Pivotal details, Roy Marshall's The Great Animator

I’ve been a fan of Roy Marshall’s poetry ever since I read and reviewed (see here) his first pamphlet, Gopagilla, which Crystal Clear Creators published back in 2012. He’s now on his second full collection, The Great Animator (Shoestring Press, 2017), and his development has been startling.

The Great Animator brings us a poet in full maturity. First off, there’s Marshall’s talent for producing endings that provide satisfaction but then unsettle and open out beyond the text. One such instance can be found in the final lines of “Expresso”:

“…His heart, once as easily excited by this dark syrup

as by a lover’s touch, has grown steady, accustomed.”

This extract also provides us with a fine example of Marshall’s mastery of cadence. He has a keen sense of the weight of every syllable, together with a delicate control over the ebb and flow of language.

The collection is packed with terrific narratives. Moreover, Marshall has learnt to home in on the pivotal details that make a story come alive, as in “Thaw”, in which the first stanza sees a grandson waiting outside “by a patch of snow/that’s losing its grip on gravel. The final stanza, meanwhile, invokes a mother’s offer of “a little ice-cream” to an ill grandmother, leading through to another excellent ending:

“…She nods, though both of you know

it’ll melt untouched while she sleeps.”

In this poem, Marshall is inviting the reader to compare and contrast two different thaws, all tied with the drip-drip of three generations. The invitation, of course, is implicit.

Perhaps the most striking poems in The Great Animator are those that portray Marshall’s work as a Coronary Care Nurse. Their strongest quality is their invocation of empathy, as they enable us to connect with the person that lies behind the health professional, casting new light on the patient-doctor/nurse relationship. One such poem is “Carrying the Arrest Bleep”. Again, its final lines are terrific:

“…and when the registrar asks

if we agree to stop, I meet

his eye, and nod.”

The above extract offers us yet another of Marshall’s “pivotal details”: the human meeting of eyes, as the people behind the jobs are revealed.

In The Great Animator, Roy Marshall demonstrates the technical and thematic skills of a mature poet. He’s come to trust not just himself but his readers. The least we can do is get hold of a copy and be thankful for the generosity of his poems.

Roy Marshall features The Knives of Villalejo

I'm delighted to report that Roy Marshall, whose own poetry I've long admired, is featuring The Knives of Villalejo on his blog as part of a longer article with all his recent news. Roy has posted one of the poems from my collection, titled "La Visita" and has some kind words to say about the piece in question, highlighting its "brevity, apparent simplicity and understated depth". You can read his post (plus the poem) in full by following this link.

Maria Taylor in The Manchester Review

Maria Taylor's first collection, Melanchrini (Nine Arches Press, 2012), was excellent. However, she's stepped up her game still further since its publication. These days, there's an immediate surge of anticipaton whenever I spot a new poem by her in a journal. Moreover, her work has developed to such an extent that it's now highly distinctive in texture, tone and emotional impact.

For all the above reasons, I very much recommend you read her two pieces in Issue 15 of  The Manchester Review. While you're there, why not also have a look at other excellent poems by the likes of Roy Marshall and John North?

Roy Marshall and The Sun Bathers

I met Roy Marshall for the first time at a HappenStance reading back in 2011. Maria Taylor introduced me to him and mentioned he was one of the winners of the Crystal Clear Creators pamphlet competition. We shared a couple of beers that night and I was immediately struck by his terrific passion for poetry. At that stage, he'd just started a blog and had also got a few initial acceptances from small magazines.

Roy Marshall published the pamphlet, titled Gopagilla, not long afterwards, and I gave it an excellent review here on Rogue Strands, mentioning that "Gopagilla is a satisfying and poetically coherent first pamphlet. It delivers a lot and promises even more. I very much look forward to reading more of Roy Marshall's poetry in the future."  However, he didn't stop there. Let's fast-forward four years. Not only has he won several prizes for individual poems and had acceptances from many of the U.K.'s leading magazines, but he's also published a full-length collection, titled The Sun Bathers, with Shoestring Press.

And then this last week came the best part: The Sun Bathers has been shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize alongside books from major players such as Bloodaxe. This is terrific news, not just for Marshall but for other late starters, for those that have taken alternative routes, for small publishers who believe in a poet and back their work to the hilt.

In short, congratulations, Roy! Oh, and while I'm about it, I very much recommend a visit to that afore-mentioned blog. It's packed with poetic tales, interviews and original verse. What's more, I've suddenly realised it's somehow still not on my Blog List to the right of this poet. Time to put that right...

Review: Gopagilla, by Roy Marshall

The last few years have seen the gradual emergence of a number of exciting poets in the U.K. who dare to embrace a tradition that runs through from Larkin to Farley, that of taking the everyday by the scruff of its neck and reinventing it. In his high-quality first pamphlet, titled Gopagilla (Crystal Clear Creators Publishing, 2012), Roy Marshall shows that he deserves to be added to that growing list.

What's more, his chapbook also heralds the arrival on the U.K. scene of a new pamphlet publisher, Crystal Clear Creators, who have taken the plunge with the simultaneous publication of six collections. They've certainly made an excellent start and I'll be keeping a close eye on how their project develops.

In technical terms, Marshall combines his powers of observation with a keen ear for the music that's formed from the playing-off of assonance, alliteration and stresses, all to the end of illuminating narratives and scenes, as in this example from Arrival:

"...The circuitry of crickets on the air,
his red wine and cigarette breath,
a sickle and scythe laid aside,
and rosemary scent, rising..."

As for thematic concerns, Marshall is especially strong when exploring the tricks of identity. In Rose, for instance, his son's "Latin genes" lead to unexpectedly "mousy hair on a milky brow". This subject is intertwined with the juxtaposed shifting perspectives of the past, present and future, which are implicitly compared and contrasted so as to cast fresh light on each other. In this respect, family is present, as in the first lines of Inheritance:

"I'll take it now, that look you gave me,
the one I saw yesterday..."

The effect of time on relationships, meanwhile, also appears,and is equally well handled in the final lines of Telepathy: 

"...One night, as we spoke on the corridor payphone
where even Queens had to queue, your voice let slip
that you had left me, but I already knew."

As these two poems show, Marshall is especially adept at beginnings and endings. Gopagilla is a satisfying and poetically coherent first pamphlet. It delivers a lot and promises even more. I very much look forward to reading more of Roy Marshall's poetry in the future.

Crystal Clear Creators

I met Jonathan and Maria Taylor, the driving forces behind Crystal Clear Creators, when they jointly organised (along with Nine Arches Press) the reading at which I launched Inventing Truth in Leicester last April. Their enthusiasm was clear from the start, as was the quality of their magazine, Hearing Voices. In fact, I was delighted when my first poems since my pamphlet appeared in Issue 4 a few months ago.

However, Crystal Clear Creators are now taking a further major step with their  "Crystal Pamphlets," a new series of individually-authored chapbooks, published 1 March 2012, by Roy Marshall, Charles G Lauder Jr, Aly Stoneman, Jessica Mayhew, Hannah Stevens and Andrew "Mulletproof" Graves. They look great, and you can see the covers on the Crystal Clear Creators website here. Of the six poets, I'm most familiar with Roy's work in magazines, and very much look forward to seeing how his verse shapes up in the format of a pamphlet.

The collections will be launched  on Friday 2nd March, 6-7.30pm, at De Montfort University, Leicester. I won't be able to make it there from Spain, but I wish all involved every success. This is another example of the emergence of a dynamic new paper-based poetry publisher in the U.K. - terrific news!