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Book & Booklet Reviews
Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Webzine, Edition #9 (61) December 2011
Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below
*
Index of Reviewed Publications, Pulsar Poetry Webzine #9 (December 2011), click on the surname of an author, contributor or press, underlined below, to link to the review.
A Heron in Buenos Aires - Luis Benitez
Poems (audio CD) - David Francis
Scarecrow Crimes - John Hindley
War Chronicle - Eamer O'Keeffe
And A Bird Sang - Alan P. Barrett
*
A Heron in Buenos Aires;
selected poem by Luis Benitez.
Slightly larger than A5 size perfect-bound book with a full colour cover
and 50 pages, (includes notes by Carmen
Vasco). Cover image by
Cooper Renner.
Translation and editing by Beatriz Olga
Allocati, Veronica Miranda and
Cooper Renner. Published during year
2011 by Ravenna Press.
www.ravennapress.com
ISBN:
978-0-9835982-3-7 LCCN: 2011928707
Price ?
Luis Benitez is Argentinian.
His book of poetry ‘A Heron in Buenas Aires’ is the latest of some 24
publications which include essays and novels as well as poetry.
If I had to pick one theme that describes his poetry it would be the
place of man in a world full of other beings and environments.
His poetry aims at building a bridge to this world.
This is portrayed in the poem ‘The Pearl Fisherman’.
Here the fisherman seeks pearls ‘to
show to men afraid even to come to the shore’.
But when he finds a pearl he sees that there is no shore and realises ‘Those
who are afraid … do not know they are walking on the sea’.
This is complicated stuff but we are helped by a well
written evaluation of his work included in the publication by Carmen Vasco.
In her ‘Luis Benitez; A Consideration’ comparisons are made with ‘The
Thought-Fox’ by Ted Hughes and DH Lawrence’s ‘The Snake’.
She points out that Luis Benitez acknowledges Dylan Thomas and Ezra Pound
as significant influences sharing his attraction to those things that ‘human beings cannot explain’.
In the poem ‘Let Ezra Pound Speak’ he suggests ‘If
you don’t have anything to say be quiet’.
But if you do then let your words ‘…
shine, authentic fish in an infinite river’.
In the poem ‘Conversations’
he seeks to understand ‘The story of the
constellations engraved in the shine of a leaf’.
A reminder that the atoms that make up our world were created billions of
years ago at the birth of the Universe.
The title poem ‘A Heron in Buenos Aires’ portrays the heron as ‘a swift letter S’ that a casual observer does not see.
But the heron ‘saw everything and everyone, swift and motionless above the miracle of
the water’.
The poems
require thought and time. But this
is what poetry should do - open a window to the cosmos.
After all this is where we all live.
Review by: John Plevin
Poems
by David Francis,
audio CD. Words and music by David
Francis, 2007. David Francis plays – piano, organ, guitar, harmonica, recorder,
autoharp, vocals: Other musicians -
Patience Higgins,
Will Holshouser, Ron Horton,
Kalin Ivanov,
Lalo, Jeff Philips and
Deborah Thurlow. Graphic design:
Claudia Scmauder.
www.edbaby.com/all/davidfrancis
Price ?
I'm not sure how to start with this CD (yes, a CD, not a
book). Is it a brave attempt to make poetry contemporary and multi-media? Is it
a music CD with whole sections that are silent save for the human voice? It is
difficult to categorise. As a musician and a poet, I was intrigued and excited
by the concept. As a reviewer, it would have been nice to see the words printed
somewhere, just so I didn't have to keep going back and hearing the same section
over and over if I wanted to check something. As a consumer of poetry, I like to
be able to savour the words, feel them running over my synapses, dripping with
meaning. But that is not an option when someone else decides how quickly you can
experience them.
There is something added to hear the poet's voice,
the cadences, the emphases. That's why I go to poetry readings. It gives life to
the writing. And this does too. And to be fair, this is poetry that sometimes
needs a little help, a little CPR. It's not bad, as such. It just doesn't
really go anywhere. Rhymes can seem forced, all the more evident because the
recorded voice hammers home that they were intended to rhyme. On the page, the
thought would not occur. Descriptions can be too detailed, too specific. There
is little space for interpretation.
The music makes up a decent chunk of the CD's playing time
so I should mention it. Francis plays most of the instruments himself, but to be
honest, most of the interludes sound like finger stretching exercises on the
piano, basic riffs repeated way too often or the sections of a children's book
where Tinkerbell wants you to turn the page. If the intention was to improve a
half-good series of poems by adding half-good music, it was not entirely
successful.
All in all, I would have a hard time recommending this. If
you want poetry, you may well find the lack of printed words an issue. If you
want music, you will not find your needs met here either. And if Mr Francis
wants my advice, he would develop the music, which he is arguably better at,
write some lyrics and find a singer. If I wanted to buy a pair of trousers,
being given one leg and the sleeve from a shirt would not really do it for me.
Review by: Andrew Barber
Scarecrow Crimes,
poems by John Lindley, including the
Elmer McMurdy poems. A5 size stapled
booklet with a two colour cover and 40 pages.
Published on 12th April, 2002 by New Hope International, 20
Werneth Avenue, Gee Cross, Hyde, Cheshire, SK14 5NL.
E-mail:
nhi@clara.net
ISBN 0-903610-30-2
www.nhi.clara.net/nhibooks.htm
£4.50 UK.
A really enjoyable read, richly worded poems lifted by a
broad streak of fantasy, but grounded in the landscapes and waterscapes of
northern Britain, Yorkshire and the Lakes. The precision of the imagery evokes the physical presence, the feel
and weight of objects, even when Lindley is talking about a ghost: Sylvia Plath
in a journal “all paper and cord and blistering glue,” Ophelia “a trickle of
heat from a nipple to his fingertip,” – a wonderfully sensual poem, that. The
moods vary from humour, wry wonder at the oddity of life, to memory and
reflection and acute observation of the present moment. Lindley is excellent
when he gives an unglamorous subject an unexpected twist, as in “The day work
broke out,”
when the poet’s family home is invaded, Second World War style, by
offers of work and the family put up a heroic but doomed defence, precisely
visualised. But perhaps quirkiest is the set of Elmer McCurdy poems, celebrating
the death and eventful post-death career of one of America’s most unsuccessful
criminals. Lindley has fixed on the ultimate anti-hero, and he revels in the
fairground glitter and ironies as the mummified corpse reaps the glory the
living man never managed: “He turns legend for the day
People gawp in
belief.”
Lindley wastes no words on pity, his elegant, flowing verse
has too much energy, and his acute observation draws out meanings which he
leaves the reader to discover.
Review by:
Eve Kimber
War Chronicle, a
found poem composed of headlines and news stories from March 1938 to September
1939, by Eamer O’Keeffe. A5 size,
stapled booklet with a two colour cover and 40 pages.
Published December 1999 by CICATRIX, BM/Cicatrix, London, WC1N 3XX.
ISBN 0-9522404-4-0 £3.75 +
postage and packaging.
War Chronicle
is the most extraordinary historical narrative poem in its concept and execution
that I have ever come across. It covers the period leading up to the Second
World War (March 1938 – September 1939), but not just in a straightforward way
listing the events that between them led to the outbreak of war. O’Keeffe
pillages the newspapers of those months for striking headlines and those bizarre
stories such as papers love; again and again she comes back to Don Bradman and
the test matches; she scours the rest of the world for weird happenings, that
have nothing to do with the rise of Nazism. This may strike you as odd in a “war
chronicle”, but the author explains as follows: “The light and frivolous events
make a balance with the darker things, which made this poem possible for me to
create, and perhaps easier to read”.
To exemplify the structure of the poem as well as the
author’s explanation above, here is a verse from February 1939:
“Electric shocks to protect
crops. Man ties wife to railway line.
Boy is drowned in hot beer.
Child drinks battery acid.
Northern Lights may trigger
storms. Heads impaled in Shanghai.
Japanese leader now a priest.
Jewish windows shattered in Prague.”
Each verse consists of 4
lines, each line of 2 (head) lines, each sentence of 3 or 4 stressed syllables,
the whole chronicle running to 180 verses. It is a “found” poem in that none of
the constituent parts are original, but the way they have been chosen and
assembled certainly is! Review by: David Gill
And A Bird Sang,
20 poems by Alan P. Barrett.
A5 size stapled booklet with a two colour cover and 24 pages. Published
2002 by Poetry Monthly Press, 39 Cavendish Road, Long Eaton, Nottingham, NG10
4HY. ISBN 1-903031-17-6
£1.50.
These poems drift
through time and give a sense of place; they stop to focus on specific moments
in time. The poems have been penned with a mature hand using traditional
stanzas, observing and conjuring images - the twenty poems travel on a journey.
The title of this collection comes from the poem Tace: Let the bird sing (p.23):
That drunk in The Globe said it all, damn him: “Let the bird sing!” (‘tace’ is
the Latin for candle). I read each poem out-loud at least twice; this is my way
of getting the feel for the poet’s voice and is good way to find the rhythm of
the poems, to bring them off the page.
There is a lot of tender reflection and subtle humour which is very moving and
enchanting. The journey starts with the poem ‘The Humber from The Minerva’ (p.1)
which has some interesting lines:
“Between the flatnesses
of land on either bank,
An eighth of England
drains its histories through here
To pass Salt End, Sunk
Island, Spurn, so out to sea.
Raise the glass to Then:
no tears, in this recension.
The poems then move on
to explore Liberal Education, 1964; Mid-August, 1940; The Harrowing of the
North; The Priory Church and It Was A leaf, she tried to tell herself. The
sonnet Eighteen Lines, for Emma, and the humorous poem Girl in the ‘Flirt’
Shirt, have great humour, and all the poems have their own charm and language
which draw you into Alan’s poetic observations of life and landscape.
Reconciling Distance
With Stars:
“And so, one night when
you are forty-five,
Take a sip and listen
for an echo from the moon,
Faint, reconciling
distances with stars.
I enjoyed reading and
reviewing this twenty poem collection which was first published in 2002. There
is that enjoyment of discovering something new, even though it’s seen as old,
and good poems with great lines are timeless, which is why some many of us still
read Keats and Gerard Manley Hopkins. I really liked that Alan had not wasted
page space and put some of his fave quotes which always have resonance with
Poets and Authors alike.
To some more than
others;
For those I will always
love
Use what talents you
possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that
sang best.
Henry Van Dyke
One of my favourite
poems from this collection:
This Has Been Written
(p.22)
Once, this was written
In the wanton inks and
alchemy of your Elixir,
Once, this was written
As fingertips described
your face,
Made homage to the
echoes of your eyes,
Once, this was written
In the cursives of each
moment’s movements
And the gracile
alphabets of all your ways.
Review by: Neil Brooks
Book & Booklet Reviews
Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Webzine, Edition #8 (60) September 2011
Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below
Index of Reviewed Publications, Pulsar Poetry Webzine #8 (September 2011), click on the surname of an author, contributor or press, underlined below, to link to the review.
Walt Whitman' Songs of Male Intimacy and Love - University of Iowa Press
Slip Stream - Paula Green
Terminal Diagrams - Garrick Davis
Hoarding Conkers at Hailes Abbey - Neil Leadbeater
Finnish-American Poetry - Johanna Rauhala, Bill Vartnaw and Don Hagelberg
The Station Master - David Gill
*
Walt Whitman’s Songs of Male Intimacy and Love.
The Iowa Whitman Series. Edited by Betsy
Erkkila. Design by Richard Hendel.
Cover art: photos of Live Oak and Whitman, used courtesy of the Library of
Congress. Calamus photograph by
Linda and
Robert Scarth, reproduced with
permission. A lightly larger than A5 size perfect-bound paperback book, with a
full colour cover and 167 pages.
Published in year 2011 by the University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 52242, USA.
www.uiowapress.org
ISBN-13: 978-1-58729-958-2
and ISBN-10: 1-58729-958-5
$24.00
When I think of Walt Whitman my thoughts naturally turn to
the American Civil War and the image of Whitman hurrying through the wards of
the Washington army hospitals seeking news of his injured brother, and then
staying as a Wound-Dresser comforting and caring for the wounded soldiers.
As a result Whitman’s Songs of Male Intimacy and Love came as something
of a shock. But in the end these
are love poems and one can only ask oneself does it matter who is loving who.
Betsy Erkkila’s book is a scholarly work with as much space
devoted to the explanatory text as to the poetry.
In her book she seeks to set Whitman’s poems of male love into the
context of his own time – the second half the 19th Century.
A time of hidden love where Whitman is dreaming of a future in a distant
‘city of friends’ where ‘nothing
was greater than manly love’.
In his lifetime Whitman compared himself
to a ‘live-oak’ standing alone
‘unbending, lusty’ but without
friends, but knowing in his heart
that he could not live without a lover.
If you like Whitman’s poetry and want to find out more about
his life then you will learn a lot from this book.
But be aware that Whitman in one of his later poems addresses the reader
centuries hence with the hope that through his words he can ‘become
your lover’. Review by: John
Plevin
Slip Stream,
poems by Paula Green.
Slightly larger than A5 size, perfect-bound paperback book with a full
colour cover and 80 pages. Editor:
Anna Hodge. Painting, (hand blown
with a straw) by Antonio Murado.
Cover design: Athena Sommerfeld.
Published during year 2010 by Auckland University Press, University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand.
www.auckland.ac.nz/aup ISBN: 978-1-86940-462-8
Price ?
Paula Green, a New Zealander, in her 80 page book, is an
original in several ways. Is it a collection of poems? Only up to a point. Is it
a long poem on a central theme i.e. the history of her illness, her hospital
experiences, her operation? Again up to a point. It’s not a long poem, rather a
sequence of individual poems, some as short as two lines (but
not couplets). Rhymes play no part in
this poetry, any more than do traditional verse forms and metres. So free verse.
However, the poet is well aware of her critics e.g. p.65 :
That seems fine, they always say. / She pictures the same
story all mixed up.
To give you an idea of her colloquial style and bizarre flow
of ideas, her introductory poem runs as follows:
Sometimes she worries that she is not worried.
She is very calm. Like the white page before she
begins writing
or the water in the cat’s bowl.
She wonders if she should yell at passing cars.
Or get wild and pull out all the weeds along the
grass verge.
She wants to get on with things.
And so she does. She’s addicted to making lists (“She makes
a list of things to do because/all about her life goes on, merrily, sweetly…”)
She loves cryptic crosswords. She adores food. Here’s her appalled reaction to a
hospital dinner:
Two breasts covered in watery glaze,
one limp potato mound with
one stringy pumpkin mound
one fish fillet weathered like the dunes
and one ladle of bleached sauce.
There is also one bowl of sugary custard
beneath five syrupy peaches.
In brief, Slip Stream is a bounding outpouring that sweeps
you along, maybe protesting it isn’t really poetry at all, but irresistible
whatever it is. Review by:
David Gill
Terminal
Diagrams, poems
by Garrick Davis. Cover photograph
by James D Steele, cover design by
Beth Pratt.
www.ohioswallow.com
Slightly larger than A5 size, perfect-bound
paperback book with a full colour cover and 61 pages.
Published during year 2010 by Swallow Press / Ohio University Press,
Athens, Ohio 45701, USA. ISBN-13:
978-0-8040-1131-0 Price ?
What I first noticed
about this book was its striking cover. Some books have basic artwork on not so
shiny covers. The cover of Garrick
Davis’s book depicts his lady getting out of a gleaming Maserati - I was
instantly intrigued by the book’s silvered exterior which caught the sunlight
while I sat and read it, and was nicely surprised by the content of this
collection. They say “never judge a book by its cover,” but we all do somehow.
Garrick Davis finely
crafted poems describe a very contemporary world with an almost urban
apocalyptic eye, inspired by maps and airport lounges, where the reader is
launched into this landscape of the metal of technology of our age, where the
poet investigates the mechanical furniture of a futuristic land and the impact
this has on human experience, to revolving almost Eliot-esq poems. These
enigmatic stanzas made me think of T.S Eliot’s the Waste Land. Whether his
subject is a car smash on the freeways of Los Angeles or the Book of Revelation
transmitted by cable television, Davis’s stanzas conjure a kind of futuristic
noir. In poem after poem, he examines the artistic possibilities of the machine,
and its alterations of human experience, with a modern spirit that - as Charles
Baudelaire defined it - has embraced “the sublimity and monstrousness of
something new.”
When
some look on the modern world, they look upon it with a certain degree of shock
or future phobia. "Terminal Diagrams" is a collection of poetry from Garrick
Davis as he presents his own set of eyes on the material world, and how the
entire process has been mechanized and polished to a shiny surface. With such
design and thought, "Terminal Diagrams" is sure to entertain as it provokes and
travels. "Passing over the Suburbs of San Diego": From an airplane, the canyons
veined with blue --/and the decadence of each drained swimming pool of the
suburbs of the.
The poems have great
titles and there is a music in these poems that resonate of the now of our
“Ultramodern counter culture that sing out a grid-like mirror of star clusters,”
which is a line from the poets verse; I liked the rhythmic surge in "Metal
Machine Music," with its title borrowed from a Lou Reed track, gives us "the
pre-millennial tension" of "blips and beeps/instead of notes" of modern phones
and introduces us to the important symbol of "muzak," here "a muzak-of-the-spheres."
Muzak, that lift background music symphonist, runs throughout Terminal Diagrams,
reminding us of the future’s environment, restricting and changing our human
behaviour. I enjoyed this collection of poems for its Modernist shiny vision and
great use of language.
ULTRAMODERN
Everywhere, telephones
are ringing
And answered by people
paid
To sit and wait for
someone to speak
But when the clock says
they can leave,
They listen
It is evening.
Dusk light, strained
through smog,
Through radioactive dust
In the atmospheres,
METAL MACHINE MUSIC
These blips and beeps,
Instead of notes,
one hears
Are a machine’s
conceits.
Review by: Neil Brooks
Hoarding Conkers at Hailes Abbey, poems by Neil Leadbeater. A5 size, perfect-bound paperback book with a full colour cover and 53 pages. Published on 1st May, 2010 by The Littoral Press, 18 Bendlowes Road, Great Bardfield, Braintree, Essex, CM7 4RR. Cover photograph by Clare Harvey. ISBN 978-0955-8937-2-8
Neil Leadbeater focuses with sharp observation on the
natural world and the delight and amazement even its smallest and most obscure
arrangements inspire in him. He draws on his childhood, Middle Eastern travels,
and he must surely be a fisherman – one set of
poems homes in on British river fish. He writes with knowledge and
sympathy, knowing how to value stillness and the microscopically small,
conveying the fish’s view of the world. He uses natural forms and events as
images of wider ideas, concepts on a human scale, but does it quietly, with an
element of surprise but without fanfare or fuss:
“Now as we peer into its hollow rim
how closely we have come to see vapour moths and
beetles
whose quiet industry has worked its way
into the dead centre
of everything.”
Stylistically these poems have the feeling of miniatures
echoing the honed natural selection of their subjects, form and function
matched. Leadbeater shows his erudition with occasional Latin names, an echo of
the Psalms or Moliere, and he has a fondness for breaking into rhyme in the
final lines of poems. At moments there can be an odd balance between passion and
humour, poking fun even, as when Rachel holds her newborn son in her arms and
knows she will remember “his hue and his cry” for ever – seeming a wilfully odd
expression for the colour and wail of a newborn.
This is a striking collection, full of character and a
living sense of the natural world. Review by:
Eve Kimber
I'll be honest about this. I had no idea what to expect. My
knowledge of Finland and its culture is pretty much limited to knowing that
Nokia come from there and Abba don't. But, as I discovered, some good poets have
some Finnish blood.
This book is a collection by three of them. The slim volume
is only 58 pages long including notes but there is a wide range of poems on
offer. There are pantoums, shape poems, traditional poems written in cantos and
more modern pieces that are heavy on enjambment but weak on punctuation or
capital letters. There are poems on the demons that plague Vietnam veterans (my
favourite one here), poets on strike (who would notice?), the attractiveness of
nature as compared to technology, the feeding of angels by the roadside and some
amusing wordplay. I enjoyed 'when the grain crows sigh high / when the grain
grows scythe high'.
The limited budget of the production does cause some issues.
One poem, 'There Are Still Tigers', for example, has several parenthesised
numbers included within the text. My first impression was that it was an
experiment with the 'modern' in a way that didn't really work. Were they random?
Were they intended to signify a score of some sort? A progression? When I read
the book to the end, I discovered that they were actually footnotes. I'm glad I
didn't read the poem aloud at some open mic. I wouldn't have known how to
pronounce the brackets anyway.
All in all, though, this was a good collection of poems that let me see a world I never knew existed – the Finnish poetry circles of America. While there were a few poems that were specifically about Finland, the majority were just about life.
Review by: Andrew
Barber
The Station Master,
a sequence of imagined encounters linking Joseph Conrad, Josef Löwy, (Kafka’s
uncle), and Franz Kafka; by David Gill.
A5 size stapled booklet with a two colour cover and 16 pages.
Published during year 2006. No ISBN.
Price ? Enquires via Pulsar
editor.
In August 1914, Franz Kafka wrote a fragment of a short
story in his diary under the title ‘Erinnerungen an Die Kaldabahn,’
(recollections of the Kalda Railway).
David Gill takes this brief fragment and makes it the basis of his
account of Kafka’s uncle who operated a trading station in, apparently, the
Belgian Congo, although there is no evidence of this.
On the basis of the fact that Kafka’s uncle, Josef Löwy,
left from Ostend in January 1891 and that Joseph Conrad was passing through the
port, also on his way to the Congo in the same month, Gill spins his fantasy of
meetings between the two men, first in Ostend and then in the Congo.
