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LEICESTER
POETRY
SOCIETY
THE STANZA
No. 36 Spring 2008
poems — news — reviews
www.poetryleicester.co.uk
Editorial
Dear Members,
Developing a reliable critical faculty is vital if you want to write well, or if you want to discuss writing. How to do this? By reading widely (other countries, cultures), by reading and listening to literary criticism, and by discussing literature. You can, of course, just pick up your pen or open your mouth in the belief that what you write or say will be “as good as” the words of anyone else — that it is merely a matter of personal taste. Many people seem to believe this. I do not. I believe that reasons can be given as to why certain literary works are better than others. Yes, personal taste plays a part (as John Lucas opined on 7th March), but there is a whole, serious layer below the light overlay of personal taste, which is achieved by study and reflection. This is true in any field.
One of the criticisms levelled at contemporary poetry is that it has no immediate appeal because it is difficult. Whilst I wouldn’t defend the deliberately obscure, I would ask — is Shakespeare easy — or Milton, Keats, Byron? Should they therefore be dumped? “Read poetry: it’s quite hard” says Don Paterson, apparently. I agree.
For those of us who write and submit our work to the various small presses and innumerable poetry competitions rejection is a familiar experience (although I did hear that Pat Corina never experienced it. Can that be true?) Fairly recently I submitted a poem and was contacted by the Editor to say she thought it “interesting”, but “would I be willing to change it?” She suggested how. It involved a total re-write. I said no. Curious beasts, editors. It would be interesting to hear from members about their various flirtings or totally successful matings with magazines etc. I feel sure it would be illuminating for us all.
Caroline Cook, Editor
Contributors
Reviews
Poems
VALENTINE
from one who could love
another - but which
one where when
here then
there now
no then
why how
well one day
which every
which way
another such
when won
by so
so why
why not
by so much
more than ever
before such
an one
and me
makes us one
Jill Cunningham 1991
We practise as children on the beach
Carefully filling buckets, tipping the truncated cone
On to the mound to make a greater form.
Gravity and friction, the angle of repose
Make the falling sand rise again, conical.
At Silbury a people rose with their hill,
Up and up and trickling down again.
Perfectly angled still, what does it hide?
A treasure, tomb, essential mystery?
We think that it should, though nothing found.
Our lives accrete by such a process,
Memory of acts done, taken in turn
To the top, to fall, mainly, down again.
Some stick, some roll, a shape appears
Apparent meaning, soon to be deposed.
Graham Norman
Review of Reading by Anne-Marie Fyfe
Friday, 16th November 2007
The Reading Nov. 2007
Scene 1
The room, unsympathetic.
The leaving of North London,
the drive, and now the reader arrived
and collected.
She is introduced, precied.
Born in Antrim, left Belfast for London
aged 21; jobs, studies, posts,
and for 10 years now running Earl’s Court workshops,
writing
as writers do, things seen askew.
Scene 2
She talks, a measured phrase, a word
of explanation – just a little way of making space
for each piece.
She has a voice, there is
a fleeting stream, collage, in the hitched flickering
of a soul ignited by film – loved from childhood on.
It’s a generational thing (4 times a week for her parents,
as often as they changed - then twice a week each when children came –
and now with her own)
Distilled, succinct.
Scene 3
House, home, and hunting feature – and re-peopling.
She observes – in words.
“The Upminster, 6.10, stops.” “she sets her brush on the tin’s edge.”
“The key won’t turn in the lock.”
“Lights go out. Our bedroom is the last to go.”
The Turnham Green house, the house they never took,
changes hands over the years, is seen – from the end of the platform.
We find the Edward Hopper New England-landscapes in her work,
and “Seal Morning”, familiar as a grandma’s visit, recaptivating her,
and American prosepoetry, Lewis Jenkins’ “Clean Up”, was read in full.
Scene 4
Wine. Poor light. Poor sound. Some heard. Some … not a word.
Conversation. Autographs and sales. Reconvene, in closer formation.
Scene 5
Flight and ferry, transport and travel – the second half.
