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Book Reviews

DRAMATIC FICTIONS
Adrian Green

Blood in the Thistle Bowl by Rupert Mallin, Redbeck Press, 24 Aireville Road, Frizinghall, Bradford, BD9 4HH, £6.95. Perfect bound. 48pp. ISBN 0-946980-34-9. Alchemy of Passion by Steve Anderson, Big Bear Publications, 6 Ashbrook Crescent, Wardle, Rochdale, Lancs OL12 9AJ, (e-mail: rsvp@bigbear.u-net.com), £6.00. Perfect bound. 80pp. ISBN 1-900026-02-3.Of Sawn Grain (ed. Anne Cluysenaar), an anthology by The Collective Writers, Penlanlas Farm, Llantilio Pertholey, Y-Fenni, Gwent, NP7 7HN, (e-mail: AberColl@aol.com), £5.00. Perfect bound. 63pp. ISBN 1-899449-35-3.

Rupert Mallin has a sense of the dramatic and offers to engage the reader and critic a couple of times in this collection by saying he has been told his poetry is not ‘tight’ enough, as if inviting you to agree or disagree. To do so, however, would be to accept that the narrative voice of the poems is his, rather than that of a dramatic persona, and to further assess these poems as part of the 20th century tradition of lyrical observation. But it would not do justice to this collection which is more a development in the tradition of the Victorian dramatic monologue than of the 20th century lyric, for all its use of colloquial speech and contemporary reference. Carrying the sub-title ‘Letters to Heather/Letters out of prison’ there are 36 pieces, all addressed to Heather, and suffused with nostalgia, longing and a sense of the East Anglian countryside, but in a thoroughly modern idiom.

Providing you can suspend your disbelief, it doesn’t much matter as a reader whether Rupert Mallin’s protagonist is real or imagined, whether the prison is real or metaphorical, or whether Heather exists. Not so with Steve Anderson’s book. Alchemy of Passion is a collection of poems specifically located in the town and history of Knaresborough. It is annotated with footnotes of local historical reference and a bibliography of relevant reference material. Its local interest is obvious, but how well does it stand up as poetry? The answer is: surprisingly well. The observation is always acute, and the language rarely inappropriately archaic. The reader cannot help but be caught up in Steve Anderson’s love of Knaresborough and the story of Mother Shipton, the legend behind Knaresborough's major tourist attraction. Somehow, though, there is less of a sense of the author filtering through these avowedly factual local poems than through the dramatic fictions of Rupert Mallin.

Contrasted with the focus and cohesion of these books, Of Sawn Grain appears at first to be somewhat directionless and inconsequential, but this is probably unfair because it contains more good work than most collections drawn together from the work of 17 different writers. This collection bears the evidence of poems which have been carefully honed and worked on until they are ‘tight’ in a way which could not be used to describe Rupert Mallin’s work. It is a remarkable collection for a group production with no obviously weak contributors, and they appear to have achieved what so many writer’s groups are aiming for with compressed and crafted lyrics. Outstanding in this respect are John Jones, Paul Austin and Leslie Lambton. But somehow the collection has almost had the life crafted out of it in what might be described, lifting the phrase from Huw Jones’ poem Schizogenisis, as "shapes of softly rhythmic stillness."

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LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT
Malcolm E. Wright

KIND OF LIGHT by Philip Woodrow. 50p plus 25p p&p from Tellet Publications, 30 York Street, Broadstairs, Kent CT10 1PB. ISBN 0 9525453 0 6. A6. 16pp. DOTTY by John Light. £1 plus 25p p&p from Photon Press, 29 Longfield Road, Tring, Herts HP23 4DG. ISBN 1 897968 26 4. A5. 28pp. THE SMILE OF LIES by Brian Blackwell. Published by New Hope International, 20 Werneth Avenue, Gee Cross, Hyde, Cheshire SK14 5NL. Price £3. ISBN 0 903610 19 1. A5. Card cover. 36pp.