Index of Reviewed Publications, Pulsar Poetry Webzine #7 (June 2011), click on the surname of an author, contributor or press, underlined below, to link to the review.
AUP New Poets 4 - Harry Jones, Erin Scudder & Chris Tse
Window on the World - Ingrid Riley
A Miscellany of Muses - Derek Malpass
The Sons of Camus, Writers International Journal - various contributors
Pennine Ink 29 - various contributors
The Hawk's Mewl and other poems - Nigel Humphreys
Vespula Vanishes and other poems - A C Evans
The Invention of Butterfly - Christopher James
Dole Anthems - Paul Tanner
Carpe Naturae in Poetry - Michèle Ford
Steal Away Boy - David Mitchell
*
AUP New Poets 4,
(Auckland University Press), published March 2011. Poems by
Harry Jones, Erin Scudder and Chris Tse.
Slightly larger than A5, perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and
89 pages. Published by Auckland
University Press, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New
Zealand. Cover design and illustration by:
Christine Hansen. ISBN
978-1-86940-474-1 £12.50
Handsome in eye-catching orange. Full marks to cover designer Christine Hansen.
So that said, what's in it?
The three poets, all resident in New Zealand, are very different when it comes
to form, subject and biographical background and yet they sit well in here
together, and they are all in confessional mood.
A few lines from the poem Dog by Canadian ex-pat Erin Scudder. She sums
up the 'feel' I get from much of the poetry in this volume.
A dog travels, down the road, and up the stairs,
bringing with it what it is:
glistening coat, plain health,
silent legs, an easy and silent pace,
Harry Jones sums up the 'sense' I get from almost all the poetry in here. In
fact he touches on an important aspect that every new poet needs to be aware of.
Transparency. Clear glass to see through. The poem Curtains hangs neatly
together over 110 or so lines.
Because we have no curtains,
We see the dark when it comes
We've made no decision
Never to have curtains again.
With Sing Joe the third poet, Chris Tse, explores an incomer's place in
the world through the medium of his Chinese ancestry. He takes his chopsticks
and sifts through the noodles.
Just another son missing
in a long line of dislocations
from the motherland
from a mother tongue
Three new poets with something to say, and each saying it with maturity and
confidence.
Review by: Gwilym Williams
Window on the World,
poems by Ingrid Riley.
Slightly smaller than A5 size, perfect-bound book with a full colour
cover and 79 pages. Edited by
Dr Graham Riley.
Cover design by Clare Brayshaw. Published by the author during year 2011, 18
Uplands, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7BL.
ISBN 978-0-9525304-4-9 £6.99
Window on the World is Ingrid Riley’s fifth book of poetry.
The collection numbers some 60 poems arranged in thematic sections:
Spying Eyes; Contrasting Images; and Untamed Forces.
There is a lyrical quality to her poetry.
We see this in the ghost in ‘Is Anybody There?’ with its ‘quivering body … disappearing through a concealed exit.’ and in
‘Threads of Fear’ where ‘People live in
misty solitude’. But perhaps
more importantly there is a sharp edge to her work, a judgemental eye cast on a
‘valueless world’ with its swaggering
youths their eyes ‘hard and cruel, full of
malice’ and the ‘Politicians’ cast as ‘cheap prophets … plunging the world into financial chaos’.
War also raises its ugly head in ‘Shattered Lives’ with a landscape where
‘blood red lilies appear among the dead’.
A cruelty matched by the natural disaster in ‘Earthquakes’ where ‘The
irritated Earth takes her revenge’.
Going through the book I realised that the more I read the
more I appreciated the sentiments and the depth of her poetry finding my head
nodding in agreement. There is
little evidence here of a ‘life on the
back burner’ hinted at in the poem ‘A Change of Direction’.
I for one am looking forward to publication no. 6.
Review by: John Plevin
A Miscellany of Muses, poems by Derek Malpass. Slightly larger than A5 size, perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and 65 pages. Published during year 2011 by Matador, 5 Weir Road, Kibworth Beauchamp, Leicester, LE8 0LQ. ISBN 978-1848765-696 Price ? books@troubador.co.uk www.troubador.co.uk/matador
An enjoyable follow-up collection of humour and light verse
to the authors first Conversations with a Muse.
A Miscellany of Muses is a entertaining look at these nine muses that make up
the poets inspiration for this collection of verse and they all make an guest
appearance on the pages in this second collection . If the reader has not come
across these nine muses in the first collection they will soon get to know them
through this miscellany. Here are some of the muses in question: Melpomene the
moaner, Polyhymnia the professional, unhappy Clio, dancing Terpsichore, astral
Urania, Thalia the comic and Euterpe the flautist. These witty poems are to be
read as one continuous narrative if you can stop laughing that is, between the
birdsong of May if your an outside reader that is, which is great at the moment
although many of the poems have there own charm and distinctive rhyme scheme to
suit each persona of the muses musings. I always tend to read the poems out-loud
to audience of feathered listeners and sometimes to a neighbour pegging out
washing in the splendour of the sunshine. I most confess I had to look up some
of the classical myths and Latin not being educated in classical mythology but
enjoyed and I even know where the retail outlet Argo’s got their name now.
I enjoyed the musical descriptions in the poem
Part of a symphony;
Then gradually, almost imperceptibly,
Various motifs begin to cohere,
Complementing each other.
Hesitant at first, then growing with confidence,
The music evolves like a melodic jigsaw,
A soundscape gradually emerging,
As if mists are clearing,
Each thematic element finding its place.
And if you have ever ponder or reflected on how a certain flat pack Swedish
furnishings company got its name?, why magnets go on for ever with-out losing
energy, or how cosmic stardust is formed, then look inside these pages there is
also a bit mythology and a few Latin words too. And by the way Erato is from
Greek and Roman mythology - the muse of lyric poetry and hymns coming from the
Greek origin meaning, literally `lovely` so this collection is quite educational
too.
The Muses Garden Party
Resplendent in the summer sun,
The broad green leaves of Helicon,
Swept downward towards the sea,
The lower meadows formed a park,
A high stone wall swung in an arc,
To a marble portico-
Guarded by a grim centaur,
Who opened up the great bronze door,
And bowed his head to Erato.
Review by: Neil Brooks
The Sons of Camus, Writers International – Journal.
Autumn 2010, Issue 7. A5 size
perfect-bound book with a two-colour cover and 200 pages.
Poems, writing, and essays from various contributors. Submissions
considered from writers over 55 years only and only via
e-mail to:
Miss Ann J. Davidson, editor,
scwijournal@earthlink.net Publisher:
Rubi Andredakis,
roubi@cytanet.com.cy
ISBN 1705-429X
and 978-9963-668-30-4 Price,
including shipping cost is: €9.00, £6.00, USA $10.00 Canada $15.00
This in some ways eccentric magazine, published annually and running to 200 pages is limited to “Friends over 55”. That knocks out a wedge of Pulsar Poets for a start. Nor is it clear whether it is open to any ripe contributors or just those who are mature and had work already accepted by the journal. International it certainly is, its contributors, for example, jetting in from New Zealand, Zimbabwe and China. But whether you have to be an admirer of Albert Camus is less clear, but the contributors’ list does include some daughters of Camus. The journal boasts both poetry and prose with generous page allocations to a relatively small number of writers. As far as the prose is concerned, two writers stand out, Raymond Humphreys and Morelle Smith. The former has chosen mostly novelists to illustrate themes e.g. Yuletide (mostly Dickens), Writers at Sea (mostly Conrad and Melville) but thoroughly readable. Morelle Smith not only produces richly descriptive travelogue prose, but some moving poetry too. I read her account of Novi Sad, a City on the Danube with interest, since I may be visiting it in a month’s time. One of her finest poems From Sarajevo to Carcassonne reaches a poignant moment when the writer is driving with a Bosnian couple away from Carcassone, all listening to the soundtrack of the man’s cello music recorded in a bombed-out library in Sarajevo. A car crashes into them. No-one is hurt. The Bosnian woman says calmly,”It’s nothing/ after what we have lived through.” Review by: David Gill.
*
Pennine Ink 29, poetry and prose. A5 size stapled booklet with a two colour cover and 45 pages. Published 2008 by Pennine Ink Writers’ Workshop. Compiling editor, Laura Sheridan, Mid Pennine Arts, The Gallery, Yorke Street, Burnley, Lancashire, BB1 1HD. Editors: Sylvia Gartside, Alex Marsh, and Laura Sheridan. Cover artwork, Florentyna by LS. ISBN: 0-9548891-3-4 Price £3.00 (price quoted in year 2008). Sheridansand1@yahoo.co.uk
With a long list of contributors, 51 in this their 29th
issue, there is bound to be a varying degree of accomplishment among the pieces.
Clearly, different publications will have different standards, and I would
consider this to be overgenerous in its scope.
Let’s start with the poems. A number of them seem to be gap
fillers. Indeed some can hardly be regarded as poems, though there may be a
flash of wit, tenderness or thoughtfulness in them.
Now, we could start a decade long debate on what is poetry and what
distinguishes a poem from a, well, non-poem; and a living poem from a workshop
artefact.
So, while many of the poems draw from experiences we would
find moving, they would need to take the leap into a higher orbit, with richer
lexis and turns of speech we don’t expect but that deliver further and/or deeper
meanings. They are at the “interesting idea” and “interesting draft” level. That
would be the case of How they Met
Themselves by Laura Sheridan –with its sci-fi conceit where a couple come
across their younger selves “on a wide street /at the edge of eternity”. In
The Gift, Christine Potter tells how a
stone presented by a friend conjures up its ancient life as a knife or axe head,
establishing a timeless connexion with fellow humans of a remote past.
Marion Beck’s Bitter Fruit tells us of an old man bringing exotic fruit to his
wife in, we assume, a care home. The virtue of the poem is how much is said in a
few words (“he visits his wife of sixty years”, “she will stare as he feeds
plump segments / into her mouth the corners drooling”). There is an added
poignancy in how he relives their past, seeing her and their children as they
were when she was the one who bought them fruit.
There were poems that exposed moral conundrums in
thought-provoking stories, such as Revenge
and Man Enough by Richard Lighthouse; those that touched on complex
aspects of human experience: aging, family, relationships, painful or happy
memories, illness. However, the language was more often than not predictable and
didn’t spark off any revelations.
The proof of a poem is partly in how it clings to our memory.
One puts the book down, walks away to get on with survival and a week or two
later, some have sieved down into oblivion, some have left a mark, whether a
hint or a smack – though it has to be said, there are instances of negative
memory too; but we will not go into that here. I remember this little poem
called Thomas Edwards’ Pocket Watch by Byron Benyon. The poet and I
disagree on how to use the apostrophe; I am of the Keats’s, James’s conviction.
Aside from that, I appreciate the pause for reflection and the subtle hand. Here
is this watch, which has survived the carnage of war; only the carnage is not
mentioned, and no need to mention it either. We know from history, from
documentaries, from art, from poetry. Say “blossom”, that’s enough. We share
this perplexity that the object lasts better and longer than the subject, and
the journey from the lifeless body to the museum where only leftovers of us
remain. Philip Burton’s The Dry Spell
uses lexis in a more sophisticated manner than most poems in the collection, and
the weaved syntax is mature and thoughtful.
The motif of white is pursued throughout the piece, and linked to the
underlying notion of dryness, which interestingly, takes different hues of
meaning as the composition progresses, but always conveying a sense of loss.
A notch above were two other poems I would like to comment
on. One was Counting for my Life by
Nicola Daly. A filmic zoom strategy carries our eyes with the narrator’s eyes
along the space the scene takes place in, and away from the brunt of what is
going on, but far from alleviating the sense of the tragedy, it intensifies its
effect. That is what poetry is about too. Peter Schwartz’s
Son of Water is one of the most
experimental poems here and bases its impact on the stringing of intensely
suggestive baffling images. Surrealist, a tad; beautifully so, and of that
mesmerising quality that entices and lingers. At the same time, good poem that
it is, Son of Water exercises its
evocative power on reality itself. On taking it in, it has affected my
perception of the rivers near us, specially, for some reason, the Thames as it
runs through Lechlade and beyond. It also has left me with memorable lines, and
a stunning last verse: “and when his
feral song begins / with the liturgy of raindrops and people / empty their
flasks to catch pieces / of this horizon, he, the son of water will turn/
to ice, like an anchor against / the sea’s quarantine /(a shadow no
more)”.
Review by: Cristina
Newton
The Hawks Mewl and other
poems;
selected poems by Nigel Humphreys.
Slightly larger than A5 size, stapled booklet with a two colour cover and
38 pages. Two hundred and fifty
copies published in May 2007 by Arbor Vitae Press, BM Spellbound, London, WC1N
3XX. Introduction by Jonathan Wood, editor, Parhelion Poetry Series, London. No ISBN.
Price £4.99 + £1.00 postage and packing, (price quoted in year 2007).
Thratheewoodz@hotmail.com
This is a beautifully
presented collection, the first volume of the Parhelion Poetry Series imprint,
and editor Jonathan Wood’s introductory comment on the ‘rare beauty’ of this
poet’s ‘observational clarity’ is borne out in many of the poems included here.
The bird of the title poem is ‘perched high/in a spindle pine’ and ‘backlit by
rift landscape’, the resonance of her cry ‘reaching back to Druid caves.’
Humphreys is as perceptive of flora as he is
of fauna, writing touchingly of a dead beech tree that the forest will ‘grow
back as though it had never been’, words that echo his, and our own,
mortality.
In the delightful poem
Cowrie Shells, a memory of his mother,
he perceives beautifully the shells’ ‘humpty’ shape and ‘crimped mouths
which/sucked their bottom lip’. The poem explores their exotic connections in a
wonderfully evocative stanza that moves from Polynesian queens to African
bazaars and the gambling dens of Dahomey.
Mortality is the theme of
For valour, in which a vicar
conducting a funeral service knows it to be a ‘dress rehearsal’ for his own
imminent death. Humphreys observes his departure from the proceedings with
powerful simplicity:
I saw him in the car park
over
their heads,
a
passenger in his own car
quietly
slipping away.
The best of Humphreys’ poems are those that are simplest in
their use of language. In others, a piling up of descriptive terms and unusual
words draws attention from the poems’ focus onto the words themselves,
compromising the very ‘observational clarity’ that can be his strength. However,
despite sections that can sometimes feel overloaded with effects, there is much
to enjoy in this varied collection.
Review by: JK Sharp
Vespula Vanishes and other poems
by A C Evans.
Stapled booklet with a two colour cover and 27 pages.
Published in year 2007 by Inclement Publishing, c/o White Rose House, 8
Newmarket Road, Fordham, Cambs, CB7 5LL.
Limited edition. Edited by
Michelle Foster, cover design by author.
No ISBN. Price ?
This is a spare, elegant
collection of poems on themes of darkness and desire, a sense of
disconnectedness and dissonance in the world and a search for identity. The
identity that appears to be at once longed for, embraced and feared is at times
personal identity and sexual identity, at times the identity of the universe we
inhabit –
“....this decaying mansion
We call home.”
A.C.Evans has a wide vision, encompassing
images of dying suns, at the same time as he describes the detail of “cracked
pavements and overturned rubbish bins” in his unflinching exploration of a
“ruined world” full of “the pain of separation,
Or
worse, the anguish
Of not knowing you.”
A sensual love of words, a delight in riddles
and paradox, pervade the poems. Some, especially in the early part of the book,
are very spare, compressed, some lines consisting of only one or two words, but
this challenges the reader to pause and give a word such as “reflect” or
“spreading” its full value. The first poem in the collection, “Misplaced Poem,”
issues an arrogant challenge to the “casual, friendless, unwary reader,” to look
inwards and take nothing for granted,
join the search: “you
Must abandon your decaying faith, you......
Must, now, see yourself.....as you are.”
The unwary reader might well be unsettled by
parts of the exploration, such as “Slave Mask,” but these poems are stark,
delicate and forensically precise in searching out the darkness, pain and hope
like “slivers of glass” in a flawed world.
Review by:
Eve Kimber
The Invention of Butterfly,
poems by Christopher James.
Slightly larger than A5 size, perfect-bound book with a full colour cover
and 75 pages. Published during year
2006 by Ragged Raven Press, 1 Lodge Farm, Snitterfield, Warwickshire, CV37 0LR.
Cover painting by Joseph James: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. £7.00 in year 2006.
www.raggedraven.co.uk
ISBN 0-9542397-9-2
raggedravenpress@aol.com
What leaps out from this book, almost from the start, is the
sheer specificity of the adjectives. 'The London Underground Hand-Cart' is a
good example. The poker being played on the tube is Chinese, the drinking songs
are Portuguese, the clocks Swiss. The burgers are made from ostrich and the
cider is flat. Throughout, James uses adjectives widely and with a great deal of
thought. There is no sense that words are used randomly. Often, this is very
effective: there is an erudition to his poems that requires the imagery to be
accurate. 'Import', on the subject of Shakespeare's wine, echoes Sir Toby Belch
in Twelfth Night by referencing the Canary Islands' reputation for fine plonk.
Sometimes, though, a little more vagueness would have helped the poem, made it
more accessible to the reader by allowing them to fill the gaps with their own
experiences.
'You will be expected to marry smartly
the worlds of art and science'. These words, from 'Cold Storage' have been taken
to heart in this generously filled collection. Throughout, James uses a range of
zoological, botanical, avian, sociological and other themes to add some
scientific rigour to his work. This is a poet who wants to describe the world
correctly, even using the Latin names for various fish (which he helpfully
translates in the footnotes). To put it simply, James is clearly a clever chap
who likes his poems to be as accurate as possible. This, his first collection,
is a sign of good things to come.
Review by: Andrew Barber
Dole
ANTHEMS, poems by
Paul Tanner. Slightly larger
than A5 size perfect bound-book with a full colour cover and 121 pages. ISBN
978-1-4475-4828-7 Published in year 2011 by Lulu.com
www.lulu.com/spotlight/TANNER £8.95
(includes post and packaging), or download PDF for £3.50. Also may be
purchased from: News from Nowhere, Radical Community Bookshop, Bold Street,
Liverpool.
Note from Pulsar editor: this bloke writes like a
tongue-in-cheek revolutionary, a Wolfie Smith type but with a harder point of
view. To a certain extent you could say there is a nihilistic, punk type, blank
generation approach to his poems - but I like the cutting edge and the incisive
wit; he tells it like it is. You have to smile because you know that most
of what he's saying is spot on. Sample from poem, 'Our Trap,'
"being stuck there / on the wet Job Centre steps / with a tatty sow in pink
trackies / coughing the details of her latest pregnancy / and an S-shaped
creature with no teeth / trying to snatch the fags out of your pocket / as you
wait for your dole / and are are always skint . . ."
Carpe
Naturae in Poetry,
poems by Michèle Ford.
Slightly
larger than A5 size, perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and 45 pages.
Dedication by
Justin Sullivan.
Published during year 2010.
ISBN
9781453836040
Price?
michèleford1@yahoo.co.uk
This well
produced book contains 33 one-page poems, consisting mainly of impressionistic
dashes of highly coloured and intense phrases. Ford, who states on the cover
that “her colourful life experiences are intricately woven into this gothic
verse,” does not altogether demonstrate intricate weaving; rather, her poetic
method seems to be that of the Impressionists in painting, laying vibrant and
distinct notes next to each other, sometimes without any connection or blending,
so that they will resonate into meaning in the mind of the reader. Sometimes
this works, as in “Flamenco Flamingo”:
“Leaves flutter in streets
Dancing round death,
Like mottled fire tongues,
Life’s parching lungs.”
For me, on other occasions, a line such as “Hopscotch treacheries spreading benign,” failed to yield any meaning however much I squeezed it, or stood back and half closed my eyes. The initial suggestion of children unkind to their playmates seems contradicted by “benign.” Better also not to use titles such as “Haiku” if the poem does not follow any of the form’s norms. Ford’s love of nature and of words, however, infuses her work, and there are many beautiful evocations of seasons and places – “Summer buzzing ticking and creeping,
Shadows of clouds sailing the skies,” an alternation between sweet and gothic
moods, which gives a strong sense of a young writer open to life’s experiences.
Her poetic method needs development to better communicate with the reader, and
give a deep and sharp sense of her meaning rather than – at times – creating
confusion. Some of her poems might lend themselves to being set to music.
Steal
Away Boy,
selected poems of David Mitchell.
Slightly larger than A5 size perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and 256
pages; also contains black and white photographs.
Edited by Martin Edmond and
Nigel Roberts. Cover
design by: Keely O’Shannessy.
Published by Auckland University Press, University of Auckland, Private
Bag 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand. ISBN 978-1-86940-459-8
www.auckland.ac.nz/aup
Price ?
This substantial volume was produced with the help of David
Mitchell’s daughter, Geneviève, and the authors and editors Martin Edmond and
Nigel Roberts with the aim of presenting ‘the lyrical beat intensity of an
antipodean hipster and iconic poet.’
A considerable part is devoted to a detailed and painstaking description of
Mitchell’s life.
The editors do their utmost to establish the best of
credentials for Mitchell, likening him to seventeenth century ‘sonneteers,’ he
liked to spell words in archaic ways, why is not clear.
They also like to compare him with Villon, and even the poets of Ancient
Greece, but without presenting any real evidence.
Indeed, Mitchell’s list of alleged influences, ranging from Jesus Christ,
via Marilyn Monroe, Anne Frank to Donald Duck, gives the impression of a
desperate desire to send up anything and everything within reach.
The editors have pointed out Mitchell’s flat style of
delivery and the fact that the poetry is written to be heard rather than read.
This is borne out by Mitchell’s choice of subjects like the ‘My Lai
atrocities,’ where the final poem has less to do with the event than with the
sufferings of his wife. Much of the
poetry relates to the poet’s own world and his attempts to organise and
categorise his personal relationships.