“Brief amnesias of hot coffee” expand on parting.
She clutches at life in Kodachromes – this is travel and time
and she puts her grandparents on a train in Novgorod Station
vividly.
Her father, deceased, exists somewhere
and in “Summertown” he would be waiting,
a Hopper-like place one can get to only by train,
and only get off once.
The window-woman’s face recalls some Aleksandr Blok,
“Always catching herself in the blank window.”
We discuss.
She paints and draws, especially buildings,
but writing is more important to her.
(6 novels written in a fortnight make her marvel at the construction
yet she is impatient with the form.
A novel has padding.)
Poetry should be cut down, articles simplified.
She has taught in hospitals, schools, prisons.
Over-explanation can kill, leaving no need for the poem.
Mostly poetry is not published.
Most sales – are at readings.
Scene 6
Anne-Marie Fyfe is greatly thanked. More conversation, sales…clearing.
We disperse.
(We must improve the room)
Lydia Finlay
Act
When the frosted glass cracked in the slam,
and slugs of Polyfilla jumped their cracks,
he picked up the scissors that had been kitchen
for the last act.
The Act was waiting — had been hanging around,
gnawing on lemons, salting their words,
chipping the skirting boards and keyholes.
The Act knew its lines, knew rehearsals
wasted time; displacement,
like most of living. The Act was direct,
balls-of-the-feet fast, punching the air,
didn't have to open the book. Ready.
They did the job. Clean, no more mess
than a bottle of ketchup, smashed in the sink.
When it was over
he went for the photographs —
the jagged edge round his smile, the scraps
scattered glossy across the floor,
her face in pieces;
wondered how it all happened.
D. A. Prince
(Runner-up in the Leicestershire Crime Poetry Competition
September 2007)
Package
Sometimes, don’t you stray to when things were all laid-out,
and life was a beach — when you weren't so blasé?
You'd seen nothing. In volumes.
You were learning how; flirting, flying.
As you stepped off the plane the heat took you,
made you clammy.
Times, don't you mist up for when you'd been nowhere?
Little soaps were fun — people, even,
when you had your buds, first passport po-face
look straight ahead, vacant — as a new suitcase.
While they unpack you run to the pool. Heaven
— like that overcloud blue! (You'd never dreamt). Fruits
could be blatant: figs hanging out, splitting pouches.
Drupes mooning in night gardens, fireflies light
-ing up. Ah! To live for. Everything.
I loosen sometimes, unpacking.
Caroline Cook
Ghost - writer
You think you've written
all you know about them now,
they've been dead so long —
but no, they keep coming back;
nothing startling, like a thump
on the shoulder someone gives you
suddenly in recognition ... but like
an itch somewhere, often low down
that you reach to scratch without
thinking at first, until it reddens,
and you realise you have to pay
attention to it. And something
emerges that you never thought
was there — an indication, a drawing
of attention, a realisation. Then
you have to begin on the matter
of a narrative, until, gradually,
the picture builds and the person's
there, right under your nose;
reaching out, almost, as if to touch
you; bringing up propositions;
and the tale is set. So, however
long they've been dead and buried,
in whatever places, you bring them back
to that one place you grew up with them.
Like my father's rose bushes, they keep
flowering; and even when the petals fall,
the stamens follow and the bush, reduced
to a spindle now, the scent never goes
away. And that's it. That's the secret
of it all, more potent than any of the
old photographs — the great-grandmother ones
in their sepia shawls, the suited marriage
ones, the christenings, the rolled scrolls
of certification; the ones who never
came back from two wars. It's not
the definitive, but the lurking part
that matters; hugging the shadows.
So that you have to tease it all out,
like burrs embedded in rough wool.
Some day, you think, it must all end;
but so far, not. The haunting still
goes on; the ghostly pencil picks
itself up and writes. You watch it
as it goes, knowing none of them
will ever read it for themselves.
Huw Watkins
Monday, 19th November
Reading at West End Adult School — Review
On a Monday afternoon, four LPS members — Colin and Caroline Cook, Mike Brewer and myself — turned up to entertain the members of the West End Adult School. Marilyn Ricci had also volunteered to read, but was prevented by illness.