Kind of Light is the fifth collection from Philip Woodrow, who is still in his 30s. He published four collections in the Thatcher years between ’79 and ’89. The author shows some mastery of technique as well as having something interesting to say. These poems are short to medium length. Longer poems would not have fitted this format, although I think the poet would have no problem filling a bigger book with good poems. Some of the poems rhyme--not a virtue in itself, but it can be if done well, as it is here.

From John Light comes a new children’s book called Dotty. The author says that it is to alert them to the possibilities of illusion and the dangers of prejudice, but really he would be most happy if it just makes them laugh. I tried this one on my six-year-old daughter Rebecca and she liked it. She liked the pictures and didn’t mind that they were black-and-white. Linus notices some very strange things about his friends Lionel and Caroline, not to mention the dots. Linus joins the dots, providing a happy ending to this story. A simple but effective idea, well produced, and reasonably priced at £1.

The Smile of Lies by Brian Blackwell, is really two collections in one. The poet is obviously a nature-lover, but his poems have neither the twee-ness of Wordsworth nor the grimness of Hughes. Bird-lovers will twitch references to several species. Birds and bees and other species of flora and fauna congregate in these pages. There are dark shadows, as in Brother, about a death in Chechnya, but there is also light glimpsed through the trees. The second half, entitled In the Land of the Birches, is made up of poems written either in or about Belarus (a western province of the former Soviet Union and now an independent state), mostly in the past six years while the author was visiting lecturer at the Minsk University of Linguistics.There is an air of pessimism, obviously inspired by his surroundings.

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MONUMENTAL TALENT
Malcolm E. Wright

MONUMENT by Labi Siffre. Published by Xavier Books, PO Box 17, Abergavennny, Gwent NP8 1XA. ISBN 0-9520942-2-3. 66pp. Price £6.95.

Labi Siffre is a poet and playwright whom I first heard of as a musician; he has now recorded a total of seven albums over a period of 27 years, including Singer and the Song and Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying. His song (Something Inside) So Strong, written for the Black community of apartheid South Africa and for all victims of injustice, has been adopted by the marginalised and dispossessed in many countries.

Labi Siffre’s first venture into theatre was Tale-Spin, an adaptation of four folk tales from around the world. This was staged at the Wilde Theatre, Bracknell in 1996, followed in May 97 by Deathwrite at the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff, which was televised by HTV in July of that year.

Monument is his third collection of poetry. The two previous collections, Nigger and Blood on the Page, were also published by Xavier Books, who have done an excellent production job.

Labi Siffre was born in London but now lives, with his partner, in Wales. He states: "My work is founded on the (perhaps naïve) belief that reason is the road to hope." The title poem sets the tone, about the ‘endless game’ of violent retribution, ‘the circle game’. But he does ‘believe a new breed of heroes / will arrive sometime / refusing to fight’, finishing up, ‘Then the circle game will prove to be / a circle the brave will break’. Passing over Stonewall and Requiem, which are too tragic to dwell on (they’re both about sexual abuse of children), we come to two more poems about child abuse. The last lines say it all. In Everlasting a father tries to teach a son to tell the time Pavlov-fashion. Needless to say, ‘he teach me much this way / but I learn only one thing’. And in The Answer: ‘If only you had hugged me once I could’ve been alright / I would’ve made that one hug last / my whole life’. Six of the Best starts off ‘It didn’t make a better boy or man / of me / It didn’t teach me right / Just taught me how to hate’ and finishes, ‘...I / merely joined the queue / of all those burning / to do it back / to you’.

So many tragedies like that at Dunblane make it difficult to remember one from another. This prompts him to write ‘I am of Great Britain...where love is something / you don’t admit to...talent an attribute best / kept hidden...passion a weakness that threatens us all’ and furthermore, ‘I am of Great Britain...where we teach our kids / it’s OK to do evil if it means real jobs...if we don’t...someone else will...’

Many of the poems are about gay pride, and a celebration of sex, as in Paradise Lost: ‘Now that sex is dicing with death / many of us grow old before our time’ and ‘busy men / affirming their existence in the dark’, finishing ‘this veteran of better times...knows / ...that even with a condom on / the good old days are gone’.