In the ‘Poem for my unborn son’ he tries to foreshadow the
boy’s development, but is inevitably drawn back to his own experience, trying to
project a persona which is not his. ‘Escape is the only answer, ‘steal away
boy.’ The poem on his father’s death
‘old rock clad man, sea girt . . .’ again fails to get beneath the surface and
express feeling about the subject.
The author’s desire that his work should be read aloud is
everywhere apparent in the way the lines are arranged, nearly always with gaps
between them, sometimes consisting of only one word.
Much of the work here, as in ’Singing Bread’ or Albino Angels,’ where
image is piled upon image, whether or not comprehensible, shows the author to be
a left-over from the beat generation, using the relentless piling on of images
to bludgeon the listener into some kind of understanding
On occasion, as in ‘Maltese Jack,’ Mitchell is able to
organise the images to convey a picture or a mood, as in the portrayal of Soho
or of Paris in ‘The Singing Bread.’
This mood-building is carried over into some of the later work, such as ‘Dark
Fire’ with its brooding depiction of a savage past, or ‘Armageddon/Hokitika
Blue,’ where he muses on New Zealand’s savage past.
In this case the savagery of the white man. In poems like these, there is
a hint of the major poet David Mitchell could have become, if only, and here the
old cliché is appropriate, life had not got in the way.
Book & Booklet Reviews
Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Webzine, Edition #6 (58) March 2011
Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below
The Second Fifty - Jenefer Ann Murray
A fanfare of Musical Limericks - Ron Lubin
Krax #46 - various contributors
Krax #47 - various contributors
Acumen 66 (January 2010) - various contributors
The Second Fifty, poems by Jenefer Ann Murray. An A5 size perfect bound book with a three colour cover and 85 pages. Published during year 2008 by Palores Publications, 11a Penryn Street, Redruth, Cornwall, TR15 2SP. ISBN 978-0-9556682-7-2 £8.50.
Jenefer Ann Murray takes the reader on a memorable journey through her childhood and to some imaginary places, recalling her experiences in the poems ‘Windmill,’ ‘Party Hat’ and ‘The Pebble.’ In the poem ‘The Box,’ everything is seen from a three year olds viewpoint, and the language is correspondingly simple.
The poet selects apparently unimportant details, her problems with her hair in ‘Uneasy Lies the Headgear’ or ‘Apple Trees’ and again refers them back to her childhood and youth. In ‘Lucky Girl’ the poet describes her school years and admits something which comes over in most poems, how she is comfortable with herself, ‘I admit I love me.’ This ease with herself has carried her through the horrors of boarding school and the loss of her brother in ‘On Being Treated Right’ to the death of a small child in ‘Grief Poem II.’ One of her main themes here is love, whether experienced by the flighty young girl in ‘Being in Love,’ the disillusioned young woman in ‘Fortunate Sorrow’ or the 81 year old in ‘Gorgeous Old Man.’
Here, as in all her collections, Jenefer Ann Murray ranges widely across the various aspects of her long life. In ‘Looking Back’ she refers to the ‘vast tumultuous waterfall’ of life, and we sense that she generally approves of what she has lived through, and is ready for ‘one further flight . . .’ before the tempestuous journey is rounded.
Above review by
Ingrid Riley
*
A Fanfare of Musical Limericks
by Ron
Rubin; foreword by
Humphrey Lyttelton.
An A6 size hardbook book with a full colour cover and 172 pages.
First published during year 1986; revised and expanded edition published
in year 2008. Illustrations
by Hazeldine and
Tim Holder.
Published by Hampstead Press, 16 Heathville Road, London, N19 3AJ.
hampstead@blueyonder.co.uk ISBN
978-0-9557628-1-9 £10.95
Imagine it. A book full of limericks. Some 170 pages of limericks all with a link to music, musical instruments or players. And if that wasn’t enough you get a Foreword by Humphrey Lyttelton plus a sprinkling of racy illustrations.
Ron Rubin is a jazz musician (piano)
with it seems a sense of humour.
A Fanfare of Musical Limericks was first published
in 1986 but has recently been revised and expanded. You could easily imagine him
entertaining fellow musicians with his limericks during those interminable
journeys between sessions - something short and sharp to keep everyone sane.
I assume that once you have composed your first 100
limericks it is difficulty to stop.
Limericks and humour go together, and according to
Humph, ‘musicians
have a style of humour all to themselves’.
Here’s an example:
The piano’s a clever invention,
But one thing perhaps I should mention:
It’s sensitive strings,
Like the players – poor things-
Are always in need of attention.
A roving musician called Rubin
Liked black coffee, with one sugar cube in;
But one night in
At a topless café,
It was served to him white, with one boob in.
If you want to see the accompanying illustration, you need to buy the book.
I suspect that musicians live closer to the edge than most of us. An edge where ‘the choice is a stark one between laughter and suicide’.
From here in the comfort zone, a limerick a day may be too much. But I could possibly survive one a week.
Above review by John Plevin
*
Krax #46, (January 2010?): poems, reviews and illustrations from various contributors. Stapled, untrimmed A5 sized booklet with a two colour cover and ? number of pages, (pages are not numbered). Frequency approx every twelve months, can be longer. No ISSN. Editor: Andy Robson, c/o 63 Dixon Lane, Leeds, LS12 4RR. £4.50 $9.00
Krax is full of fun and thoughtful poems. The main thread of
the poetry and short stories gracing the pages of this A5 bible is fun and
knowledge. There is every day humour and the poems cover a wide range of subject
matter and off-beat attraction, both in the UK and Stateside. Krax also has its
own mighty review pages of small press reviews, which are delicately interlaced
with poetry competitions and info. Krax has interviews with poets and some nifty
cartoony illustrations too.
I really appreciated that Krax revels in its own joy and
silliness. We all need a bit of that from time to time. There were quite a few
laugh-out-loud poems that made me chuckle. The subject matter in this issue
ranges from poems about Time Machines / Sitting on the lav/ Odes to sausages/
Husband shopping/ Super Poodles/ Pirates/ sonnets/ Giving up smoking/
Photocopiers. There’s a very eccentric mix to keep you reading and smiling,
depending on your own sense of humour, if you have one that is.
So you sit to scribe a sonnet
As a poet you may pose
Scratch about sonorous syllables
Sonnets are not caws of crows
Then you pause a pronoun
For example "you" "you" "you"
Gives you overt alliteration
Hooks a reader on to you.
You the poet poeticizing
Reaching for the readers soul
All your oo-s and A-s imploring
Baring all to share your whole
With the book-worm, with the horse- woman
With the often over-looked.
If you write romantic sonnets
you must keep the reader hooked. oo?
You!
Richard Cheevers
Above Review by
Neil
Brooks
Krax #47,
(November
2010): poems, reviews and illustrations from various contributors. Stapled,
untrimmed A5 sized booklet with a two colour cover and? number of pages, (pages
are not numbered). Frequency approx
every twelve months, can be longer.
No ISSN. Editor:
Andy Robson,
c/o 63 Dixon Lane, Leeds, LS12 4RR.
£4.50 $9.00
Rising costs and internet competition mean that small press poetry magazines
struggle to survive.
A
notable exception appears to be Krax Magazine. You won't find it on the
internet. It's a genuine
blast from the
past.
So
what is it about KRAX? What brings in contributions from the likes of
Michael Newman, Oz Hardwick
and David Pike?
Why are people posting stuff to the c/o address in Leeds from corners of the
world?
The clues, as they say, are here. In issue 47 there is a lot of material from
the USA; Kentucky, Texas, California and New York to pick a few random
locations. There are also many poems from the ladies. 60 Minutes Creation
News Magazine from Susan Levasseur caught my eye. Here's an extract:
Ducks dive for food
With brisk, bristling beaks.
Shimmering fish scramble
Flit-flop under water.
Bees perk up with a
Goulash of perfumes
Inspiring them to sweetness.
Water dances decidedly over
Sun-streaked rocks.
Now -
Tell us the news.
But in KRAX there's the other end of the bardic spectrum to be found too. John
V. Spinale's Birth Control
illustrates a point:
We gave up Martinis
On learning what they do.
Our daughter was Martini One,
Our son Martini Two.
As
well as poetry KRAX contains quality graphics, cartoons and articles. But what's
the real KRAX secret? Simple. KRAX doesn't take itself too seriously. It's great
fun. You'll enjoy it.
Above
review by
Gwilym
Williams
*
Acumen 66,
January 2010;
a literary journal, the first issue in Acumen’s 25th year.
New poetry, prose and reviews.
An A5 size perfect bound book with a full colour cover and 124 pages.
Editor:
Patricia Oxley;
Advisory Editor:
Danielle Hope:
6 the Mount, Higher Furzeham, Brixham, South Devon, TQ5 8QY and 4
Thornhill Bridge Wharf, London, N1 0RU.
Consultant Editor:
William Oxley.
Book Reviews Editor:
Glyn Pursglove,
25 St. Albans Road, Brynmill, Swansea, SA2 0BP.
www.acument-poetry.co.uk
ISSN 0964-0304 Single copy prices: £4.50 UK,
$10.00 USA.
Acumen is a well-established literary
journal edited by Patricia Oxley, assisted by her husband William, and now in
its 26th year. Subscribers to Acumen 66 not only received a sunflower
on the cover but a free packet of sunflower seeds, (which, incidentally, failed
to reach this reviewer). Poetry rings the changes with literary essays. Among
the poets are famous names like Wendy Cope, Andrew Motion and Alan Brownjohn.
Where serious verse predominates in Acumen, Wendy Cope’s
A is for
The Archers and Adultery comes as
light refreshment. By and large the Archers behave themselves, but “I listen
sometimes, doing random checks/ So I’ll know when there’s more illicit sex.”
Another poem (a serious one this time on the subject of semantics ) entitled
Meaning by June Hall impressed me
considerably, in lines like “Meaning cannot be confined –we miss and find and
miss it/again and again like a sea-bird riding the wind, visible and invisible…”
Among the literary essays I was fascinated by Ruth O’Callaghan’s
Observations on Mongolian Women’s Poetry,
a realm of poetry totally new to me. But best of all was Thomas Land’s
How a Poet’s Killer has become a Hero in
Hungary. Despite the title with its emphasis on Sergeant Andras Talás,
the essay is an amazing and moving homage to a very fine poet Miklós
Radnóti.
He was with a group of other Hungarian-Jewish prisoners on a “deadmarch”
westwards in 1944 when he was executed by his guard. Radnóti’s
poems were recovered, much admired, and became available in English translation.
Editor’s note: I confiscated the
sunflower seeds, to give to my grandchildren.
DP
Book & Booklet Reviews
Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Webzine, Edition #5 (57) December 2010
Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below
Hereafter Landscapes - Jody Azzouni
When You Come Again Will You Never Go - Andreas Morgner
Made in Germany - Julian Woodford
A Mermaid's Tale of Xanadon't and other poems -Wendy Webb and Guest Poets
This Is Not What You Think - Jim Murdoch
Kokopelli's Dance and Other Poems - Bryan Owen
The So-Called Sonnets - Bruce McRae
*
Hereafter Landscapes,
poems by
Jody Azzouni.
Landscape format, perfect-bound book, 9” x 7” size, with a full colour
cover and 56 pages, (also features colour illustrations and engravings by John
Martin, 1789 – 1843). Published in
March 2010. The Poet’s Press. 279 – ½ Thayer St, Providence, RI02906, USA;
www.poetspress.org
ISBN 0-922558-42-6.
$19.95 papaerback.
jodyazzouni@mindspring.com
Jody Azzouni was born in New York.
His poetry speaks of the “invisible
future” but is addressed to a complacent present.
A present where we seem indifferent to the pain and damage we inflict on
the planet leading to a future where “the
ashes flutter like black moths” and the “water
from the sky is acid”. A future
where there may be no place for Mankind.
The poems are aptly
accompanied by illustrations from the engravings of John Martin (1789-1843),
engravings that gave nightmares to generations of Victorian schoolchildren.
This bleak view of the future of humanity leaps at us right
from his first poem ‘Oracles for modern times’ where our gods are “without
magic”, simply faces trapped in the “coins
in our pockets”. A future where “we
will wander the earth like plastic bags.”
Each poem can be seen as a key unlocking the door to a dark world.
A world where our noble ambitions turn out to be simple greed.
Consider the poem ‘Will we still have blogs?’:
“We were an empire once
(but the binge of landscape is over).
Only skulls still move like armadillos
(and we can finally retire the wheel).
When the last new thing is made.”
When You Come Again Will You Never Go, poems by
Andreas Morgner.
Slightly larger that A5 stapled booklet with
a full colour cover and 56 pages. Colour photographs included.
Published during year 2009 by Unlikely Books, 500s. Mesa St,. #389, El
Paso, Texas 79901, USA.
www.UnlikelyStories.org ISBN-13:
978-0-9822934-3-0 $10.00
This is a powerful single-theme
collection of poems stimulated by appalling conditions in many parts of the
African continent. The American
poet, Andreas Morgner, has been able to convey in close-up such nightmares as a
slaughter yard in Nigeria, a filthy gold mine in Burkina Faso, a massacre in
Sierra Leone. Four of the poems are set in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
the quite recent atrocities described reminiscent of those recorded a century
earlier by that intrepid investigator E.D. Morel in
Red Rubber. Plus
ça change...
Many of poems narrate poignant situations, conveying the
poet’s sympathy for the long-suffering Africans: the father whose wife has been
killed by militia, and whose baby son he watches over in a clinic throughout the
night until morning breaks:
“The father hears a sigh and in the melting
shadows, a small eye opens.” Or the
hotel waiters, treated with contempt by army peace-keepers and self-satisfied
diplomats they have been serving, finally go home.
“Down the streets to where friends call
Them by name, the evening’s cooking fires are
starting, and
Children run to greet them.”
A word about the verse.
It follows natural speech rhythms, but unlike a lot of free verse many of
the poems are organised in long lines of six, seven or eight stressed syllables
in blocks of four to as many as ten lines. Moreover, in an unexpectedly
old-fashioned way each line starts with a capital letter. The message at all
times comes over loud and shockingly clear. Altogether I was im/depressed.
David Gill
*
Made in Germany,
poems by
Julian Woodford.
A5 stapled booklet with a two-colour cover
and 16 pages. Cover and page design
by Mark Barton, MK66, Design.
Published during year 2009. No ISBN.
Price £2.49 which includes the cost of
P&P. Enquiries to:
julianwoodford@yahoo.co.uk
Julian Woodford’s poems have a classical element to them and follow traditional
forms. The ten poems in this
collection are concise and filled with emotion and feeling.
The poems delve into the somewhat fairytale world of the pain and longing
of relationships. Some poems even made me think of the Brothers Grimm tales. The
poems seem to work on the fertility of their content.
I enjoyed the humour in the poem muse’s
present / She’s had pictures, fairy tales,
two poems and a song, starlit-dripping whispers/
Each poem seems to contain its own tale and intrigues the reader with mystery.
The first poem ‘Spare set of keys’ which
is a Shakespearean sonnet, begins with the opening lines of an old wooden door
opening to the sea. In its closing
couplets the poem embodies the shortness of the rhyme tradition. I enjoyed
reading the ten poems that take you to a different echoing territory. These are
passionate poems and they grew on me as I read them for this review.
I can’t help but feel the poems are born out of the language that shapes them.
The poem "One Take" has an almost Bukowskian directness and short punch:
from "One take"
It’s one straight take,
we don’t rehearse,
Nothing else, no rewind
from the poem "I am unbiddable"
So far, I’ve understood my life,
each particle and line,
but this is beyond me,
*
A Mermaid’s Tale of Xanadon’t and other poems
by
Wendy Webb
and
guest poets. A5 stapled booklet
with a full colour cover and 33 pages. Front cover illustration: The Faerie Glen
by Dee Sunshine.
www.redbubble.com/people/deesunshine
also
www.thunderburst.co.uk.
Rear cover artwork by Kay Weeks,
http://awalkintothepast.blogspot.com/2010/03/far-from-ellicot-city.html
Published 30th September 2010.
Series: Mermaid Tales,
ISBN-13: 978-1-903264-88-1 Wendy Webb Books, 9 Walnut Close, Norwich, NR8 6YN;
tips4writers@yahoo.co.uk
£3.50
As well as editing this
collection, Wendy Webb has written the Title Poem. A Reviewer refers to it as
being written ‘by Synaesthesia,’ a second one says ‘imagine a synaesthetic
experience, multi layered...’
The further I read in
the poem, the more bewildered I became. I felt I needed a glossary to help me.
‘This Misticol’s beyond me, with no hookah, I’m just the mouth that
reads from Mr. Avon, The FattaPilla puffed, Nigmatic, pukka, then rang a Yerk
bell and, before he was quite gone,’
Mr. Avon must be Shakespeare, but many of the references eluded me. ‘LeastCoast’
is East coast, perhaps, ‘FattaPilla,’ caterpillar. The author tells us ‘HeartMore’
is Dartmoor, but what of ‘Biblitec,’ ‘Merflake’?
However, when I allowed
myself to be swept along in the flow of the Mermaid’s tale, (tail?) and the
expanse of metaphor tumbling over metaphor, I felt lulled into a land of
make-believe, similar to the spell the poem, ‘The Land of Counterpane’ cast over
me as a child. Geographical, literary and classical allusions abound,
interspersed with references to personal and everyday life.
‘one Merflake was enough, and serving tea
with salmon and cucumber sandwiches, and fancy cakes. The mermaid listened, in
sincerity.’ Myrmidons make frequent appearances, originally a war like
Thessalian people who followed Achilles, in later usage, a ruffian for hire, an
unworthy servant, a bailiff, ‘The Myrmidon
was perfect, I ate bread,’ yes, but later,’it seemed like honeydew in Myrmidons and so refreshed the deepest parts
to song.’ which seems as though Myrmidons is a place. Fantastical,
capricious, often whimsical verses which left me pondering on the nature of
meaning, wondering what was eluding me. Poems written out of a fertile mind,
sometimes almost spinning out of control into fanciful spaces, the poetic
equivalent of Picasso images. Although you may get lost in the who, where, and
what of this extravaganza, enjoy it for its pace and flow. Congratulations to
Wendy for maintaining the impetus, and explaining the settings in Norfolk.
There are lovely poems
at the front and back of the book, from John Elinger, Joan Sheridan Smith, Anne
Mullander, Norman Bissett, Clare Knight, Denise Margaret Hargrave, Caroline
Gill. They give us beaches, oceans, memories, waterbirds, spring flowers, a
golden haired boy, and waves, in well formed verse and colourful imagery which
rebounds in the memory. Buy the book and form your own opinions.
Kate Edwards.
This Is Not What You Think,
poems by Jim
Murdoch.
A5 perfect-bound book with a
full colour cover and 112 pages.
Published on 19th July 2010.
FV Books, 4c Bumbrae Street, Faifley, Clydebank, GB81 5BY.
ISBN 978-0-9550636-3-3.
fvbooks.com also jimmurdoch.co.uk and jim-murdoch.blogspot.com
Price?
In an essay titled Inside Out and subtitled Notes
on the Autobiographical Mode the poet Robert Creeley begins with the words
I’m telling you a / story to let myself /
think about it…
Having thought about it I think it is also what Murdoch is
doing with This Is Not About What You
Think. But having said that, it’s important to quickly qualify it, for
Murdoch states in his introduction that he doesn’t see all the poems as being
autobiographical:
They are my reactions to
certain subjects, some which I have experienced at first hand, some which I’ve
witnessed others experience, others which I’ve read or heard about…
Murdoch’s poems are mostly short and to the point.
Lonely City, Edinburgh, begins:
I dragged my loneliness
down Rose Street,
looking for a cold one,
and we watched a dancer
lose her top
every third record
in this wee corner pub…
Here is one of the shorter poems
You and I: A Poem About Identity. One
may think of it as a life tracking itself.
You are not me and yet you are –
you’re that other part of me
that brings me to peace with myself.
Loneliness is incompletion
but you make me whole and still more:
you’ve let me see what I could be.
And I love you for that.
I have the feeling that something rather interesting is
going on here. And so, I’m tracking Jim Murdoch with more than passing interest.
Might this poet be on the cusp of something? Time will
tell.
Gwilym Williams
Kokopelli’s Dance and other poems
by Bryan
Owen.
Slightly larger than A5
paperback book with a full colour cover and 43 pages.
Published during year 2010 by Matador, 3 Weir Road, Kibworth Beaucham,
Leicester, LE8 0LQ. ISBN
978-1848763-951. E-mail:
books@troubador.co.uk
www.troubador.co.uk/matador
£6.99
Bryan Owen’s poems range widely, from Europe to the USA and
Canada, reflecting his own travels. In many poems he takes an observation, such
as the beauty of the night sky, and uses it as a basis for a moral or
philosophical point, hoping in ‘A gentle sprinkling of stars,’ that the war and
cruelty around us is not present on other planets. The stark truth of invasion
and subjugation is present again in ‘Deal Beach’ where, whatever the poet’s
sympathies, Caesar’s victory is shown to be inevitable. In some of theses poems,
such as ‘A Sign in Montana’ and ‘Dune Acres, Indiana,’ the writer’s liberal,
enlightened form of Christianity contrasts sharply with the blinkered views of
suspicious, closed societies – ‘those great ideas / upon which the republic was
founded / seemed to be no more.’
Other poems reveal a pessimistic outlook o the world.
‘Aporia’ lists the current fears and concerns, from global warming to the
alienation within a growing population and asks ‘How shall we live in the years
that are coming / . . . when so many fears . . . / hang over our lives?’