First off was Colin, a member of both organisations, who read a poem by Anne-Marie Fyfe, whom a recent generous donation by the West End School had enabled us to invite for our November Reading. He followed this with a reading from the late Alex Milloy, who had been a member of the Evington Adult School.
Caroline followed, with several slyly humorous poems of her own, including one about a parent trying to answer a child's questions about what went on in a sex shop. This was much appreciated by the mostly elderly audience.
I was next, causing initially some disruption by attempting to distribute four sheets of poems (I hadn't been sure how many of us would be reading) from which I only had time to read a select few. To complicate matters further, I attempted to read Christmas Turkeys in two voices, wearing a scarf for one of them. It provided good exercise for me, and the audience seemed to enjoy it; indeed, feedback was good for all four readers.
The climax was provided by Mike, another old friend of the West End Adult School, who read a sequence of humorous autobiographical poems emphasising how much better it was to be alive in the 1960s. The audience agreed enthusiastically!
Brian Fewster
The Paper Parasol
I remember when young
trying to do a balancing act
walk on water, a paper parasol aloft;
the paddling pool was slippery
tragedy inevitable
and that tears didn't solve a thing:
but I cried anyway, all the way home:
for children the world can be
a magical place where anything goes,
or a place of dark corners and fears:
watching the sun rise,
its promise of warmth and light
eagerly accepted, bathed in ;
its disappearance keened
(where did it go) the concept
of a moving earth ungrasped yet:
questions and answers
were eventually noted, absorbed
stored, used: mourned all these years
a paper parasol . . .
B. J. Walklate
Published in Decanto
February 2008
Review of Members’ Reading
14th December 2007
Introducing the Members’ Reading, Caroline Cook said that she likes poetry that means something and is understandable. She would not have been disappointed by the three members who read to us that night. Different in style and content as they were, they all told their tales with a clarity that showed a deep involvement with and a knowledge of the subjects on which they had chosen to write.
Mike Brewer asked us to hear him “sing of love and loss”; alternating poems that reflected these two themes. Mike has a strong reading voice and the added resonance from the microphone gave an authority to his reading, especially to those poems which had a social or political theme. “Down Boy!”, which was about the starvation of humans in Zimbabwe, and was cleverly emphasised by being ostensibly about eating rats and dogs, and “Comments Book, Hiroshima Peace Museum,” appealed straight to the emotions. This latter poem Mike described as a “lowku.” Was he teasing us? He seemed to have a wry sense of humour and may have been. Nevertheless, the poem was not low on feeling,
I’m sorry,
I can’t see to write
Through these tears
“Cassandra, Cassandra” was a poem of loss written 30 years ago and foresaw the environmental disasters that are upon us today. It was very prescient, making one wonder if Mike had a supernatural experience all those years ago, or perhaps the problems of global warming and loss of the earth’s resources of which the poem prophesied have been with us for longer than we thought. Or maybe back then,
Mike Brewer’s poems of love showed sensitivity to passion between man and woman and he has the skill to translate the world of feeling into meaningful thoughts by metaphor and observation of the things that lovers say. “A Stroll in Winter” starts with the surprise of, ““Don’t think without speaking”, she chided gently,” which leads the poet to a contemplation on this phrase, taking it out into a universal application before returning to the personal world of the two lovers.
Mike’s humour ran through his reading, alongside the sombre and meaningful. He concluded with a rousing rendition of “The Stand-In” which played on the meanings of “stand-in” and “standing” and while telling the tale of Stella who though, startlingly pretty, was stood up and left standing. Great fun and Mike even got his audience participating. We thought we had gone to the Panto!
Maxine Linnell told us that, though born in Leicester, she had left at age 18 and had lived for many years in Hartland, north Devon. She has clear memories of Leicester, to which she has returned, evidenced by her poem “Land locked” which described the yearning for the coast that landlocked Leicester people feel more than most. The feeling was eloquently described in the verse,
I dream of folding this place,
like a map, so we could step off Melton Mowbray
onto Great Yarmouth beach, walk west
from Hinckley to Towyn for cream teas
or drop by Bognor Regis for a swim.
