My article on Ben Wilkinson's poetry

My article on Ben Wilkinson's poetry is now up at The Friday Poem, tracing his development from his first pamphlet through to his second full collection, Same Difference (Seren Books, 2022). Here's a small taster...

...Same Difference sees Wilkinson concluding a process that began with The Sparks, resolving the co-existence of accessibility and erudition in his poetry, and employing a coherent and cogent method that combines allusion and directness of speech. By resolving these potential clashes and making them work in synch he’s already generated an approach that’s highly unusual in the context of contemporary UK poetry... 

You can read it in full by clicking on this link.

Job, hobby or vocation?

How would you describe poetry’s role in your life? As a job, a hobby or a vocation?

For me, it’s definitely not a job. However, the fact I don’t use poetry as a means to generating my primary source of income doesn’t mean it’s any less important to me, nor does it mean my own poems are any worse (or better!) than stuff by people who do. Moreover, in my own personal case, viewing poetry as a job would kill off my capacity to write. This is because poems are ring-fenced in my mind as one of the few parts of my life in which I can do as I please without worrying about the fallout!

But then the term ‘hobby’ makes my hackles rise immediately. It insinuates I might be playing at being a poet, categorising my writing alongside stamp collecting or trainspotting. And it also gives the impression that poetry plays a secondary role in my life, which isn’t true.

And what about ‘vocation’? There’s a concern it might sound pretentious or feel like a pose, but it’s the word that works best for me. It doesn’t mean I necessarily spend umpteen hours a day writing poetry, but then I’d argue anyway that the genre doesn’t require or even benefit from lengthy periods at a desk. Instead, poems are often better for being filtered through lived experiences. My life feeds into my poetry and my poetry into my life. And that interwoven relationship is the reason why writing poems is a vocation for me.

The specific as a pathway to the universal

Having recently read a few gorgeous lyric poems that failed to transport me anywhere at all, I found myself (yet again!) wondering why.

Once more, I reached the conclusion that supposedly universal lyricism without context is just beautiful language that floats in a vacuum without an anchor. It's to be admired rather than absorbed.

In my view, one ideal way to achieve universality in a poem is via a specific frame of reference. This is crucial to the ability of a poem to create a credible new reality that enlightens and transforms the reader's pre-existing imaginary world.

Contrary to certain critical beliefs, the specific is a pathway towards the universal and never deserves to be disparaged as unambitious. In other words, so-called anecdotal poetry is capable of generating power that reaches far beyond its initial modest confines. The supposed anecdote is simply a point of departure...

A letter to a reader

Dear Camilla,

Fingers crossed this letter finds you in good health and still enjoying poetry!

I’m afraid I can’t quite remember your face from my reading at the New Park Centre four years ago, though I do just about recall resisting a dodgy joke about the royal family while checking the spelling of your name and signing your brand-new copy of The Knives of Villalejo. However, I’ve been thinking about you a lot these past few days, ever since my friend spotted that very copy at the Oxfam shop in Chichester last week and whizzed a photo of it over to me.

On the one hand, I hope you enjoyed it and then passed it on, rather than regretting your purchase. And then, of course, I hope that you yourself chose to give it to Oxfam. Far too many books in charity shops are from personal libraries that have been dispersed by relatives (see my blog post about Peggy Chapman-Andrews from a few years back).

And on the other hand, I’m writing to thank you for granting me this poetic rite of passage: the first time my book has been spotted at a charity shop. I’m pleasantly surprised not to feel annoyed at all that it might have been discarded. Instead, I’m excited to wonder about the prospective new life it’s been given. As soon as I get back to Chichester, I’ll be popping in to the Oxfam shop to find out whether it’s found another owner.

In other words, I'm proud of joining the ranks of the charity shop poets. I've always loved second-hand books, and my collection's now among them! For that, Camilla, I’ll always be grateful to you.

All the best,

Matthew Stewart

Clarity and freshness, Sarah Mnatzaganian’s Lemonade in the Armenian Quarter

Sarah Mnatzaganian’s first pamphlet, Lemonade in the Armenian Quarter (Against the Grain Press, 2022), is as refreshing as the fruit it evokes and invokes. Of course, as its title immediately indicates, a key theme is origin and identity, but this is not wielded as a statement. Instead, it’s explored via fierce curiosity.

And then there’s Mnatzaganian’s use of language. This might initially seem slightly formal on the spectrum of lexical registers, as in the following choices: ‘whom’ is used instead of ‘who’, ‘until’ instead of till’, and ‘if I were’ instead of ‘if I was’. However, any lazy accusations of stiltedness can easily be dismissed due to the clarity of her sentences, which flow naturally and are easy to read. They’re far from old-fashioned, simply acknowledging a linguistic tradition behind them.

One key poem in terms of the above-mentioned theme of identity is undoubtedly ‘Juice’, dedicated ‘To my father, Aphraham’. Its closing couplet reads as follows:

…Now I want to watch your dark throat dance
while you drink.

The metrics and aural patterning are especially interesting here. Three trochees are followed by three strong syllables in the penultimate line, thus imitating the dancing movement of drinking, while the open vowels and closed consonants also follow suit. And then the final line, made up of a single anapest, stops the poem in its tracks as Mnatzaganian suddenly accelerates to its climax.

Of course, the key adjective in the above couplet is ‘dark’, especially in the context of the poems that comes immediately after it in the pamphlet, which is titled ‘Made in Hemsworth’. The penultimate stanza resonates and reflects back towards the previous poem…

Now mum knows she’s one-third Viking,
she’s proud of her pale and ageless skin,
her North Sea gaze.