The answer may be to cut ourselves off like those closed
communities in the mid-West. Or it
may be found in direct acts of individual goodness, like the Chinese man helping
the writer’s daughter on an escalator, ‘An act of kindness in the city / two
strangers met for a moment / and knew it.’
Maybe our salvation will be the scenario depicted in ‘The
Voices of Scotland,’ the kaleidoscopic, human melting-pot where our common
features prevail. ‘We are all related / one to another - / by genes and by
blood, and by our very humanity.’ The poet himself seems to preserve some sort
of hope by contemplating the Scottish countryside, the lochs and towns.
‘For a brief moment / a rainbow arches / bridging the breach
/ between dreams and what is.’
Bryan Owen states that he has set out in his poems ‘those
universal themes of love, liberty, justice, the search for meanings and
protecting the beauty of the world we all live in.’ In doing so he has produced
an imaginative and engaging collection.
Ingrid Riley
The So-Called Sonnets
by
Bruce McRae.
A slightly larger than A5 size perfect-bound book with a two-colour cover and 80
pages. Cover art by Laurie Lipton.
www.laurielipton.com
Cover graphics design by Bill Reed. Published on 15th October
2010 by Silenced Press.
www.silencedpress.com
ISBN 978-0-9729410-5-5
www.bpmcrae.com
$14 USD.
The first thing to grab you, (or otherwise), regarding any
book on a shelf is the outside cover.
Does the book look interesting enough to pick up and read?
This of course is a personal thing.
The cover of Bruce McRae’s (BM’s) book has an almost ecclesiastical feel.
You see a person ascending or descending well worn stairs in a
cathedral-like building. The person has a bag of some sort suspended from his
hand. Does the bag contain books, a
bomb, (or more likely it looks), a large portion of chips?
Anyway, an interesting start.
There have been a few books over the years I have read which
made me laugh out loud in public; the sort of guffaws that make people stare at
you in surprise. Some of the poems
in BM’s book, through dint of sheer inventiveness and dry humour, made me
chortle out loud – I couldn’t help it.
You know the type of thing, Mrs Miggins has just given birth to a new
baby and is proudly displaying the same to passers-by in a supermarket.
You are duty-bound to look in to the pram and say things such as ‘how
gorgeous,’ and ‘he looks just like his father,’ and ‘bless him.’
BM is less forgiving, (though probably more accurate), in his poem,
‘Newborn.’ Verse includes:
“Unfortunate child. Born so ugly
the stars crawled away to die.
So ugly the father scooped
out his eyes with a sugar spoon
and the mother changed sex . . .”
The poem ‘Cum Laude’ gives an incite into pseudo
self-seeking academia where students register for college but do naff all. A bit
like a kind of X-factor, but with even less X-factor, if that’s possible:
“The University of Self-perpetuating
Self-myth. As seen on TV.
Students
large it up in front of oversized and
multiple mirrors. They’re majoring
in ambition, their lectures and lessons
unattended . . .”
The poem concludes:
“. . . The graduates go
on to work in me-me-media. Their CVs
sexed up, legendary, ghost written.”
I found the book very readable, amusing, well written and
unpretentious. Would I buy it?
Blimey, we’re talking about $14 USDs here.
Yes I would. David Pike
*
Book & Booklet Reviews
Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Webzine, Edition #4 (56) September 2010
Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below
Index of Reviewed Publications, Pulsar Poetry Webzine #4 (September 2010), click on the surname of an author or Press underlined below, to link to the review.
Signs - Catherine Graham
Smack a Trifle - by Neville Phillips
Powerless - by Will Daunt
Sandcastles at Evening - by Martin Lyon
The Beckoning Wild - by Lucy Lepchani
Ways of Saying by Helen Ashley
*
Signs,
poems by
Catherine Graham.
A5 size stapled booklet with a 2-colour cover and 25 pages. Published
during year 2010 by ID on Tyne Press, Flat 4, 43 Percy Park, Tynemouth, North
Shields, NE30 4JX.
www.identityontyne.blogspot.com
ISBN 978-0-9565496-0-0
Cover design: Dr. Sheree Mack. Price?
An apt title, ‘Signs.’ – yes, plenty, but no signposts. Half the pleasure of
these poems is the way the meaning becomes clearer with each reading, the other
half comes from the unexpectedness of lines like:
‘this is the place
where dandelion clocks stand still.’
And:
‘...................skimming stones
Across reality.’
Any only child will recognise themselves in the poem of that name, likewise
‘Sister’ will strike a chord with all who are such. The images in ‘Industrial
Panorama’ brilliantly echo the Lowry painting.’
‘its priestly-tall steeple poking
a fag end sky.’
‘headscarved
and slippered at back doors.’
I found a mystery in the title poem, where is she journeying to, and to meet
whom? Who is it alights ‘with only the
ghost of a well dressed smile’ and ‘alights’ from what, a bus, a train, a
plane? – or is it simply a beautiful metaphor? If so, I haven’t solved the
puzzle, but I’ll dig deeper, because that’s what many of these poems want you to
do as the truth of them unravels. ‘The Agoraphobic Poet’ is a delightful piece
of whimsy, with a sadness lurking, we so hope the cobbler will repair the shoes
and set her free.
Nowadays, we poets are supposed to show, not tell, but with many of these I
could have used a bit more telling. There is poignancy and nostalgia in poems
such as ‘Things I Will Put in My Mother’s Pocket’ and ‘Black Bullets and
Vinegar.’
‘The aftertaste hangs in my mouth,
Lingers on my tongue like grief, bittersweet.’
A closeness to family and friends and her environs comes across strongly. The
Northern Voices and Northumberland Writers’ awards are well deserved. Because
much of her work is about people and places in the North East, I found it quite
parochial, those of us who live further South may not always find it easy to
identify with or relate to. My husband enjoyed this poetry more easily than I
did, - but then, he comes from the North East.
Kate Edwards.
*
Smack a Trifle,
odd quirks in prose and rhyme by
Neville Phillips.
A5 size perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and 151 pages.
Published during year 2009 by Matador, Troubador Publishing Ltd, 5 Weir
Road, Kibworth Beauchamp, Leicester, LE8 0LQ.
www.troubador.co.uk/matador
E-mail:
books@troubador.co.uk
ISBN 978-1848761-872
This is not a poetry book but a book of odd quirks in prose and rhyme as the cover has it. The author is an 85-year old retired actor. He dedicates his book to the odd glass of wine for the little book should not be grumpier or sadder.
There are 27 pages of poems within the 151 pages. The rest of
the book is taken up with
a selection of amusing tales found under titles like Short Arse, The
Enormous Rainbow
and Two Nice Ladies of Nice; a selection which may be suitable
for readers who appreciate end of the pier wisecracks. It's all good pun.
The poems, if I dare call them that, are rhymes of the
cheeky chappie variety and they are mostly very short. Here's a
typical example from Thoughts in Shorts or Rhyming Briefs as author
Neville Phillips punningly labels one group of them:
A Mixed Blessing
When he fell into the pool at Lourdes everyone was mortified,
But our Lady in her mercy smiled on him.
"A miracle! A miracle! I can move my legs!" he cried.
Then he gurgled his last words, "But I can't swim!"
The
most poignant poem in the book is The Old Pro's Lament.
Here, Neville Phillips reflects on his life on the stage. Things aren't what
they were.
I want to see the curtain rise
And footlights all aglow.
The way a play is staged today
Dismays an aged pro.
. . .
I know these days are gone for good:
It seems another age
When curtains rose and footlights shone
And magic took the stage.
There are 4 more verses in similar vein.
Smack a Trifle
is the ideal book for great aunts, resting actors and old soldiers residing
in seafront hotels. Mildly titillating and sure to spark a fond memory or two.
To be read with a glass of wine at the elbow.
Gwilym
Williams
*
Powerless,
poems by
Will Daunt.
A5 size perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and 66 pages.
Published during year 2010 by Indigo Dreams Publishing, 132 Hinckley
Road, Stoney Stanton, Leicestershire, LE9 4LN.
Cover photography: ‘Ashurst Beacon 2040,’ by Will Daunt.
Cover design by Ronnie Goodyer and Indigo Dreams.
www.indigodreamsonline.com ISBN: 978-1-907401-09-1 Price: £7.25
This fifth collection of poetry by Will Daunt is packed with
mystery and intrigue. He tends to take the reader to the place of his thoughts,
inviting you into his personal landscapes of rural England and his familiar
Lancashire. He visits Devon, Cornwall and even our beautiful Wiltshire.
I really liked his poems.
You gain a real sense of places with imagery from the present day and how
objects from the past reflect in the conscience now, for example in the series
of poems several farewells SUNDAY SHOES/AN AUTOMATIC WATCH, these things or
objects trigger memories and take us back. There’s also tender humour in poems
like SUNDAY IS A DAY OF.... SHOPPING and LAMBORGHINI.
Will has talent for writing about nature that is around us with
feeling and depth and with the geographical observations of a poet who travels,
where poems take you on a journey using the landscape as a muse, to take you to
a place you feel you may have visited or would want to explore. The sequence
poems RE-SELL/RE-CYCLE/RE-FUEL/RE-FURNISH had a wonderful metre. I read them out
loud as a sequence, even sang them to get the natural rhythm of the words. A lot
of the poems resonated with me as reader and as a poet the earthiness of his
words struck a chord in Moss Roads/ Above the trees. Salmon-through-RIBBLESDALE
mentions the natural instincts of the salmon’s journey home. You get a good
sense of dear Blighty and Will even mentions Stonehenge in his poem Sarum. This
is a collection of variety with poems that zip around from the past to the
future to settle nicely like an electronic bee on flower. The poems are written
with a mature hand that has been around watched, lived and learned.
MOSS ROAD
there is a different life-distort, a shelf of saturated baize, an arable table -
the Moss:
that mass of dense, deep soil, which (were you brave enough to build upon) would
behave like swell beneath your home, kept buoyant by a raft -
an otherwise unsupported way to live. And its net of tarmac stretches unevenly
lower than squinting-height,
ARTIST, STUCK IN SCENERY
His writing thins, like gravel tracks, and blends
with racks of furze-remembered wheat
and maize, crow crawled with dust that lazes
past wind-washed clumps. Geraniums.
And deep with bass, ponds bronze, while vaguely
silage steams, like barrows in the dew
but inspiration shuns his notepad
Review, by Neil
Brooks
Sandcastles at Evening,
poems by
Martin Lyon.
A5 size stapled booklet with a full colour cover and 32 pages.
Published during year 2010 by Acumen Publications, 6 The Mount, Higher
Furzeham, Brixham, South Devon, TQ5 8QY.
Cover design: © Patricia Oxley 2010. Image:
www.photoeverywhere.co.uk Acumen occasional
pamphlets #15. ISBN
978-1-873161-24-1
Sandcastles at Evening is Martin Lyon’s first collection.
His poetry is of place, love and death with the occasional, sometimes
obscure, nod to the classics. An
underlying pattern of rhythm and rhyme binds this eclectic mix together.
Places visited include the Gedi ruins in Kenya where the ‘bones
of a dead city silently decay’.
The quiet dignity of Gedi leads to a conclusion that perhaps we all can share:
‘May I pass gracefully when falls the night,
And slumber like these ruins, robed in white.’
Out travels take us onward to Cyprus and an encounter with a
ghost (or maybe an alien), then onto Ireland and Iona, returning via Atlantis to
the less romantic Bow Bridge with the acid criticism:
‘Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A vista so offensive to the eye…’
Our present day preoccupation with celebrity finds a voice
in the poem ‘Fame’:
‘At last fame’s scales have fallen from my eyes,
And my false glory crumbles into shame.’
Fame is invariably short term.
Poetry however provides at least the opportunity for a more lasting
legacy. Does ‘Sandcastles at
Evening’ add to this? On the whole
I think yes, although in the poem
‘Horace to Leuconoë’ the poet concludes:
‘Decant your
wines, and limit your long hope
To a brief interval.
For as we talk
Life grimly hurries by.
Enjoy today,
And trust the future least of everything.’
Perhaps that is what you need when reading poetry, a glass
of good wine.
John Plevin
*
The Beckoning Wild,
poems by
Lucy Lepchani.
A5 size stapled booklet with a full colour cover and 32 pages. Published
during year 2010 by Acumen Publications, 6 The Mount, Higher Furzeham, Brixham,
South Devon, TQ5 8QY. Cover design:
artwork, ‘Shiva,’ © Brenda Rogers 2010. Cover layout: Sean Hellman. Acumen
occasional pamphlets #16. ISBN: 978-1-873161-25-8
Lucy Lepchani has chosen her title well (see above), since so
much of her feeling and thinking conveys an urgent need to escape from
domesticity, from conventions (both in life and poetry) and embrace the alluring
wild, the free, the natural, the artistic. In the fine opening poem
Cartography, where she describes her
severance from a cartographer lover in a plethora of ‘metaphysical’ imagery, the
crumbling relationship is expressed in the special vocabulary of map-making:
e.g. ...he angled me with theodolyte
eyes/ locked me into a key and reasoned that I/ could be folded up into his
pocket. But she escapes to a wilderness ‘and
where own-two-feet forged new found lanes/ on the route to my own true North.
(Phew!)
Many of the poems in this
selection are about relatives, the one I find most appealing being
An Armada of Aunties, where the poet
gives full rein to her humour and considerable invention. Imagine aunts, for
instance, as ‘A mainstay of earth-mothers
in Marks & Spencer cardies’. Seriously, these companionable aunts were
life-buoys to the young Lucy, just witness this moving extended metaphor:
“These
soft-dough invincibles
were
ballast to my childhood’s fragile hull,
while my
brittle parents wrecked every chance
and then
each other
on rock
after treacherous rock.”
To conclude, Lucy Lepchani
handles language like a conjuror: it’s full of linguistic surprises, delightful,
sometimes challenging. I only wish I could have quoted more for you, dear
readers. But why not discover the proof of the pudding yourselves?
David Gill
*
Ways of Saying,
poems by
Helen Ashley.
A5 size stapled booklet with a full colour cover and 32 pages.
Published during year 2010 by Acumen Publications, 6 The Mount, Higher
Furzeham, Brixham, South Devon, TQ5 8QY.
Cover design: © acumen 2010.
Acumen occasional pamphlets #17.
Price £3.50. ISBN:
978-1-873161-26-5
This collection of poems might best be described as
thoughtful and gentle. There are no dramatic outbursts of feeling.
Major themes, such as friendship, love and death, are touched upon
peripherally. For example in the poem, ‘Generation Gap,’
“. . . my son will ever replenish the joy
/ that my long dead mother still tears away.”
Human life is firmly set in its natural context.
In ‘After Life,’ the soul of the departed seems to be carried
away, “. . . to a point where bid and
light fused.” The poet
expresses a wish for a similar outcome when she dies.
In ‘Bill,’ a dead blackbird symbolises the death of a friend.
A pair of swans in ‘Eternal,’ marks the continuity of life.
Closely linked is the poet’s sense of historical context,
from the gentle regret for a more natural past life in ‘Grandmother’s Jug,’ to
her more colourful vision of the past which is expressed in ‘More Than Meets The
Eye.’ Here, the poet’s imagination
superimposes the colours and sounds of a ruined castle.
In ‘Misfortune,’ Helen Ashley presents us with the gulf
between modern, rationalistic attitudes and the traditional, superstitious view
of life. ‘North East,’ points out
the contrast between the harsh North Sea landscape and the sheltered vision of
Devon which offers gentler, safer limits.
The poem, ‘Letters,’ describes the burning of letters, “watch
the smoke lift them, twist / untwist black curlicues of grey, to white,” and
recalls, “words that meant passion once /
wrought without the boundaries of time.”
Book & Booklet Reviews
Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Webzine, Edition #3 (55) June 2010
Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below
Index of Reviewed Publications, Pulsar Poetry Webzine #3 (June 2010), click on the surname of an author or Press underlined below, to link to the review.
Mohawk man - by P.J. Dodd
Incident in Pisa - by Ian McInnes
Losing the Edge - the eleventh anthology by Ragged Raven Press
A moment of Attention - by Chris Hardy
Krax Magazine No. 45, poems - reviews and illustrations from various contributors.
Strangers Like You - Mark Mansfield
*
Mohawk Man
and other poems by P. J. Dodd.
A slightly smaller than A5 size, perfect-bound book with a sepia tone
cover and 62 pages. Published
during 2010,
www.mohawkman.co.uk also see
www.pjdodd.co.uk ISBN 978-0-9564792-0-4.
UK £10.00. No publisher postal address shown in the book.
Mohawk Man and other poems
is a first collection of poems and so the variety is there that is properly to
be expected, but poetry must always be worth the weight of the paper and then
there's the quill and candle on the cover...
Sometimes there is some charm and delicacy as in:
The high ring of flowers
on each cactus part
smile like maypole dancers
in pink elegant dresses ...
but then there is anger and frustration:
The man is a cunt.
The man is a cunt.
The man is a cunt.
The man is, a cunt....
Nothing clever there. We can only move on. There is humour, dark at times,
but also a deep sense of despair; perhaps merely that things are as they are;
that we have, the author aside, sunk to a sub-human level:
Fat, fat, slime, fat, slime,
(no low fat healthy option this time).
Try not to savour, swallow quick;
Are you really loving it? ...
The avant-garde often has a taste for words without wine, but it's worth noting
that price wise at ten pounds we're now into the stratosphere. The point
is, that with this slim and expensive volume of P.J. Dodd's material, as
compared for example to Seamus Heaney, we're not getting enough of the poet's
richness of language as Andrew Motion calls it.
Poetry is more than journalism and points-of-view hacked into verse.
Review by
Gwilym Williams.
*
Incident in Pisa,
poems by Ian McInnes.
Slightly larger than A5 size, perfect-bound book with a three colour
cover and 45 pages. Published
during year 2009 by Matador, 5 Weir Road. Kibworth Beauchamp, Leicestershire,
LE8 0LQ. www.troubador.co.uk/matador
e-mail: books@troubador.co.uk
ISBN 978-1848761-971. £6.50.
This is an interesting first collection; I liked the way the poems were witty,
charming and full of human emotion. When reviewing poetry collections I sit in a
comfortable chair in the garden, weather permitting, and carefully read the
verse to get a feel of the content. I
found reading Incident in Pisa a pleasure as the weather has been so nice, and
the poems where thought inducing and reader friendly.
The collection is agreeably set out using themes as starting places. The poem, A
visit to Streatham, draws you into suburbia,
Outside the bus must be waited on / A
leaf caught in a belch of wind, is held for a moment in cold sunlight / then
drops through the gutter slats . . . I like the momentary details in this
poem. The next part of the book is Tribes of Men with poems about sport, bravado
and cybermen. Then following segment of this collection features poems on people
themes with witty verse about executives, death, students and Parallel wives;
all very enjoyable. There’s sadness and joy in these poems and some great lines
like in the Spring song of the executive,
My car’s parked smooth as a bullet outside restaurants with dark windows . .
and from Student Song, Who is this at my
graduation who offers me jobs, thirty thousand a year?
The collection has two touching poems in The memoriam page,
Nest / My girl blues, then finishes with a nature poem, The river,
Will watch the seabirds wheeling free /
Where the catcher seeks the oyster yet /And the deep sun bites back.
An interesting array of echoing poems.
Neil Brooks
*
Losing the edge,
anthology of poems from various contributors.
The eleventh anthology of poetry from Ragged Raven Press.
An A5 size, perfect-bound book with a two colour cover and 96 pages.
Published during year 2009 by Ragged Raven Press, 1 Lodge Farm, Snitterfield,
Warwickshire, CV37 0LR.
www.raggedraven.co.uk e-mail:
raggedravenpress@aol.com ISBN:
978-0-9552552-5-0. £5.00
An eclectic selection of poems in this competition anthology, disparate
thoughts, slanted ideas, lyrical, intelligent, hard hitting, leaving a gasp in
the mind. Not for the faint hearted, many poems require knowledge and
understanding from the reader
The first prize goes to Angela Readman’s ‘The Scent of Mrs. Di Maggio’s Bedroom’ and is well deserved. Compelling imagery, conjuring bedrooms in states of glamour or disorder.
‘Too
many potions and bottles on the dresser,
Glass that gabbles when I walk in the door.
My half blown apology cracks to sand on my tongue.’
I believe the best poetry leaves echoes which resonate strongly when the poem is
left behind, a beautiful haunting, often a matter of personal preference and
one’s own experiences, I believe many lines and stanzas will resound in this way
for other readers. One such is ‘The Book of Sheep’ – David Mark Williams, where
a grassy pasture becomes
‘A
book of hours they faithfully scribe,
Working in the fine detail.’
Likewise John Terry’s ‘ Losing The
Edge’ from which I assume the book takes its title, a cataclysmic poem which
takes one to the edge of loss before returning to more solid ground
We might walk off the world
In the middle of a word,
Fall a different way –
Andy Humphrey’s ‘Breathing for Me’
is a beautiful, passionate poem, Ami Roseingraves ‘Get the Point’ a moving
picture of inner city turmoil, despair and desolation. Equally affecting,
Deborah Harvey’s ‘The Worm,’ –vivid descriptions of the family whose names she
finds inscribed on a gravestone. Two I must mention for their skill and
dexterity, K.V. Skene, ‘The Regenerative Body,’ intelligent and thought
provoking, and Antony Scott’s ‘Double Helix’ where he cleverly writes the poem
in the shape of its title.
Some of the poems I found slightly obscure, probably a failing in myself, not
the poet. Reading this collection is valuable and inspiring, many of you will
prefer poems I haven’t space to mention, but all are worthy of their place in
this intriguing anthology.
Review by
Kate Edwards.
*
A Moment of Attention,
poems by Chris Hardy.
