The Forward Book of Poetry 2011

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I put tabs on the following poems

Miracle by Seamus Heaney

Night Drive by Lydia Fulleylove

Cockle Picker by Rachael Hegarty

Manatomy by James McDermott

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This collection is excellent – James provides such an authentic voice to the experience of being a gay man in our culture – the ways that toxic masculinity traps us, locking down the range of expression that is allowed, forcing you if you what to be different to do so irrevocably.

I share 2 poems, but I could probably copy out the whole book...

I was raised on James Bond films

I was raised on James Bond films.

Connery taught me

men drink a lot;

men don’t cry;

men have lots of sex;

men fight;

men slap women on the arse.

I was raised on James Bond films.

Lazenby taugth me

men get married;

men don’t cry;

men have their voices dubbed;

men fight;

men lose their wives.

I was raised on James Bond films.

Moore taught me

men wear suits;

men don’t cry;

men hide emotions behind humour;

men fight;

men should not wear flares.

I was raised on James Bond films.

Dalton taught me

men bear grudges;

men don’t cry;

men don’t have friendships;

men fight;

men don’t stick around.

I was raised on James Bond films.

Brosnan taught me

men gamble;

men don’t cry;

men live to work and win;

men fight;

men only see women as conquests or rivals.

I was raised on James Bond films.

Craig taught me

men are muscly;

men don’t cry;

men get hurt if they fall in love;

men fight;

men need to look good in Speedos.

I was raised on James Bond films.

Hook up

We swipe right.

Meet that night.

And we suck. And we fuck.

As we do, I love you. When it’s done, my love’s gone.

That was great… but it’s late. Then you say, Can I stay?

So I say, You can stay. And a part of my heart

prays you would stay for good. As you smoke, tell my jokes.

The patter. Then chatter. Then secrets. We connect.

Holding hands, we make plans. My heart says you will stay.

My heart prays you will stay. My head rests on your chest.

And I beam. And I dream.

Wake at dawn.

You are gone.

Secret Spitfires by Howman & Cetintas with Gavin Clarke

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The story of the dispersal of the production of Spitfires is, in itself, interesting – but it also a strong reminder of how limited the story Southampton tells about its past is. The obsession with the Titanic (which for some reason is especially marketable to Cruise travellers when if any group of tourists would seem unlikely to want to hear about lost of a ship you’d have thought it was these – but no…) eclipses almost every other narrative – even when the ability to claim to be the birth place of the iconic Spitfire would be a gift to the marketing department.

Somehow even the library hasn’t purchased a copy of this book for the local history section…

Luminaries by Rowan Williams

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Rowan Williams is turning out a consistent bookshelf of these slim and accessible volumes – and it is a great gift to the church that he is now able to share such insights widely in a way that as Archbishop the tangle of church politics denied him the time for.

I will share a few quotes that resonated strongly for me...

He quotes Anslem: “Taste the goodness of your Redeemer, be on fire with love for your Saviour. Chew the honeycomb of his words, such their flavour which is sweeter than sap… Lord, make me taste by love what I taste by knowledge; let me know by love what I know by understanding. I owe you more than my whole self, but I have no more...” (p34) There is an embodiedness that we have often lost as the “rationality” of the enlightenment took hold.

He sums up a shift in approach neatly “But we have at least begun to see that liturgy is not a matter of writing in straight lines.” (p45)

He quotes Wilberforce “If Christians, committed to personal responsibility and social justice, cannot keep before the eyes of the state and its legislators issues that are greater than security and profit, who can?” (p88) which feels like a sharp challenge within our contemporary public life.

“How do we make sense of these stories? Only by telling them over again. We may not – we don’t – have the words with which to compose a theory about what was going on in all that, but we can tell the story of lives that made sense, and try in telling to make sense of them for ourselves.” (p111)

“It may cost us everything we thought we needed to hang on to, but – as the history of Christ’s journey to the cross and the resurrection make clear – the end of the story is a fulfilment, a homecoming, for which we can never find adequate words. It’s the freedom to be what we most deeply are.” (p123)

Real Life by Brandon Taylor

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In contrast to rattling through Ragnar Jónasson this had to be a slower read as the emotional intensity was almost overwhelming.

Taylor writes about anxiety and depression with raw authenticity – and the intersection of race and sexuality which seems to box Wallace in, even within the purportedly liberal environment of a post-grad community, is portrayed with both a subtly and a punch that is profoundly unsettling.

How Wallace and Miller ache for each other, seem to struggle to know how to be with each other, how Wallace makes things harder than they maybe need to be speaks to the reality of relationships – two quotes capture different parts of this for me…

“But there is a difference between entering someone, being in someone, and being with that person. There is an impossibility to the idea of simultaneously existing within them and beside them, the fact that when you get close enough to someone, you cease to be discrete entities and instead become a single surface, glittering in the sun.” (p102)

“What he was about to say was that such a display would have felt vulgar in a way, that to make so gross a statement about his feelings, or his attitude, seemed too direct, too intrusive. Affection always feels this way for him, like an undue burden, like putting weight and expectation onto someone else. As if affection were a kind of cruelty too.” (p306)

How hard it is to like, or love, someone else when you are not really able to like yourself. You can’t imagine that they are genuine in their feelings for you, when you feel yourself so completely unlovable.

The punch about white privilege

“’No one said anything to him; no one did anything.’

‘I wanted to, but then, I guess, I chickened out.’

Wallace pauses, still in Miller’s arms. There will always be this moment. There will always be good white people who love him and want the best for him but who are more afraid of other white people than of letting him down...”

It is a punch that hurts, because it is so true – which of us white people can really put hand on heart and say we have never done that, excused ourselves that it is someone else’s fight?

But it is also the way that it is a drip drip drip that is always there – hard for Wallace to call out, because individual situations are not, taken in isolation, extreme and get dismissed as him being oversensitive but seen in the round the pattern is clear.

The way that loneliness and anxiety can sometimes make you self-destructive is given voice by Taylor and I think it is this that makes this a powerful and important story for people to hear.

The Golden Orphans by Gary Raymond

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The is something other worldly about this novel, and I think somewhere along the disorienting way I may have lost the plot.

Much is not as it first appears, and the layers of meaning and relationship are intriguing – how memory and place can twist and turn.

Cyprus a setting that lends itself well to all these themes.

The Art of Holy Week & Easter by Sister Wendy Beckett

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Following the format of The Art of Lent, this is a very nice presentation of words and images.

However its 30 images might be better, if less accessibly, titled The Art of the Triduum – as other than the first and last two the rest cover the sequence of events from Maundy Thursday to Easter Day.

Those are eventful hours and days, therefore there is plenty of images and plenty to reflect upon, but unlike The Art of Lent or The Art of Advent it is not really going to be a daily companion over a period of weeks, instead it will be a useful aid to creating moments of stillness in which could otherwise be liturgically cluttered days.