In this case, the pivotal adjective is ‘pale’. By juxtaposing a father’s dark throat and a mother’s pale skin, plus the contrasting proper nouns of Aphraham and Hemsworth, Mnatzaganian is portraying the two elements of the blend that creates a person. Rather than claiming or declaring an identity, she’s working through it, portraying it, unravelling its roots, reconciling its differing facets.

The clarity, freshness and light touch of this pamphlet are the qualities that lift it out of the hubbub of contemporary poetry, especially when considered alongside Mnatzaganian’s refusal to take short cuts or reach facile conclusions. For not much more than the price of a dodgy pint in a flash London pub, Lemonade in the Armenian Quarter encourages the reader to pause, breathe in its vitality and return to everyday life, newly invigorated. Get hold of a copy for yourself and you’ll see what I mean…

My review of Thorpeness, Alison Brackenbury's new collection

 My in-depth review of Alison Brackenbury's fine new collection, Thorpeness, is now up at Wild Court, and here's a quick quote as a taster...

"Thorpeness finds Brackenbury stripping away artifice to face the ageing process and the only possible end of age, setting her narrative thrust in the context of the world around us."

You can read it in full via this link. Thanks to Robert Selby for the commission. 

Nuances and undercurrents, Helena Nelson's Pearls

When we approach Helena Nelson’s new book, Pearls (HappenStance Press, 2022), certain potential misnomers and misconceptions are worth addressing and dismissing.

First off, it isn’t really a collection as such. Instead, it’s subtitled ‘The Complete Mr and Mrs Philpott Poems’, and includes several poems that were previously published in earlier collections, now reprinted alongside a whole host of uncollected pieces. And secondly, Pearls isn’t thematic if we take that term as it’s understood by most people in the poetry world, i.e. preconceived, planned and executed as a whole. There are no fillers here, nor are there poems whose role is to link themes or join up a narrative. These are individual, connected poems that accumulated over decades.

And the above points lead us to a third clarification: Pearls is not a novel in verse. This is demonstrated by the fact that every single poem retains its value as a stand-alone piece while also adding to the sum. Nelson employs a collage effect throughout the book, implicitly building her characters and their stories via juxtaposition, each scene, each moment, each episode enriching the reader's experience, page on page, pearl after pearl. As a consequence, it’s useful to quote Nelson’s own explanation, which reaches beyond the structure of the manuscript, taking her title as a point of departure to understanding life itself:

...But now I feel there’s a sense in which all the moments of our existence are suspended timelessly, pearls on a string. Each moment contains the whole story: beginning, middle and end...

And then there’s a fourth issue to clear up. Poetry readers don’t often encounter the explicit, sustained deployment of three-dimensional characters, so it’s important to underline that these poems are far from being confessional in tone and content. This statement would be superfluous if we were discussing a novel, but even experienced heads often seem prone to seeking out pointless biographical parallels when it comes to considering poetry. Of course, any character contains a proportion of the writer that created them, but that’s the case in any novel too.

Moving on to the poems themselves, one of Helena Nelson’s greatest attributes is her knack for observation. Not just watching people and then portraying them, but the capacity to pick up on the nuances and undercurrents that play crucial roles in social and human relations. One such example is the closing couplet to ‘Back’:

…She is back. He is glad. And the bed is glad
and a pot of coffee is almost ready.

The ‘he’ and ‘she’ of this extract are the Philpotts, of course, the protagonists of this book. Their relationship, a second marriage in middle age, is evoked via snapshots such as these lines in which emotion is conveyed indirectly through the active role of objects such as the bed and the pot.

In technical terms, meanwhile, this couplet is fascinating. For instance, the penultimate line features three anapests before a iamb kicks in, drawing the elements together and offering a musical reassurance that’s mirrored by semantic warmth.

And what about the punctuation? At first glance, it might seem artificial or unusual. Two three-word sentences without conjunctions are then followed by a longer, unexpected sentence that goes against convention, not just by starting with a conjunction but also by refusing to place a comma midway through (at the end of that penultimate line). However, this punctuation is actually riffing on our expectations, surprising us and then turning inevitable, guiding us through the couplet’s delicate cadences.

As the clichéd rhetorical question goes, which came first, the chicken and the egg? In this case, however, we’re referring to the poet and the editor. Is Helena Nelson such a scrupulous editor because of her highly tuned understanding of the importance of the tension between sentence and line or has her poetic skill-set been further developed by her work as an editor?

Deep down, of course, the important thing remains that her awareness of syntactic and semantic cause and effect, already keenly felt in her first full collection, Starlight on Water (The Rialto, 2003), has only increased over the years. In fact, one of the aesthetic pleasures in reading this book is derived through observing an expert at work, admiring her control of sentence and line, learning from it.

In other words, Pearls possesses numerous attractions both for previous readers of the Philpott poems and for newcomers. Perhaps the most moving facet of this book can be found in the previously uncollected pieces that portray the couple’s ageing process and their slow-looming awareness of impending death. In this context, the books closing lines from ‘Peril’ pack a huge punch:

...of course they are not all right

but she takes him in her arms
and she tells him that they are.

The mirrored, satisfying rhythms of this final couplet strengthen its comforting effect. And once again, there’s that slipping-away and stripping-back of punctuation, leaving behind only the words and their latent power.

It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that critics’ and judges’ prejudices might well kick in and indicate to them that Pearls will only be of interest to women of a certain age and certain social origin. They couldn’t be more wrong. Pearls matters to us all. Like any great story, its specificality is what makes it universal. And then, moreover, for poets themselves, it provides an implicit lesson in the roadcraft of writing poetry, far more useful than any handbook or workshop. With such wide appeal, here’s hoping Pearls reaches the swathes of readers that its poems so richly deserve.