Slightly smaller than A5 size, perfect-bound book with a two-colour cover
and 83 pages. Published during year
2008 by ‘Original Plus,’ 17 High Street, Maryport, Cumbria, CA15 6BQ.
Cover design by Martha Hardy. ISBN
978-0-9546801-5-2. £8.00.
There is something of the Mediterranean in much of Chris Hardy’s poetry.
The sea with its shivering boats
seems close by and there is the faint smell of olives.
All comforting fare for a reader emerging from a bitter and long winter.
But the poetry is not just sea and sand, it is populated by people.
People getting married, taking photos, cleaning floors, clearing tables
in the local bar,
having babies. People going about
the business of living, like the grandmother in ‘The Open Door into the Garden’
holding her grandson for the first time where
her thin fingers hold him in a net.
Equally it is not all about living, death is also be present.
In ‘The Way Home’ when buying a place in the country we may be enchanted
by the lapwing’s call, but this is also where farmers
hidden in the bales shoot themselves.
And in ‘Words Like Hounds’ we are reminded that
life’s blue curves are floored by death’s
horizon. Chris Hardy’s poetry
is rooted in experience, the experience of an observer who recognises the value
of distance. Certainly a
publication that deserves a moment of your attention.
Review by
John Plevin
*
Krax Magazine No. 45,
poems, reviews and illustrations from various contributors.
Reviews are carried out by anonymous persons.
An A5 size, untrimmed, stapled booklet with ? pages, (pages are not
numbered). Published during year
2008. No ISSN. £3.50 $7.00.
Editor: Andy Robson, c/o 63 Dixon Lane, Leeds, LS12 4RR.
No e-mail, no www listed.
This collection of British and American verse is something of a lucky dip, some
good things, some provocative, some damaged. Free verse poems, several here like
Charles Kesler’s Willie’s Book
Distributer and Tim Wells’s I’m going
to make Heaven my home would work as performance poems. But Bob Newman’s
satire The Women’s Institute
pulls out all the stops of rhyme, allusion (to Blake’s
Jerusalem), puns for flamboyant presentation of that WI run by
‘The monumental Mrs Mason,
The dark satanic Mrs Mills.’
Here and there contributors appear to be tackling themes for homework: Write
about the changing fashions of footwear perceived from the point of view of a
dance floor; write about the contents of a toolbox; what can you say about the
colour yellow?(this last well elaborated by Michael Spindler).
Which leads me to sentimentality. In Jack
the Nipper, the author wishes his pet hedgehog could talk: “Hey buddies, I
was out on the tiles last night etc.” And worse, the poem about a dog with
‘little brown ears’ who gets rejected by a bitch called Tiny. Result: ‘A tear
trickles down his cheek’. Where did I read: ‘Sentimentality is emotion gone
wrong’?
Krax offers a fair number of short poems: limericks, senryu, etc., some of which
come off. I particularly enjoyed Joseph
Hart’s Senile Senryus, so here are a
couple from his set of 6 for the flavour:
These days when I pass
A clock I get the urge to
In brief, Krax does unleash a fair scattering of talent but with a dash of
ineptitude. Perhaps the editor(s) could be carefully selective?
Review by
David Gill
Strangers Like You, poems by Mark Mansfield. Slightly larger than A5 size, perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and 83 pages. Published during year 2008 by Van der Decken Press, Table Bay, New York. Front cover photograph by Luida Mansfield. Cover design by Shawn Smith, Geneva Printing Company. ISBN 978-615-32012-0 Price $8.20. For information, e-mail: mmansfield001@rochester.rr.com
Photograph above: Mark Mansfield
The author was born in the USA, travelled extensively and
worked in various professions. His
amazingly varied life is reflected in his poems.
They are almost narrative in form, taking incidents from his own
experience. He merely states them,
leaving it to the reader to assign any wider relevance.
Mansfield’s poems are often dense and leisurely paced.
When looking in a shop window he recalls in the poem
‘A Tough of Light
. . .’ ‘a trace of camphor from a woman’s hair.’
‘Empty Courts,’ depicts a relatively minor interlude, with
the shattering impact delivered in the last two lines.
‘Except that we were young and she
would die
long before the next winter’s first
snow.’
This sense of a writer haunted by his own past recurs
throughout:
‘The Whisper,’
‘I passed along the
pier
and stopped for
nothing but
to watch day
disappear,
then turning,
heard you there,
although you’ve
been gone for years.’
Unfortunately, some of the poems such as ‘On Her Birthday,’
or Rocket Room,’ while obviously meaningful to the poet, are difficult to
appreciate fully, because of references which are not familiar to the reader.
Most poets are introduced by a quotation from a well-known
writer. Sometimes the link to the
poem is obvious, but more often than not it is obscure or even impenetrable.
However, it rarely seems that the introductory line adds anything to the
poem.
These minor criticisms apart, Mansfield has something to say, and at his best says it with feeling. Ingrid Riley
*
Book & Booklet Reviews
Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Webzine, Edition #2 (54) March 2010
Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below
Index of Reviewed Publications, Pulsar Poetry Webzine #2 (March 2010), click on the surname of an author, underlined below, to link to the review.
Driving through the Debris - by Ivan Wallace
Divinity is Prised Loose - by Michael Thorne
The Third Fifty - by Jenefer Ann Murray
The Fourth Fifty - by Jenefer Ann Murray
Fires of Memory - James Knox Whittet
I Wandered Only As A Cloud - Wendy Webb
*
Driving through the Debris,
poems by
Ivan Wallace.
A5 size stapled booklet with a 2-colour cover and 36 pages.
Published during year 2009.
No ISBN. Available from the author:
15 Drumhoy Drive, Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland, BT38 8NN.
£3.00.
I’ve always believed that inside every poet there is a voice that is trying to
get out. In Ivan Wallace’s ‘Driving
through the Debris’ the voice is one of ribald humour, liberally dosed with
alcohol. After a night on the booze
in ‘A Drop of the Hard Stuff’, a hangover brought on by drinking a mix of milk
and ‘Poteen’ is put down to the
simple excuse that ‘the milk was off’.
In ‘Not so Famous Poets Convention 2009’ we are told by a dead poet that
alcohol ‘will kill anything that lives
and preserve anything that’s dead’.
It’s almost enough to tempt you to join the Temperance Society except I
heard that they’ve had their licence revoked.
But it’s not all booze. Have you
ever thought why Adam and Eve had belly buttons?
Perhaps God made us like we would make a pie with a hole in the middle to
let out the heat. We are left
wondering ‘if he licked his finger when
he’d finished’. In ‘Withering Sights’ a passer by complains that ‘the
cold gets to you when you get to our age’.
You conclude that ‘he thinks
you’re as old as him’ and ‘maybe I
should dye my hair’, then remember you don’t have any.
I suspect that I am closer to Ivan Wallace in his taste of singer-songwriters
than I am to his poetry. A ‘Van
fan’ in ‘The Van Morrison Appreciation Society’ believes that Van is on a
par with Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen.
He is told in no uncertain terms ‘that
Van couldn’t even lace their boots’.
However if you want a bit of easy fun, Driving through the Debris doesn’t
disappoint. Review by
John Plevin
*
Divinity is Prised Loose,
poems by
Michael Thorne.
A5 stapled booklet with a 3-colour cover and 53 pages.
Published during year 2009.
No ISBN. Front cover image from
www.banksy.co.uk
Order via
www.myspace.com/rhuardean
at £3.50, includes cost of postage and packing.
E-mail:
mike_t8@hotmail.com
Michael Thorne’s poetry accumulates observations of people and tells tales of
his travels with no holds barred and with the odd bleep-bleep word; these poems
are layered with humour and imagery. Some of the poems have a sense of mystery
of human encounters along his journeys. I really enjoyed reading these poems - I
heard the morning sing/Autumn/Pins and Up early for Paris were some of my
favourites and I liked the fact that each poem contained a different mood
ranging from the reflective side of the mind as well as the more gritty and
humorous poems like Want a job? /The Tale of the Office Manager. Yeah I liked
the fact that there was variety and range in Michael Thorne’s poems which
continue to surprise and delight throughout the 53 pages like the reference to
Charles Bukowski being a tight arse in the poem Judicial Review and the
flactuance in the poem/ As if I could care/ made me laugh out loud. There is
something in Michael Thorne’s poems that makes you relate to the human condition
/ experience and how we interact and observe each others behaviour in our
cosmopolitan cities and on our own journeys.
Up early for Paris
Set the functioning light’s bare grey, barren glow
against my yawning senses, up early for Paris.
The scalps of twenty other passengers, set ahead
equally struggle with air, thought and communication.
I preferred it on the station floor,
cold, beneath John Betjeman’s statue.
I preferred it in the early shower,
hot faced and bleak eyed in the clouded mirror,
I preferred it in your bed,
dreaming of fresh apricots at the height of winter.
Autumn
When winter had grown cold,
Hard as a frozen tap,
We knew when time would come for spring.
And when spring had become lush,
Soft as morning sun,
We held tight in preparation for summer.
And when summer blew dry,
In equals portions of green, gold and brown,
We would pretend that it would stay that way forever.
*
Palores Publications’ 21st Century Writers.
The Third
Fifty,
poems by
Jenefer Ann Murray.
A5 Perfect bound book with a
3-colour cover and 65 pages. Published during year 2009 by Palores Publications,
11a Penryn Street, Redruth, Cornwall, TR15 2SP.
ISBN: 978-1-906845-05-6
£8.50.
The collection, as the title implies, contains 50 poems and is the third book in
a series. The poems are written in the sometimes flowery language of a bygone
era.
The author, pictured with her brother and their dog after the war, must be quite far advanced in years, and that's what makes this book so intriguing and interesting; for it's the enthusiasm for writing that shines through in almost every sentence. The strong subtext hammering through is that we are never too old to make good use of our grey matter.
To nail down Murray's own phrase, one that she uses in at least two of her
poems, the poetry is awfully nice. Yes, on the one hand it is indeed what
you'd expect to find on the book table at the village hall or in the dust motes
behind the back pews at the local church, but it is also more; as the quote in
the front of the book alerts us: In every work of art there should be space
for the mind to travel between like and dislike.
The poem Sam's Shed is perhaps a metaphor for The Third Fifty:
At last when he was grown-up
and had a house with a long garden
he began to build it in his spare time
what an excitement, his shed. . .
In the poem Sam and Sybil take care of the garden, the flowers, the paths, the
bushes, the trees. There's the old door and some beams and weatherboard walls...
Songs
for people of a certain age. And, yes, I'm getting there.
Review by
Gwilym Williams
*
Palores Publications’ 21st Century Writers.
The
Fourth Fifty,
poems by
Jenefer Ann Murray.
A5 Perfect bound book with a 3-colour cover and 73 pages. Published
during year 2009 by Palores Publications, 11a Penryn Street, Redruth, Cornwall,
TR15 2SP. ISBN 978-1-906845-07-0
£8.50.
Although the author has reached her mid-eighties she still produces some
interesting poems and prose, digging deep into her past, building on life
experience. What we have here is an
unconventional autobiography, presenting the poet’s life in the form of
‘snap-shots.’
In the poems, ‘Beginning,’ Little Brother’ or ‘The Inescapable Inedibility of
Candles,’ just to mention a few, Jenefer Ann Murray gives the reader an insight
into her childhood and how she saw the world then through the eyes of a child.
At the same time this is a child who is fully aware of what is to come
later as she says ‘Being an infant is uphill work though.’ ‘Youthful Protests
WWII’ and ‘Going down to Pentabulo,’ reflect early experience of men, but again
filtered through the older woman’s awareness.
There are heart-felt poems here like ‘A Truly Miserable Moment,’ ‘Till Death us
do Part,’ ‘Follow-on’ and ‘Sequel,’ which describe the devastating effect of
choosing the wrong partner in your life. ‘Blind Man’s Buff,’ ‘Not Unusual’ and
particularly ‘Grief Poem III’ present a side of life which the author is able to
conceal below the lighter poems.
‘Mighty Oaks,’ ‘Agapanthus,’ ‘That Old Sin,’ ‘Seaside Garden Summertime’
and ‘Rose Grower’ are on a lighter note and echo the humour in ‘Epigrams.’ In
the poems ‘Ornaments Overhead,’ she compares the upbringing of her own children
to that of a seagull mother with her chicks entailing the ‘learning curves’ . .
. ‘you will have to feed the chicks,’ the anxiety of raising the offspring.
Finally, there are the wry philosophical poems of old age, ‘Where loss,
departure and death are concerned,’ ‘it’s the other side of love.’
After reading this collection you have the feeling that you know the writer and
understand her development from child to wise old lady.
Review by Ingrid Riley
*
Fires of Memory,
poems by
James Knox Whittet.
A5 size Stapled booklet with a full colour cover and 23 pages.
Published November 2009 by: Wendy Webb Books, 9 Walnut Close, Norwich,
NR8 6YN. No ISBN. E-mail:
tips4writers@yahoo.co.uk
£2.50.
James Knox Whittet is a poet from the isle of Islay in the Hebrides. In this
collection
Fires of Memory
we are seldom far from the cries of seagulls, the sight of swans dipping
their necks into a loch, the mist-shrouded mountains, but lest you should think
you are in for an undiluted dose of Celtic Twilight I must assure you that this
poet has his feet firmly under a table, for example, of a motorway service
station restaurant in Newport Pagnell at 3am. There in a bleak, tawdry
atmosphere he sits observing three other travellers, who like himself are
breaking their journeys “to destinations not wholly of their own choosing”.
A touch of Phillip Larkin here. His sympathy for people, particularly
those who suffered, whether he knew them personally, or simply from a report in
the local paper, is a pervasive characteristic. Hence the fine, moving title
poem Fires of Memory, written in
memory of a Norfolk farmer who, as a soldier helped, to liberate Belsen,
couldn’t forget what he saw. He was haunted:
But memories of mountains of children’s shoes
Spilled from each cupboard you opened;
Glaciers of eyeless spectacles stared back
At you, like sun strands on splintered glass.
And
campaigned to publicise the horrific truth.
Whittet, shows a mastery of traditional forms (perhaps he uses free verse
elsewhere).The three sonnets display different arrangements of rhymes, and one
of them Cadences runs on lines of
four feet instead of the usual five. There is a clever terza rima and a poem of
cinquains, a form quite new to me, where as in haikus the syllables are counted.
Babyhood is encapsulated in 2/4/6/8/2 as follows:
Faces
moon from above
as I lie in this pram
wrapping sun strands around my frail
fingers.
I heartily recommend this small bouquet of beautifully crafted poems smelling of
heather mingled with cooking oil.
Review by David Gill
*
I Wandered Only As A Cloud,
incorporating
Quiet Voices In The Loud Child,
poems by
Wendy Webb.
A5 stapled booklet with a
2-colour cover and 31 pages.
Published during year 2009 by Wendy Webb Books, 9 Walnut Close, Norwich,
NR8 6YN. ISBN-13: 978-1-903264-80-5
£3.50.
tips4writers@yahoo.co.uk
www.norfolkpoets.blogspot.com
www.coastingnorfolk.blogspot.com
The
shade of Wordsworth and echoes of his poems permeate this collection, daffodils
bounce and rebound through the poetry as Wendy Webb walks and climbs in the Lake
District.
‘I wandered lonely Dora’s field,
All winding clouds of daffodils…’
Sometimes it reads almost as a pastiche,
‘though my heart now with pleasure fills
and dances where the warbler thrills.’
again referring us back to Wordsworth. The poems choosing to link Keats, John
Clare, and Betjeman with the area imitate their style and mindset very cleverly.
I was not always convinced by the flow and rhythm of the poems,
occasionally seeming as though the writer was overcome by thoughts and ideas and
tried to fit too many into a line or stanza. This was particularly noticeable in
‘Quiet Voices in the Loud Child,’ where the metre is often disturbed by the urge
to express too much at once, then settling into well measured
verse. Nevertheless, the
poem is an epic achievement of loss, loneliness, hidden yearnings, with
references to the Bible, Mythology, Peter Pan, - here is a leaping imagination
encompassing many things to illuminate meaning.
‘I shade that beauty which has not yet grown,
in ghostly face drained into winter’s loss,
to grow myself a spring for Psyche’s pain
back into heaven , when her joy is born.’
Later in the reminiscence, journeyings. Norfolk to Devon, Dartmoor, Glastonbury
Tor, the M6, M62, all seasoned with remembered joys and griefs, memories of old
sadness resolved in new intentions and insights, culminating again in the
spirits of daffodils.
Wendy is prolific and entertaining, with an interesting and unusual view
of things. Much of the poetry reads like a discourse between the poet and a
remembered self, which, as eavesdroppers, we are privileged to overhear, and may
learn much from the courage and optimism which glow softly through this work.
Review by
Kate Edwards
Index of Reviewed Publications, Pulsar Poetry Webzine #1 (December 2009), click on the surname of an author, underlined below, to link to the review
Genteel Messages - by Gwilym Williams
More Su - by Su Laws Baccino
Peeling Oranges and Lemons to Dartmoor - by Wendy Webb
Utterances - by Frédérique Lecoq
iota 82 - by various contributors
Incubations - by David Gill
*
Genteel Messages,
poems by
Gwilym
Williams.
A5 size perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and 54 pages.
ISBN 978-1-906357-17-7 Published by Poetry Monthly Press, 39 Cavendish
Road, Long Eaton, Nottingham, NG10 4HY.
poetrymonthly@btinternet.com
£5.25.
I really enjoyed reading this collection; it’s a book I actually took to work
with me to view on a 12 hour shift, where I slowly (and with joy) read through.
I discovered and liked the poet’s rich
imagery and observations, items that to some could appear mundane but he has
made interesting. There’s sensitivity in his words too. Gwilym has tackled lots
of different themes/subjects with humour and imagination; topics like flat
packed furniture made me consider putting together flat-pack furniture, with-out
reading the de-structions, which I tend to do. Gwilym has packed a lot into 54
pages some of the poems were like small sketches even caricatures of quirky
human behaviour and the nature and how people act, Good companions/poets of the
public bar. I also enjoyed his homage to his literary heroes Beckett/Bukowski/RS
Thomas/ 'grunt' and found it all quite educational. I’ve not heard of Coluim
Wallace (1796-1906), lots of references to history. I have never been to Vienna,
it seems like a place to ignite inspiration if you’re a writer. Genteel Messages
is a readable collection and has a chap-book feel to it! A bargain at £5.25.
Gwilym Williams provides an insightful view of many themes through a poet’s
words. I have many favourites
Okabe’s Frottage Sites
Okabe’s pencil blurs rapidly over a surface
and an image appears on paper;
every stone leaves a unique imprint;
just like your thoughts.
Walking with Bukowski
Say, you might read a passage to me
from Buk’s new book
the last night of the earth...
you’d like the feel...
the black and red cover...
the acid-free paper...
Neil Brooks
*
More Su,
poems and prose by
Su Laws Baccino.
A5 size perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and 41 pages.
Published in year 2007 by dibleydo. ISBN 978-0-9553656-1-4
Cover note by U A Fanthorpe.
£5.99.
The Suffolk coastline and countryside figure strongly in Su Laws Baccino’ poems.
At one moment we are comfortable in a ‘Dormant Land’ where ‘snow
falls silently from indigo sky’, the next moment we are immersed in the 1953
floods where children ‘slipped slowly
from adults’ frozen hands’. But
nature kind and cruel is not the only inhabitant of her landscape.
In ‘Sunrise’ the ‘Sizewell dome
shimmers, mirroring the rising sun’, while elsewhere the residents of Acacia
Square rebel against the introduction of wheelie bins.
And of course the hand of man has its place with the ‘warmongering
politicians’ in ‘Who Cares’ puffing out
‘their bullet-proofed chests’.
The sea also figures in the two prose items included in the collection.
In ‘The sea was huge,’ Jack
has a storm and Mother Nature to thank for his transition from simple fisherman
to canny businessman. The
futuristic story ‘Crowded Out,’ set in 2050, describe a world where the
boundaries between death and life are strangely blurred.
In summary ‘More Su’ is an eclectic mix and not always a comfortable read.
But maybe that’s no bad thing.
John Plevin
*
Peeling Oranges & Lemons to
Dartmoor,
poems by
Wendy Webb.
A5 size stapled booklet with a two-colour cover and 39 pages.
ISBN 978-1-903264-77-5 Published in year 2009 by Wendy Webb Books, 9
Walnut Close, NR8 6YN
tips4writers@yahoo.co.uk
£4.00.
A magical mystery tour. A curious mixture of clues and locations. A kind of
join-the-dots poetry.
A so-called stream of consciousness. An almost A to Z atlas of Great Britain ...
Well, who knows? Maybe there is a something or other to be unearthed at the end
of it all.
For me, Webb demonstrates much too often the old trick of using nouns as
verbs. Almost a sleight of hand I think it should be, not blatant. Her bold
style took a bit of getting used to.
Tardis me to 1947
or, for example
My rats all cockroach from the sinking ship
Clues, to something to be found beyond the poetry, abound:
Read the Qur'an to find (his name means 'Jew')
or, again by way of example
Scarborough 45, 'Take the exit,
after 300 yards turn left ...
Lines like the following unearthed memories of puzzle-setters like Dan James and
Kit Williams and jolly car treasure hunts from village to village through the
green and pleasant countryside:
Spent Botticelli's Venus discards Mars,
to Wessex peaceful Hardy, when all's Donne:
What to make of it all? There is a kind note inside the front cover guiding the
reader to 4 other Wendy Webb books together with instructions as to The
correct sequence to read these poems.
To be quite frank, without the lure of some precious artefact like the
famous golden hare, I found it all rather too much.
