The Forward Book of Poetry 1997

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I put tabs on the following poems

White City and Sheds both by Charles Boyle

Altas and Collateral Damage both by U A Fanthorpe

New Dog by Mark Doty

Mrs Krikorian by Sharon Olds

My Sad Captains by Thom Gunn

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In this slim collection, it is Considering the Snail that touched me the most.

Hainault, via Newbury Park and other broken tracks by Keith Jarrett

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This collection has the energy that tells you Keith Jarrett is a spoken word poet without reading that on the blurb on the back cover.

It is a slim volume, less than 60 pages with generous white space around the text, and yet the topics it manages to embrace are so wide reaching – it really feels that all human life is here.

I put a tag in Tell me (what you believe) – which is an in your face poem, but one I am tempted to use at Threshold – it has something of Kenda Creasy Dean’s Practising Passion about it.

Having read Selah I have been reaching backwards to Jarrett’s other work, and so I find A Gay Poem, which I tagged in Selah as here in an earlier version. It would seem this is as far back as I will go, as algorithms seem to be giving the limited copies of Jarrett’s earlier work Antique Roadshow worthy prices :-/

Cruel Cruel by Dior J. Stephens

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This is made up of 3 sequences, the first – Once Again – reads as a single poem, the other two perhaps more as distinct but closely related poems.

There is a richness in the lyrical quality of these sequences – the sound of them perhaps even more than the meaning is what engages you.

Take Care of Your Hooves Darling by Laura McKee

published by againstthegrainpoetrypress.wordpress.com

These poems cover a diverse range of topics, reflective of a rounded life.

I put tabs in My son a portrait of a man, mainly for its Dolly Parton reference, and in secondary modern you had perfect skin, for its uncomfortable in its account of the power between the voice of the poet and the one that looks upon them, and in Walls which manages to say so much in what it leaves unsaid.

The Decline of Magic by Michael Hunter

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It might just have been the tiny type but I found this book harder to engage with than I expected. Nevertheless it was interesting and certainly helped me think again about “science” developed.

One of the main myths Hunter exposes is the idea that there has been a linear and inevitable march of progress towards the secular Dawkinist future – it was often the religious not the secular voices that were first to attach “magic” - and we need to remember how late real medical understandings arrived leaving space for all sorts of “cures” to retain legitimacy.

The focus on written sources and on the forum of debate rather that the every day practice is completely valid but at times it was a little dry as Hunter offered comparative readings of texts when accounts of “folk religion/customs” would probably have been more colourful.

I was amused by a quote from Boyle, in the late 1600s, who remarked about “’the great and deplorable Growth of Irreglion’ in his day, and it was London, ‘this libertine City’, that he saw as its focus.” which saws that concern about the metropolitan elite is really nothing new.

I Am Unlearning by Julia Forster

As a child, I always liked it most

when I sat at the centre of the seesaw;

there, you didn’t need to pick a side,

yet somehow, you still got the thrill

of the aching highs and the sudden lows.

I also found it was best to be agnostic

about where I preferred to spend Christmas.

Mt recurrent nightmare was that my parents

were drowning in a river and I had to choose

one of them to swim out to and save.

So, you’ll forgive me if I find it difficult

to say what I’d like for dinner, or if I take

an hour deciding on a film to watch.

Choice is hard for some of us. And anyway,

perhaps my parents were fine in the river,

perhaps it was my job to stay dry.

Published in New Welsh Reader issue 132

Hard Drive by Paul Stephenson

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That I got to double digits with the number of tabs I put on poems in this collection should tell you a lot about the quality and intensity of it.

Writing about the impact of the death of his partner many of the poems are hard hitting – but this is an honest grief, there is an immeasurable depth of loss but also an honesty – so of the sorrow is etched with his partners imperfections.

That this is a story of a gay relationship adds to its importance – we need to tell all the stories – too often “gay lives” are only seen when they are in particular moments and contexts – we are fabulous or we are victims we are given very little space in between – the ordinariness to our lives is often the most radical thing about them.

