in terms indistinguishable from the launch of a new candy bar or deodorant?”

This poem speaks powerful of a grief that is awkward, so much powerfully unsaid...

What Will Your Sims Do Now?

Like a good nephew, I save your computer

from the skip’s slew of lifelong wreckage,

lug its black lake-weight back to my room

even thought the tower is now a humming grave.

Inside still live the pixel kids

you abandoned to a timeless

paradise, still frolicking poolside,

spurting gibberish, clownish, in a summer

that will never end. They know nothing

of the absent god act you’ve pulled, these tiny

Adams and Eves in cherry-print kaftans.

I feed and clothe and shower them, these strange

skin cells you’ve shed in your swift exit,

my head haloed by the screen’s heaven-

blue, the way yours must have been as you

crafted your craved reflection.

Here is the candy-haired

mohawk girl modelled on your ideal.

I push her around her little kitchen,

fingers lingering on the keys that yours

last touched. Her chip pan has caught fire.

The girl’s face bursts open with tears.

Scorched walls. Her kitchen is

ruined. I can’t console her.

Footnotes by Peter Fiennes

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Having started out with a strong chapter on the contested legacy of Enid Blyton I ran out of steam on the journey around Britain somewhere in Mid-Wales.

Maybe it is just that I have too many other books on the “to read” pile in my room (or more correctly 4 separate piles, which are currently teetering so Health & Safety suggests a fifth should be in born…).