The front cover shows a picture of a mound called Brentor Church. Perhaps it's
also some kind of clue?
I think it best to leave the final word to Webb herself:
The moment is all challenge in the mud.
Gwilym Williams
*
Utterances,
poems and photographs by
Frédérique Lecoq.
A5 size booklet with a two-colour cover and 15 pages.
No ISBN £6.00
Available thro’
frederique.lecoq@yahoo.com
Frédérique Lecoq is French. Utterances is her first
collection of poems. These seven poems sprang from her profound feelings for the
Cornish coastal town of St Ives during the first of two years spent there. I
have to say at the outset that the booklet is beautifully produced with mounted
photographs echoing the seascape imagery of most of the poems.
St. Ives
establishes the closest possible relationship between town and newcomer: mother
and child, opening with:
“You have welcomed me into your pregnant belly.
I am reborn
along the path of your estuary.”
The sea also plays the role of mother, but a murderous one. The last verse of
The Sea runs as follows:
“Mother and destroyer,
Your true colour is silver.
You heave the hour
And swallow it like a flower.”
The photo here suitably shows a silver path across a pewter-grey sea.
However, the poem that appealed to me most was Surf. Here the language
has a lyrical impetus: and some delightfully weird thoughts, for instance, where
the poet walking along the beach wonders whether she will survive the
encroaching winter:
“Will I wake up like the sleeping marmot?
Will I defrost like the dead frog?”
She also has feeling for assonance (has she read Verlaine?) as here:
“The bay echoes its last whispers to me
And disappears into the mist.”
The sixth poem St Uny Church signals the end of her poetic childhood.
It’s a powerful poem with punishing imagery, e.g. after a short walk to St Uny
Church
“ My organs are bleeding from the journey
and drum against the ground under my feet.
Shortly after, her” body overflows with its own blood
returning to the estuary below.
It becomes a one-eyed crawling snake.”
Mercifully she revives, inspired by “the spirit of the poets”.
David Gill
*
iota 82,
2008/2, quarterly publication of poems from various contributors and reviews by
Bob Mee. A5 size perfect-bound book with a two-colour cover and 56 pages.
Editors: Bob Mee and
Janet Murch. ISSN 0266-2922
Submissions and correspondence to: Nigel
McLoughlin, Editorial Board, iota, Room QU223, Francis Close hall,
University of Gloucester, Swindon Road, Cheltenham, GL50 4AZ.
Subscriptions address: Bluechrome Press, PO Box 109, Portishead, Bristol,
BS20 7ZJ.
www.iotapoetry.co.uk
iotapoetry@gmail.com
Single issue £3.00. Annual Subscription £12.00.
Every issue iota provides reading of quality and variety, and number 82 is no
exception. The first few pages list
the winners of this years’ poetry competition which are remarkable pieces of
writing, like ‘Our Lady of the Doorway,’ by David King who won the first prize.
The poems ‘Arthur’s Self Portrait’ by Maggie Frolish, ‘Obedience’ by Hilary S.
Bussey and ‘The Lodger’ by John Daniel, contain elements of anger out of bounds,
anxiety and a kind of helplessness, even fatality, which is expressed in the
lines, ‘He shouts. Like that. Burst of volume,’ I must not speak or shuffle my
feet,’ ‘I study her face, wondering how a woman so cruel could produce such
perfection,’ Insulating himself from the world.’
Calvin Green in ‘Old Man’ describes – on a more sombre note – a father figure
whose life is ebbing away through cancer and strokes.
The son comes to the conclusion that he hardly knew him.
He resigns himself to the fact that ‘we all die, each with his own
grief.’
There are many more outstanding poems for the reader to discover, like ‘Dead
Stock’ by Sean Elliott who uses the day to day activities of a book shop as a
metaphor for the way we treat other people, categorizing them and often
discarding them. ‘We . . . sift the
nameless from the soon forgot.’
In ‘A cold coming’ Norah Hanson reworks the nativity story to show Bethlehem
today with walls, checkpoints and weapons.
But now, as two thousand years ago, there is still love and hope in the
world, ‘there is an energy which can conceive a child of peace in the womb of a
virgin.’
Towards the end of this issue there are a number of reviews which are
informative and also make interesting reading.
Ingrid Riley
*
Incubations,
being longish poems in prose contexts by
David Gill.
A5 size stapled booklet with a full colour cover and 84 pages. Front
cover painting reproduction: Johann Wolfgang Goethe in Italy by J.H.W.
Tischbein. Published in year 2009.
No ISBN. Available from the
author at: 38 Yarnells Hill, Oxford, OX2 9BE.
£3.50 (includes the cost of postage).
irenedavidgill@btinternet.com
What makes this more than another poetry collection are the prose pieces
preceding the poems, a fascinating and useful device. How often have you wished
to know the background to a poem, or the story which inspired it. Well, here
that wish is satisfied. It is like being taken by the hand and led through a
history – of David Gill’s travels, his ancestors, his wife Irene’s amazing
family, the people he met and knew, their stories told in a way that makes you
feel you know them too, his grandfather, who once served on the same ship as
Joseph Conrad, his friend Peter in Saxony.
‘A letter to Peter Friedrich’ is the story of a lasting friendship, from when
the boys became pen pals soon after the end of the war. A visit to Gdansk, the
home of Irene’s grandmother in childhood when it was called Danzig, gives rise
to a poem about two Post Office sieges, Dublin during the Easter Rising, and
Gdansk when Germany invaded Poland.
‘No
letters arrive, no letters depart,
Pigeons range quietly along upper sills
Where, below them, rifle barrels start
To quiver like sandpiper’s bills.’
’Nyakasura
revisited’ is a wonderful tale of a school near the Mountains of the Moon in
Uganda. The poet’s taut descriptions and imagery transport the reader into that
landscape.
‘The burnt sienna camelots
Of termites,pursueing their own
Strange collective lives.’
In ‘Station Masters’ a connection is made between Joseph Conrad and Franz
Kafka, ‘The Battle of Berlin Zoo’ reveals much of the poet’s humanitarian spirit
towards animals as well as mankind. ‘Samso,’a Danish island where Irene is
taken, escaping from Nazi Germany, is exhilarating and beautiful, even with the
frightening background of threatened invasion.
'Your careful hands,
Curators of seashells, tiny scallops,
Mussels like jewellery boxes
With opal linings.’
A youthful Portugese is urged not to embrace futility or to lack hope,
and ‘The Goethe Rose’ describes how a rose from Goethe’s gartenhaus in Weimer
eventually
‘unwraps it’s soft strong petals
in Caerleon beside the Usk.’
Adventurous journeys, compelling events, described in flowing and
intelligent poetry and prose.
Kate Edwards.
Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Edition 52, September 2009
Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below
Suburbs of My Childhood,
poems by
Bill Vartnaw,
published year 2009. An A5 size
perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and 74 pages.
Cover design by Douglas Rees; photo at page 71 by Jim Scott.
Published by Beatitude Press, Berkeley, California, USA. Web
www.beatitudepress.com
ISBN: 978-0-9815047-0-4 $12.95 Bill
Vartnaw:
taureanhorn@hotmail.com
Bill Vartnaw (b. 1949) is a well-known Californian poet.
This present collection of poems covers the period 1972 to 1995, hence
the title Suburbs of My Childhood.
His opening poem ‘The Pursuit’ proclaims: ‘I come to/this life to leave
my fingerprints.’ Which he does,
and some of them are pretty oblique. For example, we find in ‘Contact Sport’ a
basket-ball game sandwiched between scenes of demolition, shrewdly philosophical
points being punctuated by the Boom! of the lead ball against the brickwork. Or
he asks a simple(?) question: ‘what use is/a rain barrel/ in summer time?’
(‘Sonata’) Amazing how much goes on in that barrel at an atomic level – before
the rain comes! ‘Cezanne’s Apples’ includes the line ‘nature morte avec pommes
(still life with poems),’ and before you can fault him, the deliberate
mistranslation leads to a thought-provoking revelation of a natural connection
between apples and poems. Vartnaw’s free verse poems, are often difficult (it
has to be said) but well worth decoding.
David Gill
Of Birds and Bees,
poems by
A. F. Harrold
with drawings by Jo Thomas.
Hardback A5 size book with a two colour cover and 47 pages.
One hundred copies for sale.
Published in year 2008 by Quirkstandard’s Alternative, 79a Northumberland
Avenue, Reading, Berkshire, RG2 7PT. Web:
www.jothomas.net
and
www.quirkstandsalternative.co.uk
and
www.afharrold.co.uk
ISBN-13: 978-0-9557081-2-1
£20.00 + £2.50 postage and packaging.
These poems feel slightly overwhelming, some a little obscure on first reading,
but when read twice, thrice, they gather one up into A.F. Harrold’s world, and
what a place that is. The birds, insects, and other creatures in these poems,
some observed in England, others in California, are described with scrupulous
attention to detail, and often with loving humour. An aura of love pervades the
pages, whether Harrold is depicting
‘the tiny whirl - light bee,’ or a snail, ‘300 million years of design shining
out,’ or visiting a girlfriend on Christmas morning. Plenty of joy and delight
in this book, the poet marvels at the flight of a hummingbird, and is amazed to
find a seagull performing the same reversing flight.
“a wingtip on the wheel, an eye out the back window,
elbow crooked over the seat’s shoulder- only
the recorded message- this seagull is reversing-
was missing. I came home laughing, unexpected.”
He sees a dragonfly;
“the fat flying twig of nacre-armour shifts
like a blur of geometry to a new there.”
I felt I was seeing these beings in a new light, a swan makes
‘his lomping lazy lope along that path,’ then becomes ‘a free-flying, flame-
white arrow in flight.’
Poems to lift the spirits, but not without a pervasive sadness here and there, a
hint of melancholy, a frisson down the spine.
‘something unique and immovable
was lodged inside me, troubling me.’
Soon dispelled by the interior of a seashell, ‘violet,
smooth as unintended love.’
Although this collection doesn’t contain any overtly ‘love poems’ it is an
affirmation of love, nature, and life:
‘it’s all going on, great thrusting life, going on all on its own.’
I’ve quoted widely from this collection, because I feel the
poetry will lure and draw you in far better than my prose. The illustrations are
beautifully drawn, lending an almost spectral, dreamlike quality to the pages.
Kate Edwards
The Waters of Mars,
poems and photographs by
Frédérique Lecoq.
An A5 size stapled booklet with a three colour cover and 14 pages.
Hand made by the author in year 2008.
ISBN ? Price? Contact
details as follows:
frederique.lecoq@yahoo.com
or though web address:
www.Flickr.com/photos/frederiquelecoq/
As someone who has over the years struggled with foreign languages I am somewhat
in awe of a poet from France writing poetry in English.
Frédérique Lecoq, born and bred in France and now living in London has in
her collection ‘The Waters of Mars’, given us a series of poems reflecting her
observations of the Cornish environment with many of the poems accompanied by
her own photos. The poems range
from the rock pool in ‘Stillness’ where the ‘clock
has stopped’, at least until the next tide, to the wider view of ‘St Ives,
Town Of My Dreams’ which reminds her of the ‘miniature
town’ she built as a girl and where she felt ‘safe
and protected’.
A nice compliment to the Cornish town and people.
However, it’s not all landscape and nature. A number of the poems are concerned with memory and time and love. These poems stand on their own, no photos are needed enabling the reader to make a connection with their own experience. In ‘Autumn Leaves’ she recalls the loss of a loved one where the dead leaves on the ground are a reminder ‘that once I loved and have been loved’. In ‘Love and Reality’ she sees man as love and woman as reality where ‘Together, they give birth to truth’. For all our sakes I hope she’s right. John Plevin
Norfolk Poets and Writers,
Anthology 2008, Edited by
Wendy Webb.
An A5 sized stapled booklet with a
full colour cover and 50 pages.
Poems from various contributors.
ISBN: 978-1-903264-74-4 £5.00. Cover picture: Lavenham, Suffolk,
2008. Published by: Wendy Webb Books,
9 Walnut Close, Norwich, NR8 6YN.
E-mail:
tipsforwriters@yahoo.co.uk
A diverse and thoughtful
anthology of poetry, lots of interesting poems packed with feelings on varying
topics. I liked the nature themed poems
as well as the observational and life inspired work. I enjoyed the sheer
diversity of the writing and re-read many poems to absorb the flavour of the
words and imagery. There were many references to the sea and coast
which has always been a great focus of the muse for poets/artists for
generations. There were a few poems that made me laugh too, which is always
good. The poem Teenage Anthem by Dee
Gordon provides a slant on the Larkin poem,
This Be the Verse, a comment on the
attitude of youth from the parents perspective. It was nice to see a Sophie
Hannah poem in the Invited Guests section. This Anthology is great tribute to
the individual talent of writers and to all small press poets who scribe away
for the love of words and language. It was a joy to review this anthology sat in
my garden with the sun beaming down, for a change.
I liked this poem for
its humour,
WORDS by Simon
Ward
Somewhere beyond the sunlit leaves
a flight of multicoloured words is wheeling
forever out of reach, While close at hand
I hear the tapping which may correspond
to fifty thousand monkeys typing Shakespeare.
How long, I wonder, will they take,
when this particular ape
has not completed even half of line
to requisite perfection or design?
Review by:
Neil Brooks
Joined-up Writing,
an anthology of writing by members of Barmouth University of the Third Age.
An A5 size perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and 128 pages.
Published during December, year 2008, by Round House Publishing,
Dolgellau, Gwynedd, LL40 1LD. ISBN
978-0-9560394-0-8 Editor-in-Chief:
Richard Paramor.
Cover illustration by Gladys Lawson, page illustration by Jack
Richardson. £4.95
A diverse anthology of poems, prose and short stories.
The reader finds contributions that show great skill in taking something
intrinsically ordinary and adding a little drama to give it more interest.
The writers have kept close to their own experience.
In ‘The First, but not
the Last,’ by Cliff Probert, the reader’s attention is kept alive to reveal
in the last line the image of the moon landing.
We are left unsure as to whether John Reece’s story,
‘La Grande Sorpressa,’ his very close
encounter with Sophia Loren, is in fact a dream?
He did accompany her to a book signing, but as for the rest, who knows?
Many of the prose pieces investigate a state of mind, such as Sylvia Vannelli’s
‘The Void,’ where we discover the
salient facts of the woman’s past life leading up to her final act.
In the case of Richard Paramor’s story
‘Guy,’ we can only hope that the chilling account of a plane crash is a
dream.
In this collection there are familiar stories that are well written, although
short, like ‘A Fishy Tale,’ by Glenys
Lawson, ‘The Unexpected,’ by Margaret Ashby to Diane Andrews, ‘Taken
for a Ride,’ and we are always left wanting to know more.
Viewing the collection as a whole, however, the impression which remains is the quirky humour surrounding the familiar. These writers, although I could not mention every one, are in my view at their best when they deal with subjects which are close to them. Ingrid Riley
Alright Squire?
No. 2, poems by
Paul Tanner.
Small stapled booklet with a two colour cover and 21 pages.
Published during year 2009 by last chance before bath-time publications.
£1.99. E-mail:
saneboy@hotmail.co.uk
See page 41 of edition #52 of Pulsar for an example of Paul Tanner’s work. Basically: irreverent, hard-hitting, non-pretentious, in your face, ‘ave it!’ Not for the easily offended. Recommended. David Pike
Book & Booklet Reviews
Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Edition 51, March 2009
Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below
iota 80,
2007/4, a quarterly selection of contemporary poetry.
An A5 size perfect-bound book with a two
colour cover and 56 pages.
ISSN 0266-2922. editors:
Bob
Mee and
Janet Murch,
1 Lodge Farm, Snitterfield, Warwickshire, CV37 0LR.
www.iotapoetry.co.uk Email:
iotapoetry@aol.com
UK sub £12.00 or £3.00 per issue.
Iota, a poetry quarterly of 20 years standing, attracts verse from the UK, Ireland and the US, hence the range of cultural ‘feel’ in the featured poems. The dominant medium is free verse (sometimes slackening into prose), though it’s possible to smuggle in a rhyming verse if you are as subtle as Fergus Chadwick (‘The Wiser Clown’). I enjoyed a fair number of the contributions, not least for their imagery wired up to our technological age. Here’s Kathy Miles in ‘Space Junk’ using the magic of her poetry notebook to “open the door of the wind” and spot not only her lost socks and her Swiss Army knife but ‘All the debris of my life/orbiting the earth above my head/pieces of my skin becoming stars.’ And from Michael W. Thomas’s very challenging 2-page poem ‘You Won’t Fall’ this self-portrait with mobile: ‘You are known – one among them,/even with your futureman clothes/your pocket that chuckles and tweets/as messages tuck themselves in/from the ends of the sky.’ And from Liverpool there’s a poet who wishes he ‘could fly like a casserole’. Good luck to him! David Gill
*
Ju Su, poems and short
stories by Su Law Baccino.
An A5 size perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and 38 pages.
Published during year 2006. E-mail: alfndibs@tiscali.co.uk ISBN
0-9553656-0-0 £4.99.
A diverse collection of poems, ranging from descriptions of scenes, places, people, to tales of travel, loss, and love. Her choice of words and imagery are often arresting,
‘And so ends summer, wind whipping pebbles;
ominous aubergine sky, mirroring the
inky sea;’
She writes from a wide range of experience, having lived in
several places abroad, but a strong impression comes from her poetry that she is
happiest in her native Suffolk, to which she returned. The first section of
poems, ‘Roots,’ speaks powerfully of her memories and current pre-occupation
with the landscapes and villages.
‘All around, yet far away, distant,
isolated voices call.’
She doesn’t hesitate to remind us of
the dangerous ways in which marshland and coastline have been used.
‘Stations……….power stations…’ However, she writes equally well of ‘les Alpes
maritime, -
‘Purring pines whisper above cliff-top
sentinels
sprinkling dust that flies far on a
diffident breeze.’
The section called ‘Life’ is full of contrasts, ‘Yearning’
and ‘Rebelling’ lively and joyful, whereas in ‘Vanishing’ sadness looms through
the poem, even before we are sure what happened.
‘With a wave they slipped away,
disappeared.’
A piece of flash fiction is powerful and emotive, painting
disturbing pictures of a terrible incident. I wasn’t so sure about the short
story. Well written, atmospheric, but I wasn’t quite certain what was going on.
A ghost? A dream? – but that may be a fault in my reading of it. See what you
think! A worthwhile collection.
Kate Edwards
Reflective Images,
a collection of English poems by
Binayendra
Chowdhuri.
An A5 size perfect-bound book with a three colour cover and 41 pages.
Published during year 2007 by: Varuna Asi, D57/32-C, Krishnapuri, Sigra,
Varanasi – 221010, India. ISBN
81-901245-4-4 Price: Rs. 50.00
This collection
confronts the reviewer with several major problems.
Perhaps the most obvious is the question of cultural references.
With no idea of what the battle of Kurushetra, (Kunti’s Prayer), involved
nor of who Karna and Kunti are, it is impossible to appreciate the meaning.
Chowdhuri makes such assumptions throughout, but fails to provide a
ready-reference glossary.
The problems go deeper. Time and
again we encounter examples of bad
English:
‘stepping at your
threshold,’ (page35),
‘. . . your. . . face
breaks into thousand pieces,’ (page 36),
‘suddenly his attention
caught of a lonely lady,’ (page 37), are but a few examples.
Another problem is the subject matter of the poems. ‘Inexorable Time,’ (page 8),
seems to offer a weighty and portentous message, but on examination merely
states that time passes. Leaving
aside the use of words such as ‘remuniate,’ (ruminate?), ‘An Admonition,’ (page
9), piles image on image, but never actually says anything.
Imperfect images coupled with faulty use of language and impenetrable
cultural references make this a difficult read.
Ingrid Riley.
Matters Arising,
poems by Peter Johnson.
An A5 size perfect-bound book with a two colour cover and 62 pages.
Published during year 2007 by: Poetry Monthly Press, 39 Cavendish Road,
Long Eaton, Nottingham, NG10 4HY.
ISBN 978-1-905126-93-4 e-mail:
poetrymonthly@btinternet.com Price:
£5.50.
Many of the poems in this collection have been previously published and as I progressed through the book I could understand why. Anger, sadness and self doubt prevail amongst the many themes. Here is an extract from
‘Bipolar’.
I do not envy you
Having no scars
From self-inflicted wounds
I do not want to have
Your certainty
Of who you are
And will be tomorrow
I choose to have my flesh, raw
From walking on burning coals
And the hours I spend
Talking with angels
‘Memory Loss’
explores, one presumes, the process of getting over a love affair
Somehow
In my memory now
I never see you full face
You are never looking into my eyes.
I can recall you only
In profile.
The poet, however, has a developed sense of humour and this
one struck a chord...
In The Fifties
....we wore black roll-necks
And coughed our way through
Innumerable Gauloises
To look like Jean Paul Sartre
-Or was it Camus?
And were found at all hours
Debating the finer points
Of existentialism
Not in pavement cafes
Of which there are few in Manchester.......
All good stuff and very enjoyable.
Dick Stewart
Mastering
Music Walks the Sunlit Sea, Roundel and Sonnet
Sequences by Alan Jacobs.
An A5 size perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and 63 pages.
Published during year 2008 by: Matador, 9 De Montfort Mews, Leicester,
LE1 7FW. ISBN 978-1906510-893.
E-mail:
books@troubador.co.uk
www.troubador.co.uk/matador
Price: £6.99.
To fully appreciate Alan Jacob’s book of Roundels and Sonnets, it would be
helpful to have studied more than a smattering of eastern philosophies and
religions. The imagery is rich, powerful and rooted in nature and things
such as the moon, music, the songs of larks and philosophy have personality and
impart wisdom and influence. Heady stuff for your average reader.