And given the raw energy of the poems the fact that Paul Stephenson is also skilled at the poets craft with them – with a big mix of form etc – this is not a bundle of emotion that has simply gone splat on the page it has been tended, crafted, gifted into fine works of art.

Nude as Retrospect by Alex Marlow

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This is a punchy little collection of poems, Maybe I’ll Be A Waitress was in featured in the Fourteen Poems Poem of the Week email. I hope that there is more where this came from.

Strange Bedfellows by Ina Park

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We need to talk openly about STDs/STIs and we should be grateful to Ina for this highly readable exploration of them.

The moralistic policing of sex results in STIs being inherently stigmatised, it assumes that if you end up with an STIs it is your “fault” for having too much sex with too many people – and pointing out that you don’t have ‘much’ sex with ‘many’ people to get an STIs doesn’t really help challenge that stigma.

We can focus so much on the STIs that we fall into the trap of seeing the mere absence of STDs/STIs as “health” - but it is not that simple. Ina notes that the World Health Organization “has been discussing and defining the idea [of sexual health] since 1975. They describe sexual health as ‘a state of physical, mental and social well-being in relation to sexuality. It requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination and violence.’” (p298)

How do we create and support a culture of sexual health, which needs to embrace a diverse range of sexual expression and allow room people to make choices that lead to good sex.

And a part of that is perhaps sharing more openly our own sex lives, and our own encounters with STIs – the more we all talk about it the less power society’s shaming will have over people.

For too long I went without getting a sexual health check up – the reasons for this were complex, but had a lot to do with the fear of HIV – despite knowing it was treatable I was trapped in a mindset that couldn’t face finding out. When I did start to getting tested on a regular basis the emotional roller-coaster between the day of the test and the results was intense. This wasn’t helped by the time during the follow up chat with the Sexual Health Advisor he said given the pattern of STIs I had picked up over the previous couple of years it would seem to be a case of when not if I got HIV. Only with access to PREP have I finally been released from that burden of worry.

The way the HIV changed the landscape and attitudes to other STIs is so complex, Ina notes that for many “other STIs didn’t seem to be as big a deal compared to HIV. What was a little syphilis in the grand scheme of things?” (p294) and therefore once HIV is managed, by treatment or treatment as prevention, then the regime of regular testing and occasional treatment for other STIs can become a part of normal life. But this leaves health professionals like Ina nervous about the rise of antibiotic resistant infections and other complications so there is a strong advocacy for condom use within the book which I understand but it does not connect with me personally.

So maybe I don’t agree with everything that Ina Parks says or suggests – but I agree with most of it, and that is not really the point – the real value is opening the conversation, that is the thing that will make the positive change.

What Does Jeremy Think? By Suzanne Heywood

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I sometimes joke about using Yes Minister as a training manual, but I definitely read this book looking for, and finding, the template for a role model of the best of the Civil Service.

That Jeremy Heywood’s career provides a narrative that takes us from Margaret Thatcher to Theresa May illuminates so much of the context of where we are now as a nation – and yet the ever increasingly pace of politics coupled with the rupture of COVID makes yet Theresa May’s time as PM feel a fairly distance memory.

I have a feeling that most biographers are sort of in love with their subjects, how else would you bear to live with them long enough to write a book about them, but clearly Suzanne is unusual being both wife/widow and biographer. Who better to tell us about Jeremy perhaps? She is not shy about sharing the frustrations of being married to a man so totally dedicated to his job that family life seems often to have played second fiddle.

I am also left wondering if Jeremy was neurodiverse – the mix of things he seems to have done so well, and the things she tells us he was pretty useless at could fit a number of ND categories.

This is Jeremy’s account of his career, and at times the way it suggests that every good idea in the last 20+ years came to Jeremy ex nihilo did grate a little.

But overall the message that as Civil Servants we should merely be passive instruments of Ministers’ whims but proactive in formulating the change they have been elected to deliver. We are instruments of democracy when we offer up to Ministers ways of creating the better future they were elected for that they have not yet foreseen – the machine of government is so vast that we should not expect Ministers to know the right levers to pull, or even which levers exist.

It was a book that reminded me why I am proud to be a civil servant.