Maxine’s poetry described life, that of others and her own, closely observed and considered wisely. Her rhythms are light and absence of rhyme could lead to a diffuseness and lack of structure but the poems are fleshed with vivid images that give them solidity and stature. In “fish, strawberry, wasp” she uses these seemingly disparate images to tell the story of a woman’s life, from childhood to senility, pithily, yet with pathos and paints pictures that stay in the listener’s head.
It ends,
She is lost for words.
The simple ones –
fish
strawberry
wasp –
slip down
too deep for catching
Maxine told us of her pleasure in Buddhist retreats and her love of contemporary art, especially Jackson Pollock. She read poems related to her interests in a soft, clear voice that reflected her gentle and compassionate view of her world. “Kitchen Symphony”, a poem about the people in the kitchen at a Buddhist retreat, was affectionate and full of good humour. It was about the noises in the kitchen and we, the listeners, were able to hear “the sounds of ten hands chopping.”
Brian Fewster is a member of the Leicester Poetry Society of long standing. Caroline introduced him as a “denizen of the workshops,” whose opinions are always valued by those who have received advice on their work, even though that often meant cutting “ninety per cent of it.” Brian applies the same rigorous standards to his own work — fortunately there is enough left to present us with a book of 91 poems, Sympathetic Magic. Brian read us a selection to whet our appetites. The poetry is both concise and precise with strong rhythms and rhymes that assist, rather than dominate, the meaning. Despite, or perhaps because of, the precision and concentration of his ideas and images, the poems’ “first hearing” meanings are immediately clear to the listener, yet repay further study to discover deeper layers and surprises. For this reason, they work well at a live reading. The listener is taken straight into the story and attention is held, interest is stimulated
Brian opened with “Fragments Overheard at Northampton Asylum,” an imaginary visit by some inquisitive gentry to John Clare, the Northamptonshire “Peasant Poet” at Northampton Asylum. Brian has a voice timbre and accent that adds dramatic power to the written words and he used this skill to good effect in other poems of parody and satire. He turns the irony on himself in The Parcel, an imaginary (naturally!) encounter with St. Peter at the pearly gates. He says, self-deprecatingly,
One of the awkward squad. A fool who waits
for half a lifetime doing work he hates.
Too much the gentleman for depth of passion.
Clerk to lost causes. Always out of fashion.
His destination is marked down as Limbo, but I suspect that this collection of verse will have a more exalted home, and be above the vagaries of fashion. I, for one was glad it was the weekend, so that I could have time to devour Sympathetic Magic following Friday’s appetiser course.
Graham Norman
Brian Fewster, Maxine Linnell and Mike Brewer at L.A.E.C.
Naming the Lights
kirjokanski sky-lid
stitched in word colours fire runes
revontulet foxfire
a sorcery of snow sparks fur swept
guovssahasak singing lights
fire swoop of the Siberian Jay
firchlis sky war
nimble men fierce in fairyblood fight
alugsukat secret birth
happy fire dance of the dead-born
aksarnirq ball player
shimmies in ice-flame swerve
manquan rainbow belt
worn in sky-land of Wa-Wa-ban
(from Russian Baltic, Finland, Lapland, Scotland, Greenland, Inuit, Native American.)
Siobhan Logan
“I was part-funded by the Radio + Space Plasma Physics Group of Leicester University to undertake a poetry research trip to Tromso, Northern Norway in December 2007. A short video film of my trip made for BBC Radio Leicester is on their Video Nation website page at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/leicester/content/articles/2008/01/11/vn_
northernlights_video_feature.shtml. I am booked to perform some poems for an evening event about the Northern Lights on Thursday, March 20th in the Science Museum in London.”
A SOCIETY OF ROSE TREES
Lamenting poor flowering
in some young people,
cursing wild growth usurping,
spraying or binning diseased leaves,
or giving a last chance
putting them on probation,
we fuss and spend too late.