However, one need not know about Buddhism, Platonism and Gnostic Christianity to
recognize Jacob’s craftsmanship. He is a serious poet with an ear for
rhythm and rhyme, and his frequent use of alliteration and internal rhyme make
for a pleasing read. The sonnet and roundel are tough taskmasters, and
Jacobs is up to the task. Harold
Webster
*
A Lament For England,
poems by Roland John.
An A5 size perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and 98 pages.
Published during year 2005 by: bluechrome publishing, PO Box 109,
Portishead, Bristol, BS20 7ZJ. ISBN
1-904781-76-4 Web:
www.bluechrome.co.uk
Cover illustration, death of empire, by Erik Ryman.
Price £7.99
In addition to being a poet, Roland John is also reviewer,
translator and expert on the poetry of Ezra Pound.
In other words he’s no stranger to the literary world and therefore
should know his business. Perhaps
this artistic background explains his dim view of the silent majority in his
poem ‘Attainment’ as being ‘dull as ditch-water’ with retirement only a
‘few years in safe captivity’.
Personally I felt more comfortable with his sympathetic view of the
workers in ‘Foundry’ breathing ‘nickels, arsenic and lead’ then coughing
‘the black phlegm’, no safe captivity here.
Sympathy was also present in the hospital visitor
in ‘Just Visiting this Time’, knowing that soon he’ll come one last time
only ‘to find your shadow on an empty bed’.
The long poem ‘A Lament for England’ traces the changes from a time of
‘Empire Made’ through a World War to the ‘lurch into hedonism and the
perverse’ to reach a land of ‘increasing credit’ where we buy the
perfect lifestyle. Shades of the
credit crunch here.
Roland John’s poetry mainly concerns people and places.
There is a sense of personal experience gathered over many years and in
many countries. Not always an easy
read but worth the effort even for those of us secure in our ‘safe captivity’.
John Plevin
*
The Sons of Camus,
Writers International Journal, special feature, “Gallery of Historic Spaces,’ by
Morelle Smith;
Autumn 2007, Issue 5. For writers
and artists over the age of 55. An
A5 size perfect-bound book with a two colour cover and 190 pages.
Written articles, poems and illustrations from various contributors.
Submissions to Ann J. Davidson, editor and graphic designer, thro e-mail:
scwijournal@earthlink.net
Editor: Rubi Andredakis, Gropious Street, No. 30, Limassol, 3076, Cyprus;
e-mail:
roubi@cytanet.com.cy
ISBN 978-9963-668-30-4 ISSN
1705-429X Price: CY £5.00, €9.00,
UK £6.00, USA $10.00, Can $15.00.
I was very keen and interested to read The Sons of Camus, an
journal of international writing named after the existentialist philosopher and
Nobel prize winning author Albert Camus, (famous for his first novel L’Etranger,
known in English as The Outsider, which I read in my youth).
What I really enjoyed about this journal was the diverse mix
of poetry, art, short stories, essays and archaeology – plus the special feature
gallery of Historic Spaces, which I found well-written with imaginative
descriptions, that made me want to visit the places and walk in the vivid
landscapes amongst the ruins and sunlight.
This journal has it all.
I found the poetry accessible and strong, even mature as many
of the writers featured are over 55 (as we are told in the introduction).
I like the bucolic sense the writers have for country life.
There were so many poems I enjoyed reading.
One of the poems I liked:
The Mountain
The mountain doesn’t like to be enveloped by haze,
It doesn’t like brooks with tamed torrents,
It doesn’t like the wounded embrace of the spruce trees
That hold back landslides.
The mountain doesn’t like anything.
With the icy hunger
Of its powerful, deified body, it absorbs everything,
Torments everything with the mute laughter
Of it concealed cracks and chasms.
The mountain fears nothing not even
Death,
It’s heart is a smooth rock
From which no edelweiss can be plucked.
Milena Merlak translated poem.
*
Book & Booklet Reviews
Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Edition 50, September 2008
Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below
Sympathetic Magic,
poems by
Brian Fewster.
An A5 size perfect-bound paperback book with a full colour cover and 92
pages. Published on 31st
January 2008 by: Poor Tom’s Press, 89a Winchester Avenue, Leicester, LE3 1AY.
ISBN 978-0-9543-3715-5 price £6.00.
There are many powerful poems in this
collection, the rhyme and metre flow without effort, the rhythm sometimes so
strong one feels compelled to read a poem aloud. Brian uses many poetic forms,
sonnet, sestina, villanelle amongst them, each form appearing the right one for
the poem within it. Often the writing is sad, as in ‘Three poems for Jane,’
which are heart-moving. Others are suffused with humour. There are lines of
particular beauty, as in ‘Moorland’…
‘Clouds disintegrate,
sliding
over the hill’s edge
into
the sky’s lake.’
I turned to the title poem several times,
something in it eluded me – is it about the search for order in a chaotic
world?…
‘By now the past has generated more
thick
sheaves of junk to bin and guilt to store.’
It would seem early man had more imaginative ways of dealing
with life’s pressures and disappointments…
‘…means
of filtering their words through magic
screens.’
The poet’s erudition, his knowledge
of art, science, philosophy, come across strongly, a metaphysical quality is
woven seamlessly into the poetry. An intriguing collection, making one think and
ponder on the diversity of life, love, and everyday scenes.
Kate Edwards
*
from the field book . . .
a collection of poems from
Carol
Thistlethwaite.
A perfect bound book, with a full colour cover and 100 pages. Price £4.99
plus p&p or £1 e-Book. Publisher: BeWrite Books UK, 32 Bryn Road South, Wigan.
Lancs. WN4 8QR;
www.bewrite.net
ISBN 9781905202768 paperback 9781905202775 e-Book.
These poems are an adventure, an excitement of birds, a
journey through fields and woods, across marshland and sea - shores. Afterwards,
you will be glad you set out, got your feet wet in long grass and rock pools,
perched on cliff tops, you’ll see birds with a new way of looking. You’ll know
their ways, their being, their similarities and differences, as diverse as
humans. Next time you see a swallow, you will recognise it in a different way…
‘…Excited chatter
Saharan sun-scorched faces…’
It reminds one of how far they have come,
‘tracing the curves of earth,
weaving lovers’ lace
through the skies.’
Watching rooks in tree tops…
‘To know the thrash and thwack
of life all-precarious.’
Carol uses words in a way that gives us new insights into the
avian world, the poems are alive with discovery, giving our perceptions a keener
edge. Even if, like the poet, (a long time member of the RSPB) you are a
dedicated birdwatcher, these poems will expand and broaden your horizons by the
sheer diversity and vitality of the descriptions and language. The bird’s
various habitats are searchingly portrayed, how they live, survive, and have
their being is lovingly depicted, on some pages the arrangement of words
portrays the birds in flight, on others, we can hear their scrawls and cries and
rustlings, and we learn more from this than from any number of technical books.
‘black-headed gulls crowd in,
over-dipped in ink,
web-feet-first,
blotting the page.’
Kate Edwards
Virtual Eden, poems by
Pat
Earnshaw.
An A5 size stapled booklet with a full colour cover and 32 pages.
Published in year 2008 by: Gorse
Publications, P.O. Box 214, Shamley Green, Guildford, GU5 0SW.
ISBN 978-0-9524113-8-5.
Price £4.50 post free UK.
To fully appreciate this little book, one needs to put aside
a few grown up attitudes about imagery.
An eight-year-old child knows that inanimate objects like tombstones and
dark rooms actually can and do talk to us.
We can and in fact often do slip into reveries and revisit past
experiences and become true artists, invisible observers of others’ and of our
own behaviours. The book is a
gathering of poignant reflections that transport the poet back to another time
within her childhood. The memories
are as beautiful as they are painful, but they do not always describe an Eden.
My favourite poem, and one I think that must be absorbed before reading
the rest, is “Dredging for Memories,” which prepares the reader for what is to
come: “Lost in a wilderness of fantasy/ mismatched with memory/ I tuck myself
into a crevice/underneath the torrent of a waterfall, and safe from ambush,/ am
content to watch the world....”
Harold
S. Webster
*
Distant Close,
poems by
Will Daunt.
An A5 size perfect bound book with a two colour
cover and 64 pages. Published on 14th
February 2008 by Lapwing Publications, c/o 1 Ballysillan Drive, Belfast, BT14
8HQ. ISBN 978-1-905425-73-0
www.freewebs.com/lapwingpoetry/ and e-mail
lapwing.poetry@ntlworld.com Price £6.95.
This one will appeal to the resolute reader. It’s not easy.
It’s not meant to be easy. Reading it left me exhausted. I can’t imagine the
effort required to write it. Daunt’s regular readership will know what to expect
in the way of puns, metaphors and word tricks. The rest of us will have to
dig-in, prod and poke. It’s a bit like cleaning your ears. Something will emerge
eventually. Perhaps grit?
Incidentally, I read the book to disintegration. It simply fell apart in my
hands.
The title piece
Distant Close comprises the last 15 pages of the book and is a kind of a
nosey parker’s cul-de-sac guide going from no. 1 to 13 and then back down the
other side from 12 to 2. Eavesdropping at
13a: Aviary produces the following:
Bird song? I’ll give you bird song
‘til you’re sick of twittering, Look –
much better, listen. I’ve reversed
this cage called home, culled half
the usual clutter, made each room
a gaping prison…
The first part of the book is basically an assortment of
postcards and paraphernalia from bardic travels.
In Stirling Efforts
…voices diverge
like words in a wilderness –
grit fills the vacuum
Poetry with grit.
That sums it up nicely. Gwilym
Williams
*
The Magnificent Guffaw,
poems by Richard
Wink.
An A5 size stapled booklet with a full colour cover and 40 pages.
Published in year 2007 by erbacce press publications, Liverpool, UK.
Cover design, editing and typesetting by Alan Corkish.
ISBN 978-0-955754-8-8
www.erbacce.com ¤5.50 $3.99 E-mail:
aprilmaymarch777@yahoo.co.uk
I
really enjoyed reading The Magnificent Guffaw. It tenderly describes the modern
day madness of human nature and what it is like to live in a city in these
times. I enjoyed the humour and
tenderness contrasted with the mud of everyday routine and the mundane things of
life. I liked the concise way the poet delivers his voice of urban tales and
hope. I sat and read many of the
poems out loud in my garden, (the neighbours probably thought I was bonkers!),
but it seemed the right way to absorb the words.
I loved the way he describes the British culture of booze and
nightclub-worship with an enigmatic vision - “On the dance floor they question
my sexuality / Sure I can smile honey” – it reminds me of the eternal hangover
of my drinking days.
I thoroughly enjoyed this chap-book and am resolved to read
more of Richard Wink’s work. Some
of my favourites were: I Feel Mysterious Today – “There is a weird smell coming
from the fridge/ as I walk through the door/ the cat licks its balls/ in a
touching display/ on my returning” and Guts Up – “On occasion you can confuse
them by playing a mental from the local hospital/ chuck a rotten cabbage/ scream
like a dirty filthy banshee/ By this rule of thumb/ madness conquers fear”.
Neil Francis Brooks
*
Sunflower Equations,
poems by
June English.
A slightly larger than A5 size book with a full colour cover and 76
pages. Published during year 2008 by Hearing Eye, Box 1, 99 Torriano Avenue,
London, NW5 2RX. ISBN 978-1-905082-34-6
www.hearingeye.org
Price £6.95. e-mail:
books@hearingeye.org
Sickness, abuse,
infidelity beat like hammers throughout the poetry of June English.
And if this isn’t enough we can add the difficulties of growing up in
wartime Britain, clutching our ration books and gasmasks, peering fearfully down
the alley where baby Rosie died ‘while Mummy danced with G.I. Joe.’
Fairy tale endings also seem to be excluded.
Peace, marriage and a new life in a new and distant country offer little
in the way of sanctuary with the ‘silent months of snow,’ the ‘talk about
bullies and bond slaves’ and where ‘my blouses cover the blows.’
Harrowing stuff, a view of a life on the margins of the unbearable.
But in the midst of all this pain there are glimpses of a gentler
existence: the uncle who makes violins sitting ‘cross-legged, penknife in
raw-boned sailor’s hand,’ and perhaps finding love in ‘Sonata’ and the ‘summer
nights we’d sneak away’ to where your ‘hands worked rhythmically in tune – to
rouse latent sonata chords in me.’
After reading her poems I’m reminded of past childhood visits
to the fairground, of being thrown around and tossed through the air, half
frightened to death but wanting desperately to go back and experience it all
again. John Plevin
The Cast-Iron Shore,
poems by Pat Jourdan.
An A5 size stapled booklet with a full colour cover and 40 pages.
Cover design, editing and typesetting by Alan Corkish.
Cover painting by Pat Jourdan. Published by
erbacce-press publications,
Liverpool, during year 2008. Price
£4.00
www.erbacce-press.com
ISBN 978-0-9555754-9-5
The city of Liverpool provides a backdrop to most of Pat
Jourdan’s poems, whether a winter scene in ‘February Sundays,’ . . . ‘a surprise
Liverpool on fresh paper,’ and almost obligatory, ‘Ferryboat to Birkenhead,’ or,
The Cast-Iron Shore.’
In the title poem she describes the broken remnants lying
around on the shore, ‘the fag-ends of industrial days,’ and goes on throughout
the book depicting the remnants of her childhood and later life.
There are many focal points here of
remembered incidents: the German prisoner-of-war catching the girl’s eye in
‘After War,’ the soldiers and the aid worker striking a contrast in ‘Shannon
Café,’ and even the brother ‘his internal landscape changed from ours,’ marked
forever by unmentioned experiences in Afghanistan, (That Far-Away Look).
The poet’s voice here is confident
and experienced, but even this does not protect her from the occasional strained
image, such as ‘Apricot skies dashed with sparks – like an orgasm gone wrong,’
or ‘the dotted chewing-gum stars on the pavement.’
But these are minor sins when measured against the image of ‘Kathleen
Ferrier, Telephonist,’ penned in by the rules while her voice soars in her head.
Here and there, the reader comes
across some vivid images, ‘the surge of the tide,’ and ‘the smell of
salt-charged air,’ (Shoreline), or in ‘Heresy,’ describing the baby’s eyes
‘bullet-blue from heaven, dropped sky dolloped into skin.’
All-in-all an interesting and
wide-ranging collection.
Ingrid Riley
Book & Booklet Reviews
Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Edition 49, March 2008
Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below
I Went With Her, poems by Alan Hardy. A slightly larger than A5 size perfect-bound book with a three colour cover and fifty two pages. ISBN 978-1-905126-98-9. Published in year 2007 by Poetry Monthly Press, 39 Cavendish Road, Long Eaton, Nottingham, NG10 4HY. poetrymonthly@btinternet.com UK price £5.50
This is Alan Hardy’s second collection and some of the poems have been previously published in, as he puts it, ‘the usual suspects.’ For me, ‘Night-Porter’ stands out, head and shoulders, from the rest of the material. . .
. . . you will understand that seedy look and smell
of interrupted sleep,
slightly querulous avoidance of eyes,
in the fidgety night-porter’s crumpled shame
having to make a living waiting for others
to deign to ring a bell
in his beaten-down eyes,
you will see the fervour and hot-headed contempt
that massacred the Tsar and bred a coup,
The book, on the whole, is a little less interesting than the above poem would suggest and one gets the impression that the poet is sometimes lacking inspiration, for example there are a couple of poems concerning flies, another on wasps. This made the reading slightly hard going; however, I was considerably cheered by the Pythonesque gem on the rear cover, ‘. . . He won second prize in The Hastings International Poetry Competition 1994. ’ Dick Stewart
*
Sound Signals Advising of Presence, poems by Peter Hughes. An A5 size stapled booklet with a full colour cover and seventeen pages. Published in year 2006 by infernal methods, Quoybow, Stormness, Orkney, KW16 3JU. ISBN? UK price £3.00.
Even if one has never been to a Scottish island, these poems wholly convey the feel and atmosphere of such a place – the lost and lonely shores, the slow tracking of time, as though the tides, the sands, the wind, move everything to a rhythm of their own.
A phrase that caught me, referring to ‘we & the strange house’, was ‘that resound to little adaptations & imagined trespasses.’ (The ampersands are the poet’s own.) The house, what he sees from and around it, the sea, tides, are the recurrent themes, uninhabited buildings, a deserted peninsula, loss and loneliness drift through the pages, but hope as well, - ‘the most stunning sights are the normal daily occurrences.’ The words are like a reverie floating through the poets consciousness, like driftwood cast on a deserted beach
Perhaps one should never ask what a poem is ‘about,’ but I would have liked to be a bit more certain that this was a return, that a house was being restored, or did I get that completely wrong? ‘Green hill,’ ‘green doors,’ ‘an unblocked chimney,’ ‘undressed walls,’ all speak of a place, a time, a moment in a landscape, hinting at lives led within it, in an arresting collection of images. Kate Edwards
*
In the beginning was the song, poems by Glenys Jones. A slightly larger than A5 size perfect-bound book with seventy four pages and a full colour cover. Published during year 2007 by: Matador, 9 De Montfort Mews, Leicester, LE1 7FW. E-mail: books@troubador.co.uk Web site: www.troubador.co.uk/matador ISBN 978-1905886-975 UK price £6.99.
The book’s cover gives the lie to the old cliché that you can’t judge a book by its cover - the sunlight on the mountain, the soft blue sky, the rugged rock, the out of focus gorse, the withered grass, the undersized tree reaching valiantly skyward all serve to illustrate exactly what’s in store.
Glenys Jones is the time-honoured reluctant poet finally pressed into the limelight by family and friends; a kind of Welsh Lao Tzu at the gate you could say, but it’s all very well done and often done with a light touch. The collection takes its title from the poem beginning with the following lines:
Before we spoke, we sang
With the birds in the trees
The wind on the lake
This hints at transmigration; an ancient Celtic belief system and this kind of thing fits well as I’ve hinted to Jack Tait’s cover image. Jones is less happy with modern hustle and bustle. Here’s Epitaph: One in full:
A womb
A tomb
And in between
Life
A crowded room
Full of shouting
Where no-one speaks
Aunt Mabel, 90, one of the original conspirators, must be delighted with her niece. Gwilym Williams
Iota 78, 2007/02. Poems and reviews from various contributors. A perfect-bound book with a two-colour cover and fifty six pages. Editors: Bob Mee and Janet Murch of Ragged Raven Press, 1 Lodge Farm, Snitterfield, Warwickshire, CV37 0LR. E-mail: iotapoetry@aol.com + web address www.iotapoetry.co.uk ISSN 0266-2922 Year sub £12.00 UK, rest of the world £18.00. Individually £3.00 per copy, UK.
You will not like all of the poems in this slim edition, perhaps not even most, (one might say the same about Whitman's "Leaves of Grass”); but if you read "Iota" carefully, you will come to the conclusion that, whatever its shortcomings here and there, this is an important gathering of work after all. It is, I think, a platform on which aspiring poets may stand and build intricate images of original thought that tweak the mind in new and refreshing ways. Just about the time you are ready to dismiss it all as vague prose in short lines, you come across poems that cut deep, that touch a chord and knock the smugness out of you.
All in all, considering the publication's purpose, the editors have chosen well. Harold Webster
*
A Real Man, poems by David Savoury. A perfect-bound book, slightly larger than A5 size, with a three-colour cover and ninety four pages. Published during November 2006 by Paula Brown Publishing, 26 Uplands Road, Drayton, Portsmouth, PO6 1HS. Information via e-mail: paulabrownpublishing@btinternet.com ISBN 9781905168125 Price?
David Savoury’s ‘A Real Man’ represents some twenty years of work, but for all that it’s not always an easy read. The publisher’s introduction claims that the poetry ranges ‘from the surface of a man’s skin’ to ‘the boundless perspective of the cosmos.’ Quite a stretch. Helpfully the poems are grouped into broad and ambitious themes: self and society; the fragility and wonder of humanity; and the dichotomy between flesh and spirit. All good subjects for the poet. Self and a rather bleak view of society are present in ‘The Suburbs’ where ‘refuse congregates’ in black sacks ‘like so many mourners.’ In the poem ‘Beach’ humanity is reflected by love turning towards sleep ‘leaving me in our darkness.’ Our insignificance in the wider scheme of things is measured in the poem ‘Growing Desert’ addressed to God where man is just ‘a grain of sand… dead in a boundless vacuum.’ I found the poems in ‘A Real Man’ grew on me. A slow process but worth the effort. John Plevin
*
Waves, 2007: 37th Annual Anthology of the Society of Civil and Public Services Poetry Workshop. Poems displayed in an A5 sized stapled booklet with a two-colour cover and 28 pages. Membership is open to anyone who works or has ever worked for a civil or public service organisation. Chairperson/Editor: Liz Rowlands, 19 Arkley Court, Maidenhead, Berkshire, SL6 2YR. E-mail: pw@gothicgarden.freeserve.co.uk ISSN 1475-144 Price £2.50, includes post and packaging.
This is a delightful anthology from the above named society. The collection covers a wide and varied range of subjects. In ‘The Upstairs Cat,’ Muriel Stammers cleverly evokes the nature of cats, threatening menace to other animals, but seeking the favour of human beings who are a useful source of food and admiration.
More serious themes are also chosen. Mike Boland in ‘Among the rocks of Albion,’ offers a romantic view of Britain’s past, “we are the land; locked into a grid of unseen power / that webs across the hills, woods, rivers/earthing us among the rocks of Albion.”
Angus Livingstone in ‘The Potter,’ describes how a routine activity gradually takes over the potter who dreams of producing the perfect pot, “and when it’s thrown and only then/she’ll know time and pain and cold/but she will smile before she sleeps.”
