Saturday, 4 June 2022

Moly by Thom Gunn

buy it from abebooks.co.uk   


When Andre Bagoo was on Fourteen Poems they shared Moly as their favourite poem so this was the next stop on my way through Thom Gunn’s works.


I tagged


Apartment Cats – I especially liked the line “… Now, more awake, they re-enact Ben Hur / Along the corridor, / Wheel, gallop; as they do, ...”


The Discovery of the Pacific – which somehow I read as if it was Adam & Eve reaching the Ocean.

A Better Life by Randall Mann

Buy it from Abe Books  


Another joy of a collection from Randall Mann


One of the poems


RSVP


The scribbled Bible verse in lieu of tip;

the table talk that grins and lays the blame;

the rubber on the bed, its little rip.

The numbers in your phone without a name.


I would also highlight Beginning & Ending with A Line by Michelle Boisseau which has 6 stanzas which mirror each other and an example of Randall’s technical crafting of their work – it is a real joy to see these poetic tools used by such skilled hands (as much as the content – which is of course also brilliant).

The Actual by Inua Ellams

Buy it from Bookshop.org and support local booksellers    


I tagged…

“Fuck / Border Guards”, tells of the scandal of border policies


“Fuck / Boys”, which concludes “… His heart if gnarled knuckle now / but holds a spot of light / thin as spiritskin / in which the boy he was and the man he could have been / whisper / in hushed starlight / in dimmed symphonies / of other ways of being”


“Fuck / Nigeria”, which begins “You are Nigerian until they massacre your elders...” for which “Nigerian” could sadly be substituted for almost any nation as few have a history without some history of violently ejecting minority members of themselves.

Clay by Gladys Mary Coles

Buy it from Abe Books  


I added this to wish list back in 2011 and got it this Christmas – the interval meaning I came to it with no expectations.


Although the blurb on the back calls Matthew a “close friend” of William it is absolutely clear that they are lovers.


William’s sister-in-law Elizabeth acknowledges this telling him “Remember, the best way to hold a bird is with an open hand. Give Matt that freedom. He’ll love you the more for it.” (p178)


World War One creates a context in which masculinity is celebrated in a very narrow expression – as poet and composer neither William nor Matthew fit that expression despite their time in the trenches. As the novel ends the focus moves to brother Jack, who returns from the trenches even more of a broken personality that when he went – treating Elizabeth with emotional and physical cruelty – conforming but deeply trapped by masculinity’s toxicity.


The novel also explores William’s Welshness – at one point when they get news that the Eisteddfod will be held in Birkenhead his mother calls him Gwilym “He laughed, delighted at Mam’s delight and her rare use of his Welsh name.” (p183) – the Eisteddfod coming to them a validation of their ongoing inclusion within the Welsh nation.

After the Sun by Jonas Eika

Buy it from Bookshop.org and support local booksellers  


These are uncomfortable stories – dystopian? - in different ways they deal with the disintegration of identity and the cruelty that we inflict on each other.


There is a slide away from reality, a touch of sci-fi, that moves the frame just a touch from the familiar that allows Jonas to bring into vision power plays that generally go unseen.


The writing is clever and captures you completely in the worlds that have been created – the pain is felt viscerally.

You Will Get Through This Night by Daniel Howell

Buy it from Bookshop.org and support local booksellers  


The advice offered here is a fairly standard set of responses to managing mental health and well being, but it is a matter of fact and accessible presentation.


This would be a book to have read on a good day in order to be able to turn to it on a bad day to give you some step by step actions to take – which may be kind of obvious on the good days, but escape you when you actually need them most.


I found this particularly stuck with me “Through my journeys of self-understanding, I’ve come to recognise myself as an incredibly talented saboteur, who can reliably have the most unhelpful reaction to any given situation. Most of my emotional responses to situations stem from attitudes I developed from a young age, to generally feel ashamed, tolerate abuse, and fail to assert my needs… there’s a lot of baggage trying to pull me down – it’s something I have to keep in check constantly… Simply by starting to think about your own relationship with your mind, you will immediately have that small bit of perspective that can make a difference.”

It never Rains by Roger McGough

Buy it from Bookshop.org and support local booksellers  


A Christmas gift from Ann Lewin.


From Rhyming Sausages


“(iii)

Sausages though tasty

Are difficult to rhyme

So I seldom eat them.”


Multi-Storey Car Park


If multi-storey car parks could talk

What stories they could tell

About cars, petrol and parking

But they can’t, which is just as well.


Ache by Scarlett Ward

 

Buy it from Bookshop.org and support local booksellers  


I tagged Sunflower, I can’t help myself, and To ache it to – but the collection as a whole has a sadness, a wrestling with endurance of pain – that to go on, in the pain and sorrow, is to how we get through life, you are not cured from depression but at times live more successfully with it – from Sunflower “There is something / to be celebrated … / when, against all the odds, you bloomed, / and I didn’t kill myself.”


Plus from poems at the back from others Sallyanne Rock’s On the bypass and Rebecca Lockwood’s Supper – the final stanza of which is:

“…

And from all of this

All I have learnt

Is how lucky you are

If the only time

You feel lonely

Is when you are

Alone.”

Physical by Andrew McMillan

Buy it from Bookshop.org and support local booksellers  


I had brought Andrew’s collection Pandemonium because of pill-box which was included in 2022 Forward Collection, and then he was featured in Fourteen Poems, and so I decided I should start at the beginning with this debut collection.


As a prize-winner these are high quality poems – the consistency of the work is really amazing.


I tagged Jacob with the Angel, which really opens up a familiar story, giving it a roundness and life that those mythical parts of the Bible sometimes lack, and Finally, which processes loss – the final stanza “that it hasn’t rained / but the birds are pretending that it has / so they can sing.” speaks of something about how life going on is not a denial of the loss, it is simply survival.

Soaring with Clipped Wings By Hope and Home

 From www.storiesofhome.org.uk



Written collectively by people from different countries and cultures this is an excellent collection – the poems have real poetic merit, and are not merely worthy “issue-based” workshopped pieces.


It contains sorrow, but it is dominated by hope and a joy in a future that is getting better.


Many of the poems speak for all those at margins of society, not just those with experience of the asylum “system”.

You of a Better Future by Graham Martin

From www.campbooks.biz


Graham pairs their reflections with extracts from Hansard debates ahead of the adoption of Section 28.


Those extracts are horrid, they feel like they come from a different era, expect that the dodgy arguments that justified Section 28 have been refreshed and are being redeployed in the current attacks on Trans rights – it feels depressingly all to contemporary.


The links between Section 28 and the baggage of shame that so many Gay men of my age carry is not really a new revelation – but it is cathartic to have it articulated powerfully, and in that powerful explanation some of the shame’s toxic power is reduced – knowing the mind-games that were played on you creates the possibility of moving beyond them.

Sugar Water by Brad Beau Cohen

Buy it from Abe Books  


In these poems the love and lust are spoken which give a visibility that is welcome – and there are echoes of Randall Mann in that.