Each tree has potential
to bloom beautifully,
but from the first
needs various nutrients
in correct amounts
held in supportive soil;
a clean bed,
pruning discipline
encouraging healthy shoots
and sun embracing
terrace and backyard
with equal warmth.
After Jackson Pollock.
The juggling began with tins. Her mind
slipped. Baked beans dropped onto
the slate canvas. There were plenty more,
biscuits and crisps, fridge and freezer contents,
then plates cups bottles jars all
thrown up and falling till the floor crunched
and stuck to the soles of her sensible shoes.
The last was flour and sugar —
the contents spun into the air
coating the rest like snow
on rough earth, demented icing.
Done. She dusted off her hands and
picked her way out of the door,
out of the house, gone.
Enough juggling.
Art.
Maxine Linnell
Review of Reading by Helen Ivory
18th January 2008
They call the balconied, Victorian auditorium a ‘room’. Perhaps the pen pushing local authority suits have a desire to disguise architecture by labelling everything equal and so pretend a poetry reading is suitable for an auditorium. Our space was a drop in this sumptuous, mismatched bucket. So we create a Friday evening ‘reading in the round’. Somehow, the velvet soft echo adds to the atmosphere as Helen's words begin to cover us.
Poetry Readings are a little like walking in drizzle. The words are fine droplets — some settling to cover you with a faint mist, yet the majority rain a distance away. We know they are there but can't touch them. So many images so quickly. For me, the test is to see how hydrated I become; whether my emotions begin to swim in the richness around me. The genuine applause, the warmth of questions, her open smile and relaxed eyes said we all became wet with Helen's poetry.
Helen began with extracts of 'The Dog In The Sky' published by Bloodaxe in 2006.
Observational poetry. Images and ideas. Perhaps a painting in words. Some realistic; some avant-garde. A touch of scientific metaphor. Helen said she teaches people to start their poems with a strong image but to end softer; though I wonder?
Seasoned with a little fire
I am quicksilver in your mouth.
But don't worry - I am only a woman;
common place, like the moon, still breathing.
is the opening and finale of 'Alchemy.' Just whimsical ideas portrayed by poignant image? Or, do the pictures stir our mind? Does their placement in counterpoint ask questions of us? Though we are told stories, are her images the true narrative? Because, on the surface, Helen's choice of language is very simple and she's often prosaic in method.
As we warmed to Helen's style she gave us humour.
'The Flat:'
It wasn't the first time she'd taken
the entire contents of her flat
backwards over the welcome mat
and sat them on the lawn.....
...The steam roller lurched into view....
Without
flinching, full steam ahead she went,
to the cry of tally-ho! The standard lamp
was the first victim
Dark humour perhaps, depicting a confusion and desire for change which reigned in the lady's head. Do we recognise such issue in our selves? Perhaps here is the clue to Helen's popularity. An ability to capture an enormity, even ourselves, in the shrewd placement of alternative ideas next to each other.
Not grain by grain
but a whole ocean;
dense and static"
is the opening of 'Salt.'
I searched for the polemic? Any hint of the political? What really stirred Helen's beach pebble memories? Was there more than observation? Then suddenly, an angry poem.
'Home Cooking'
I'll take your eyes first
and boil them whole for the stock....
...How I don't slice carrots,
but your fingers instead...
Helen explained this poem was a reaction to time spent with a partner.
Our Reading's conclusion was a rich dessert. A feast of love poetry recently written:
'Gone'
Each touch, my skin giggles
under your finger tips. My teeth
want to feel each morsel....
each touch and we are gone
deeper into each other.
... as we taste the sweat
that tastes of nothing else but water
that rises from the earth, that holds us
in some timeless place all afternoon.
Intensely personal stuff. Dare we ask, was this luxury of time spent with the same fella whose eyes she wanted to boil? Or was it with someone different? Helen did say. But you should have been there to find out for yourself!
What of this fine array of poetry? What echo remained for us to savour? I suggest a not so subtle expression of feminine irony, of change creating stability. And very much in the flavour of Bloodaxes's poetry bestseller, 'Staying Alive'.