There are many more themes in this collection which should be mentioned, in particular the various evocations of nature, such as ‘Suburban Summer,’ by Terry Rickson, or ‘End of Summer,’ by Terry James. This is an anthology which has something to offer everyone and stirs the reader’s imagination throughout. Ingrid Riley
Minor Yours, poems by Peter Hughes. An A5 size stapled booklet with a full colour cover and 11 pages. Published during year 2006 by Oystercatcher Press 4 Coastguard Cottages, Lighthouse Close, Old Hunstanton, Norfolk, PE36 6EL. ISBN 1-905885-008, price £3.00.
Minor Yours; (Mine or Yours?) poses just that dualistic question, as do the poems in the slim volume, with interesting cover illustration by the author (which, in colour therapy terms, would show that the artist had issues with gender, psychic stability and direction ….) The poems start to confirm this, moving from: ‘I’m a charcoal sketch/ a self portrait in an unframed mirror/ a subterranean rumour/ a trickle of coal dust……’ to ‘purposeful steps/ usually kill an insect or two/ you can hear them in the attic/ or in the alley down the side of the house/ maybe it’s a neighbour’s dog a fox/ or some less easily named/ nocturnal presence,’ then, with more definition: ‘time to clean out the pipes &/ listen to the dripping in the cellar’, confirming the duality: ‘pros and cons light and dark/ your turn my turn’, ‘vicious and sympathetic by turns’, but (don’t worry about it!) ‘where no-one is watching or measuring/ setting you up to shoot at the target of yourself/’ while the last poem has more visual structure, the message is still lost, as it feels, is the poet: ‘though the dogs are waiting/ with reflections in their eyes/ for someone to tell them/ this is not happening/ someone will come back.’ Of course they will. And it’s important to say it when you feel it. And paint it. Wonderful words. Janie Thomas.
Book/Booklet Reviews
Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Edition 48, September 2007
Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below
The Mansion Gardens, poems by Alan Morrison. A slightly larger that A5 sized perfect-bound book with a three colour cover and 71 pages. ISBN 1-905168-11-X. Published during year 2006 by Paula Brown Publishing, 26 Uplands Way, Drayton, Portsmouth , Hampshire, PO6 1HS. paulabrownpublshing@btinternet.com www.paulabrownpublshing.com Price ?
Alan Morrison, the man who *re-jigged Under Milk Wood to much acclaim, is an out of the ordinary writer. His work abounds with strangely named characters like Short Shanks the Shopkeeper and The Turpentine Prophet.
The poetry in here will appeal to many a reader’s socialist feelings and includes a selection of Morrison’s epigrams, or as he refers to them - overbs. There are also lengthy pieces like Rats, Cats and Kings, a homage to Orwell in Catalonia and a number of poems written in a kind of Joycean verbalesque manner.
If you think you’d enjoy a mulligatawny of poetry served up, not by a flyblown waiter, but by a creative and thoughtful poet seeking to enrich the language, both with and without pub beer wisdom, then this handsome 172-page volume could be just the thing for you.
*
Poems by Soran Hassan. An A5 size, perfect-bound book with a full colour cover and 48 Pages. ISBN 0-953681-7-0. Published during year 2004 by: Writers Without Borders, 22 Margaret's Grove, Harborne, Birmingham, B17 9JH. Price £3.99.
Wandering and searching for meaning in what must have been a very alien world, Soran finds a universal point of reference – the many faces of nature. He sees the flowers growing, blooming and dying, ‘a wind rises / scatters the butterflies . . . nothing new in the garden.’ Soran uses nature repeatedly in his poems as a means of conjuring up ‘the world beyond boundaries,’ the life which he lost.
Aspects of the poems are underlined by drawings which echo ‘Guernica’ with their evocation of fractured reality. Soran is trying to resolve his own devastating experiences, to cope with ‘the hugeness of suffering . . . to open the door to a new philosophy,’ – however difficult that may be, ‘but one door will open / the sun, the seas, birds, all things will enter / and one way will lead to felicity,’ (Sent to Coventry). The poet himself, ‘looked for a new land / where your dreams would not be slaughtered.’ The destination, Birmingham, might seem to us to be near farce. But for Soran the city is not loaded with the baggage of associations – it offers a new perspective on life.
These poems portray a world we can hardly imagine, and we can only marvel that the poet has taken the vocabulary of his second language and approached it in an original and fruitful way, ‘under the canopy / of refuge poetry.’ Ingrid Riley.
*
The Triad, a collection of poems by Charles Portolano. An A5 size stapled booklet with a two colour cover and 38 pages. ISBN 0-9779035-9-1. Published during year 2006 by: RWG Press, P.O. Box 858, Rockford Il 61105, USA. Price (USA) $6 (includes the cost of postage). Copies may be obtained from: Charles Portolano, P.O. Box 17205, FountainHills, Arizona, AZ 85269-7205, USA. Also view web: www.thesouldecision.com E-mail: angeldec@hotmail.com
What do Americans think about America? There are probably a million points of view, but in Charles Portolano’s ‘The Triad’ this particular American seems somewhat disillusioned with a society caring only for what we can hold in our hollow hands. A similar message comes through in ‘Cutting across Kansas’: harangued by hand-made signs telling him abortion is murder, the car driver is more concerned with the thought that war is murder. The car-driving poet in ‘Cutting across Kansas���, perhaps like the rest of us, doesn’t like tailgaters, in particularly those driving a huge black Hummer fast like a black hole which when it finally overtakes presents him with the rear bumper sticker Honk if you love Jesus. But the pellets of protest are tempered with gentler thoughts: the old man in ���Haunting’ walking the length of an old dry-docked sailboat his hand never leaving her side; and in ‘Gypsy Fever’ the flamenco dancers laughing loud loving life.
There must be room for protest. Those of us alive in the sixties will always remember the power and impact of Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters of War���. There is much in the world today that demands our concern, but the voice of protest seems strangely muted. Perhaps in his way Charles Portolano is doing his bit to remind us that we need from time to time to prod ‘The Hornets’ Nest’ and be ready to die. John Plevin.
Homing, poems by Philip Ramp. An A5 size perfect-bound book with a two colour cover and 88 pages. ISBN 0-944550-72-X. Published during year 2005 by Pygmy Forest Press, 1125 Mill Street, Springfield, OR 97477, USA. $12.00 U.S. Copies may be purchased at $12.00 from: P.O. Box 34 Aegina Island, 180 10, Greece.
These words are a form of poetry that I feel drawn to: ‘Emotional but without histrionics, wilful but lacking the mayhem of dream; conclusiveness of falling, the insistent plea of logic in its refrain.’ They express the prosaic magnetism of someone who knows he’s not there yet, but is looking forward to the journey, enjoying the struggle of looking at the map and trying to decipher the way while looking up at the sunset feeling wistful in his head as well as warm in his heart, perhaps because of the company he keeps. In his ‘Sometimes it Seems like Evening has the Answers he says it differently: ‘as always, the expected time of arrival/depends on when you left.’ But has its own contradictions and these physical/metaphysical ponderings about nature in its many forms are what make the joy of rhythm and excitement of unravelling the thread of words forming the form, shaping the shape of his poems. Janie Thomas
*
Mackerel Wrappers, poems by Martin Cook. An A5 size stapled booklet with a two colour cover and 36 pages. Published 24th March 2007 by HappenStance, 21 Hatton Green, Glenrothes, Fife, KY7 4SD. UK delivered price £4.00. ISBN 978-1-905939-05 3. Further information from e-mail address: nell@happenstancepress.com and www.happenstancepress.com
An entertaining and clever collection, with surprising insights and often a deep seriousness almost concealed by the dryness and humour.
“Herring Gull at Mwynt” becomes
‘…a High Court Judge,
considering my bribe of bone,
and whether to cull me.’
Several poems are about friends and characters he has known. “Mildred” discards her wheelchair,
‘…striding out….
…bullying the countryside.’
Clarence, Danny, George, Lillian, all come to life with their quirks and foibles revealed to us in very wry, often sad, comments. The Title poem tells of eating fish and chips ‘in a polystyrene tray’ as the poet regrets the passing of ‘unhygienic newspaper’. He ends by describing how the Romans wrapped their fish in ‘old poems (or even discarded prose) ‘and how their empire lasted a thousand years.’ “A Christmas Letter” is a delightful ‘reverse take’ on the Round Robins so often received at that season.
This collection brings many a smile, and sometimes dampens the eye, leaving an impression of a poet at ease with his words. Kate Edwards
Book/Booklet Reviews
Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Edition 47, March 2007
Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below
Poems About Places by Peter Naldrett. A slightly larger than A5 sized perfect-bound book with a two-colour cover and 45 pages. Published in year 2006. ISBN 978-1-4116-4072-6. Price? Available via: www.lulu.com or via Blackwell's, www.blackwell.co.uk. E-mail: peter.naldrett@talk21.com
As stated clearly on the tin, these poems are about places. From Sydney to Vienna, Belfast to Brixton they’re all here and a very impressive travel journal it is. The blurb on the rear cover makes it pretty clear that these journeys have already formed the basis of much writing. I mention this because Peter uses a very factual and dead pan style for a poet and a teacher. Some of the endings of the poems left one hanging in mid air.
Avignon
I knew this place was in a song,
But I thought it was by Bryan Ferry.
No, no, no, that’s Avylon
But I stood on the famous bridge, anyhow.
Cold, cold, blowy and cold.
Universal culture drags me in McDonalds
Because toilets are free and clean.
And they even serve beer in this one.
That’s where I am now.
I am not at all sure that the romantic in me wanted to know that there is a McDonalds near ‘Le Pont D’Avignon,’ and of course, Bryan Ferry’s song is Avalon not Avylon but I strongly suspect that our teacher poet knows this and is secretly smiling whilst running his nails down the blackboard. Cunning. Dick Stewart
*
Orpheus in the Park, poems by Rose Solari. A slightly larger than A5 size perfect-bound book with a full-colour cover and 81 pages. Published in year 2005 by The Bunny and the Crocodile Press, Washington DC, USA. Cover design by Randy Stanard of DeWitt Design. Photograph of author by Jimmy Patterson. ISBN 0 938572 43 1 UK price on application.
Behind Travis Hall’s out-of-focus cover painting of the Mystic River, curving like the trunk of an elephant, is a volume of autobiographical work where entangled threads of elegy, myth, block-verse and the occasional essay combine to inform and/or divert the attentive reader.
Poetess Rose Solari, not without pluck, unburdens herself in the public arena, settles accounts with her late parents and generally takes care of unfinished business. She hankers to run after loved ones just as ancient Orpheus pursued Eurydice when she had perished from snakebite. A serious case of introspection dressed up in Grecian cloth you might think. And there you might be half right.
For me Solari scores best when she gets away from the antique Greeks and puts more of herself into the poem as she does for example in her poem My Mother’s Elephants written with feeling – one of the most moving in the book:
Because of their size, and the shape of their ears, and the sweetness
and wisdom she claimed to see
in their miraculously-lashed eyes, my mother,
for as long as I can remember, loved elephants.
Like mother’s pachyderms Orpheus in the Park is a lumbering but impressive animal of many parts. The 7-page addendum will fill-in your mythological gaps. Gwilym Williams
*
A Rum Do, poems by Ivan Wallace. An A5 sized stapled booklet with a two-colour cover and 20 pages. Published in year 2006 by Bramble Press. Available from Mr I. Wallace, 15 Drumhoy Drive, Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland, BT38 8NN. No ISBN. Price £2.50 (includes the cost of postage and packing).
This is not a collection that offers dramatically original insights or daring innovations. Ivan Wallace gently probes everyday situations, the ‘little things,’ like a visit to the betting shop in ‘The Tip,’ or receiving medical treatment in ‘Blood Test.’ At the same time, everything is subjected to Wallace’s dry humour. The blood test is administered by a cleaner, and the horse the old man was so sure of, loses.
Despite the humour, there is an element of genuine despair here. In ‘Giving Up,’ the man in the bar is giving up hope for lent. In ‘Malice,’ the divorced man writes to his wife, ‘I’m so hungry I’ve just eaten a mouse,’ and she replies, ‘Next time try eating a rat, they’re more filling.’
This collection can be warmly recommended as the writer’s gentle humanity makes his poems well worth reading. Ingrid Riley
The Good is Abroad, poems by Will Daunt. An A5 size perfect-bound book with a 2-colour cover and 52 pages. Published in year 2006 by Lapwing Publications, c/o 1 Ballysillan Drive, Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT14 8HQ. ISBN 1-905425-32-5. Price £5.95 ��12.00.
To be a good poet you need to be an observer of life and nature. To be a very good poet you need to be an observer with empathy. Will Daunt in his latest collection ‘The Good is Abroad’ seems to demonstrate that he has both these qualities. And perhaps even a bit more; he likes to play tricks with words. The ‘Shadow Lad’ who ‘came fast to the world’ but ‘ran out of faces who���d let him fake lives’, and poor ‘Polly’ learning that ‘school’s full of places where you cannot hide,’ both are strangers to the absent ‘good.’ I must also admit to liking poets who are not stuck on style and form. The occasional sonnet, villanelle and rhyming couplet dotted among free verse poems is my cup of tea, perhaps drunk in the ��Nursing Home,’ hiding in its ‘Welcome Room’ with one eye on the cricket until ‘pain stops play.’ John Plevin
*
Coasting Norfolk, poems by Wendy Webb and Guest Poets. An A5 size perfect-bound book with a full-colour cover and 92 pages. Published in year 2006 by: Poetry Monthly Press, 39 Cavendish Road, Long Eaton, Nottingham, NG10 4HY. ISBN 1-905126-73-5. Price £5.50.
Coasting Norfolk is the culmination of a year’s observations of East Anglia: history, art, culture, people, place; sketch impressions from near and far. I enjoyed the mixture of personal reminiscences and delight in the countryside – Wendy Webb’s work is sometimes romantic, rhyming, and feminine, (which I like), finding fun in the experiences and land she describes. She is supported by guest poets: Brigid Simpson’s Selection of Norfolk Haiku and Norman Bisset’s Peace particularly appeal. Somehow the minimalism of the haiku epitomise the peace reflected by the form, words and landscape: There isn’t much here but sea and sky, clouds and flocks of migrating birds, eye-patched like Nelson… while seeing far more and using the rhythm of bird names to bring colour to the senses and imagination. It is an interesting collection of gentle poems which pay homage not only to the landscape but also to poetry about it. Janie Thomas
Book/Booklet Reviews
Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Edition 46, September 2006
Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below
Dirty Blonde at the Cash Machine, poems by Ray Hollingsworth. An A5 size, spiral bound book with x? number of pages and numerous black and white photographs, (pages expand concertina style). Photography by Stuart Nicholls, photographic model: Julie Patterson. Published by Kiss Production Ltd, 2006. E-mail erotic.cafe@btopenworld.com £9.95. ISBN 0-9536958-3-2 Available via Amazon on-line.
With this glossy collection of poems and photographs I was like a traveller unfolding and refolding maps. Open, the book is sometimes more than a yard wide. I should have tackled it on the floor with a boxed pizza and an uncorked bottle instead of on a small table in a pub corner. Try this for size from Tee Shirt:
“When you’re standing in a bus queue
and a girl comes up to you wearing a tee shirt saying
‘trust me, I am Jesus the Lord’
and gets so close that you can almost taste the flavour of her chewing gum …”
Hollingsworth’s words are backed up with atmospheric shots of model Julie Patterson in back alleys and under neon lights. Dirty Blonde at the Cash Machine is a potent assortment of messianic verse, social commentary, inner-city rebelliousness and classy poster-poetry. Ray Hollingsworth is one to keep an eye on. You’ll find him at the pointed end of your next scenario. Gwilym Williams
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Measured Rings, poems by Ingrid Riley. An A5 sized perfect-bound book with 83 pages and a 2-colour cover. Photographs by Peter Riley, edited by Dr Graham Riley. Published in year 2005 by Ingrid Riley, 18 Uplands, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7BL. ISBN 0-9525304-3-0. £5.99.
Regular readers of Pulsar will be familiar with Ingrid Riley through her reviews. Her latest publication ‘Measured Rings’ provides us with the opportunity to look at the poet behind the reviewer. Many of her poems examine the impact of nature on our lives: the stripped Autumn trees recalling ‘the whisper of a loving breeze’; the noisy ravens dropping from the sky ‘like sombre rain’; and in Winter the whisper of death that ‘comes in slow waltzes’. But not all is nature and seasons. A section of the book deals with conflict and its impact on modern life ‘where tears feed their hoard of sorrows’. The brushes with conflict come in different guises from neighbours from hell with their ‘windows blinded by spinning threads of fear’, to the ‘tormented souls’ embroiled in the war in Iraq.
Whether in the world of conflict or nature, Ingrid Riley’s poetry has a certain lyrical quality, perhaps best tasted in the quiet of the evening with a glass of wine and time to think. John Plevin
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Cheap Therapy, poems by Nick Mannion. An A5 size perfect-bound book with a full-colour cover and 84 pages. Published in year 2005 by Matador, 9 De Montfort Mews, Leicester, LE1 7FW. ISBN 1-905237-42-1 £7.99. E-mail books@troubador.co.uk www.troubador.co.uk/matador
Despite an unfortunate title and unappetizing cover graphics, Mannion more often than not delivers the aesthetic goods. He writes perceptively and honestly of the ebb-and-flow of human relationships, with scarcely any trace of bathos or self-pity. I would add that his poetry, all true poetry, may assist our healing, but amounts to much more than mere therapy in the end. Blair Ewing
When the Thunder Woke Me, poems by The Foyle Young Poets of the Year 2005. The Foyle Foundation / The Poetry Society. A slightly smaller than A5 sized stapled booklet with a full-colour cover and 32 pages. Price? No ISBN. Published by The Poetry Society, 22 Betterton Street, London, WC2H 9BX. www.poetrysociety.org.uk e-mail: fyp@poetrysociety.org.uk Contact: Andrew Bailey.
A vigorous and warm handshake should be given to whoever in the Foyle Foundation decided to help the Poetry Society showcase young poets. Of course teenagers and young adults will not have breadth of experience to produce deep poetry I hear you say perhaps; but this would be too stereotypical and mostly wrong in this case. The collection of the best from the Young Poets of the Year Award of 2005 does have its charming naivety in some places, but there is much to frustrate any of us who struggle with the form well into middle age and beyond, with their maturity. “How to Watch a Child Die” by Amanda Chong could easily have been simply maudlin, but a delightful line saves it; “Turn away from the blank faces of your own children/ and make no associations/ Pretend you do not notice/ how your teenager leaves her food/”. There are a few deliberately-obscure-to-be-fashionable pieces, but I am happy to persevere with re-readings over the next few months… there are few enough volumes where I would have said the same. Some of these names, I shall watch out for, to see if they are published and grow further. To take, unfairly, one example, Ella Thompson provided in “Finding a Voice” a simple form of words that led to many layered meanings representing frustration and despair using landscape/classical metaphors. When I make connections using these words where perhaps none were intended by the poet, I know I have found a poem that is worth returning to. I would recommend finding yourself a copy and look out for future editions. Lachlan Robertson
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Average Sunday Afternoon, short stories by Pat Jourdan. A5 size perfect-bound book with 55 pages and a full colour cover. Published in year 2005 by Poetry Monthly Press, 39 Cavendish Road, Long Eaton, Nottingham, NG10 4HY. ISBN 1-905126-29-8 £5.50.
These stories are entertaining and fun, though some are rather ‘samey’. Sometimes I wished Pat Jordan had penetrated deeper into the psychology of the essence of her tale and made more of it, rather than leaving the first idea on one level. For instance, Miss Havisham Reconstructed makes for light-hearted reading in the knowledge that everyone, but everyone, knows Miss Havisham from Dickens’ David Copperfield, so the legend can be used, or built upon to advantage. So when Miss Havisham decides to up and make something of her life in today’s culture, rather than mope it away the very thought is funny and the story too. She and Queen Victoria epitomise a psychological illness which still exists sometimes unrecognized, however, and rather than disregard that and use it for the joke, it could have been unravelled and turned around more cleverly, to everyone’s greater benefit, without losing the laughter. Janie Thomas
Book/Booklet Reviews
Extracts from Pulsar Poetry Magazine, Edition 45, March 2006
Reviews from earlier editions are also shown below
The Blood In My Veins, poems 1995 – 2005, by U.V. Ray; A5 size, perfect-bound book with a 2-colour cover and 51 pages. Published in year 2005 by Cyberwit.net, 4/2B, L.I.G., Govindpur Colony, Allahabad-211004 (U.P.), India. www.cyberwit.net also www.uvray.moonfruit.com ISBN 81-8253-042-3 Price Rs. 80/- $15 ��9.
Minimalist hobo poetry has got to hit the spot like a shot of Polish vodka. Now when your mugshot is on the cover (leather jacket and shades) at nine quid a throw over the blurb promising primitive emotional vigour and your leading punch is that good old refrain to the young whore in Reno...that made my stay worthwhile then the poems inside need to be extra special, a lot more than mere jottings on the run. This is not always the case here.
After the introduction which spoke of smashed up cars and trashed hotel rooms many of the poems turned out to be quite tame but The Painted Doll was in a different class; almost Bukowskian. It seems that U.V. Ray, the self-confessed Blue Coat School dropout, can do it if he tries. It's getting him to try that seems to be the problem. Gwilym Williams
*
“Courtney’s the future she is,” poems from the people of Parks and East Walcot, Swindon. Compiled and introduced by Community Poet, Tony Hillier. Published in year 2005. An A5 size stapled booklet with a 2-colour cover and 74 pages. Price / publisher / ISBN? Poems / responses to