Much of the work in this volume formed part of a performance he gave at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, called A Day in the Knife, which got rave reviews in the press. The final poem, The Heritage Trail, ends with these words: ‘Never forget / To preserve your culture / You must / First / Kill / It’. If Labi Siffre has ‘killed’ his culture, then these poems must have been written long after its resurrection. They are rich with life.

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UNCOMPROMISING IRONY
Carolyn Oulton

Holding Hands With Prufrock by David Goodall. Price £2 plus 50p p&p. Available from the author at 64 Hawkswood Drive, Hailsham, East Sussex BN27 1UR. Published by Cherrybite Publications. A5. 36pp. ISBN 1-900447-17-7.

The arrangement of these poems into a fictional sequence is not entirely cohesive. What makes them so compelling is the writer’s control and excoriating wit. In ‘Workout A.M. Early’: "utilitarian costumes clung on toning muscles; / circulations visibly improved, /under an envy of tans."

The uncompromising irony of much of the collection is skilfully relieved by a more evocative and reflective style, as in ‘Ypres Evening’: "too many lives too suddenly frozen, / like etched consciences / of too-few survivors." Brilliantly executed and sustained, it is the subtlety of these poems that ultimately surprises.

Kindred Spirit by Chris Roe. Illustrations by Paul Roe. Price £1.50. Cheques should be made payable to Chris Roe. Published by Word Pictures Publications, 13 Church Road, Bergh Apton, Norwich, Norfolk NR15 1BP. A5. 24pp.

Two difficulties associated with Christian poetry are apparent here: deeply felt belief often leads to linguistic excess, while the personal style is submerged in places by a dependence on traditional imagery.

That having been said, there is a discernible internal logic in several of the poems - ‘Born of Chance’ argues for an ultimate design, invoking a series of gambling images which it firmly undercuts: "Could the dice be thrown / So many times."

‘Judges of Time’ uses a similar rhetorical device, interrogating the reader and finishing on the uncomfortable note: "When they ask of you the truth, / Will you lie again?"

Beautifully illustrated and sharply focused in places, this collection may nonetheless be enjoyed more by the Christian than by the general reader.

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.THE SMALL PRESS GUIDE 1999
Adrian Green

The Small Press Guide 1999, Writer's Bookshop, 1-2 Wainman Road, Woodston, Peterborough, PE2 7BU. UK price £9.99. USA price $18. ISBN 0-9529119-8-1.

This guide, edited by Anne Sandys and introduced by Peter Finch, is basically a listing of 393 magazines in alphabetical order covering the field of poetry and short fiction publications in the UK.

As a writer looking for publication you will find it an invaluable reference guide so long as you bear in mind that such guides are invariably out-of-date by the time they are printed, a point carefully made by Peter Finch in his introduction.

As a guide, it lacks the breadth and detail of articles on editing and presentation you might find in the Writers and Artists Yearbook, but it does contain a page of concise, common-sense advice on basic submission rules. The press entries appear to have been written by publishers themselves, so the factual information will be reliable (so long as the publisher has not moved or ceased publication, as some certainly have), but it does mean there is no independent or critical comment from the editor of this guide. You will still have to rely on your own judgement from reading the magazines, or from listings in magazines like Sol.

To use it as a reference source, however, you need to start with knowing the name of the magazine you are looking for. There is no index or cross-referencing by genre, region, publisher or editor. So if you want to find out how many magazines Geoff Stevens is associated with, or want to discover the relationship between "Auto Queue" and "Micropress Midlands Poetry", for instance, you will need to read all the entries. This is to some extent an abdication of editorial responsibility, though it could be overcome by publication on CD-Rom.

On balance, though, with the usual caveat of needing to spot the odd mis-spelled editor’s name before submitting anything, the publishers of Poetry Now have done a great service to small press writers by producing this guide.

The Small Press Guide 2001 is now out and can be bought through Sol Publications for £7.99, post free - that's 20% off the cover price!

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