'Alchemy'
This may seem dramatic, absurd even —
and a certain amount of trust is required
Andie Wingham
University of Leicester G.S. Fraser Prize 2007
WINNER
The Lament of Tsar Kolokol
Melancholy Bell,
Knot of Mighty Metal Mute,
Sometimes snow-clad,
Lurking.
Hunched in strange design,
Design that time had no time for.
Mister miss, miss the time,
No prophetic chime,
Or bass reverb.
Ring-a-lo, ring not at all,
Cracked colossus, Bronze,
Squatting in an iron land.
My masters Motorin,
My sister Dhammazedi!
My un-pealed hail, echo to Romanov.
Two tonnes of silence, one for each man.
Ring-a-lo, rang-a-lo,
Great bell is silent.
Killed before utterance.
Birthed in fire, Broken in fire,
Bronze of my Bronze,
Crowned with gold in the
Cold winter sun.
Phillip Dyte
The poet speaks ...
My name is Phillip, and I'm currently in my second year at the University of Leicester studying English BA. I was pretty surprised to hear that I had won the poetry competition, and more so when the organiser Nick Everett informed me that I was the first fresher to win it for at least 15 years. Half of that surprise was because I didn't actually write it when I was a fresher. I wrote it when I was 16.
I can't remember now, where I first heard of the Tsar Kolokol — the giant bell that was forged for the Empress Anna (niece of Peter the Great), but it was such a romantic, pointlessly grandiose gesture that I couldn't help but find it charming. I scribbled down The Lament during a history lesson, I believe. I never knew it'd hit so many right notes.
Unfortunately poetry is fickle, and I haven't actually written anything since the January of 2005, but I remain cautiously optimistic that one day the lines will come back. The best stuff seems to be when you're not thinking...
A little bit about the poem proper: Ivan Motorin was the man who designed and made the bell alongside his son, Mikhail, and it took 200 men to craft. Dhammazedi is another strangely beautiful story — a giant bell commissioned by King Dhammazedi of the Burmese Mon peoples, it was looted in 1608 by Filipe de Brito of Portugal, who intended to melt it down (bastard, if you don't mind me saying). However, when his ship, and the raft carrying the bell, reached a fork in the river, the raft sank underneath the weight of its cargo, taking Filipe's ship with it. It was said that until the late 1800's, you could still see the tip of the bell breaching the water at low tide, but the base of the river is silty and silken, and eventually the bell — irreclaimable — will be swallowed into the earth.
Bells are curious things.
Leicester, 19 December 2007
Launch of “Lines North” Friends Meeting House
Saturday, 26th January 2008
Leicester Poetry Society and Soundswrite joined forces to launch “Lines North”, a collection of poems by Pat Corina. Pat had previously produced a pamphlet of 17 poems under the same title, and it seemed appropriate to Karin Koller, Davina Prince and Brian Fewster, who assembled the work, to keep that title. After all, although Pat had travelled widely and finally settled in Leicester, she was and remained a proud Yorkshire woman.
Attendance at the event was very good, and included Werner and other members of Pat’s family, as well as friends, acquaintances and writers from other groups.
Karin Koller invited representatives of both groups and others to read one of Pat’s poems, and to add their thoughts, reminiscences, anecdotes and appreciation if they wished. Readers commented:
- Pat’s poetry was wide-ranging and did not conform to a regular themes or format.
- She was a good listener and critic; if she commented on your work you took notice and probably followed her advice
- She went to Poetry Festivals throughout the country, from Ledbury to Aldeburgh.
- Pat will — perhaps as a result of this publication — be recognised as one of the foremost poets of the late 20th Century
- She had a wry wit.
- She spoke her mind.
- We were exhorted not to leave the collection lying on a shelf somewhere, but to keep it to hand.
Colin Cook
Davina Prince, Karin Koller and Brian Fewster
at Friends Meeting House 26th January 2008
A Poem Prays for Survival
When first the Muse’s careless spawn
(if not aborted or still-born)
sets out towards your fertile mind,
a predator swims close behind
(oblivion-mouthed, unfeeling, blind)
to gobble up without remorse
what hasn’t strength to stay the course:
what’s lame and stiff; what’s limp and slack
and impotent against attack;
what’s bloated, floundering, thick of tongue;
what’s pure of heart but fashioned wrong;
and what mutates from verse to prose.
Please let me not be one of those.
Brian Fewster (“Sympathetic Magic”)
Sympathetic Magic by Brian Fewster.
(Poor Tom's Press, 2008. Price: £6.00.)
ISBN 978-0-9543-3715-5.
Brian Fewster's substantial collection, bearing a mask from the Torres Strait on its cover, is long overdue but worth the waiting for. Previously he has published two chapbook-length volumes but it requires a fuller assembly to represent the voices within his voice, the tonal range of his poetry.
Those who know his writing will be unsurprised at the formal accomplishment exhibited, which can border on the formidable, but what will delight is the abundance of humour, a humour hard-won and tempered in adversity.
I would hazard to place his writing as being somewhere midway between the Auden-stream of English poetry and the Larkinesque, with perhaps the shades of William Empson and Norman Cameron in fitful attendance. By this I mean in inclination not derivation, he is wholly his own man. Like the early Auden, he is political, and unafraid of his own intelligence; while like Larkin he can be unafraid of the wry and rueful, inclining somewhat towards a slowly leaking personal pessimism.
It is a very English voice, but not parochial, and though he favours formality he retains the flexibility of response to dabble when required in free verse. He can be very funny about the tightness of tradition:
" Won't somebody help me? I'm trapped inside a sestina"
He can be like the Alexander Pope of The Dunciad or The Essay on Man:
“ Beset by gibbering mouths on every side
and overrun by chaos, I can hide
in hollow artefacts contrived by spells”
this from the title poem. The reader will not fail to notice the nuances of “hollow artefacts”. There is a plangency within the author’s protests, just as there was in the disabled Pope’s. The poem begins with an imagined space: “a clear enclosure where, alone,/ light spills and settles over whitewashed stone” then revokes its dream for the reality of a Larkin-like innerscape of an often unmade and unshared bed and junk post that merges with life’s promises and reprimands, of a life that verges on the shabby, that is almost solitary, before looking back, further over its historical shoulder, to the masks and talismans of Stone Age cultures and finds a glittering mask for its “crumpled face/ dreaming about simplicity and space” where domestic seediness is transformed into an implied ecological Eden. For this rationalist is a magician too, as befits a poet, an animal which Eliot characterized as both the most sophisticated and primitive of its tribe.
Most affectingly, he can directly move the reader, as in the triple-poem sequence in memory of his sister Jane. And, secretly, he has a covert eye for nature, this, from one would think of as primarily an urban poet, on a flock of birds, caught on the wing and on the eye:
“ A racing crew
with downbeat bright
as feathers catch
the level light”
I buy that. And so should you, from the author, price pounds sterling six.
David Bircumshaw
NEWS
Member Consultation January 2008
The member consultation had a very good response and has helped the Committee to put together an exciting programme of events and workshops in 2008 to 2009.
Briefly, we found:
- That you want a change of venue – we are intending to move to the Friends Meeting House, Queens Road from September.
- That you wish to continue with Friday evenings as the meeting time.
- That you would like improvements to the quality and presentation of the guest poet events.
- That you enjoy our Members Readings and would like to see the “Open Mike” type of event repeated.
- That you would like to see the Society hold competitions – we shall organise one this summer.
- That you want the LPS to become more involved in publishing members work.
Full details of the survey results can be sent by e-mail or post on application to the Chairman.
Leicester Poetry Society will hold a Summer Poetry Picnic in Belgrave Hall Gardens on 21st June from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Intrigued? More details will follow, but please make a note in your diaries now.
Graham Norman, Chairman.
Deadline for the next copy of The Stanza (No. 37) is Monday, 19th May. Send interesting material — news, views etc. and/or poems in any genre.
Caroline Cook, Editor
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