Undeservedly under the radar, Christopher James' The Penguin Diaries

When making notes for this review, I was struck by how difficult it was to introduce the book in question, Christopher James’ collection The Penguin Diaries (Templar Poetry 2017), without it seeming a hard sell at first glance. And at that point I realised I had come upon a pivotal reason why this excellent collection undeservedly passed under the radar on publication, as I’ll now explain.

The premise is as follows: 65 sonnets, one for each member of Scott’s ill-fated 1910 expedition to the Antarctic. The stumbling block can be found in certain contemporary preconceptions, which might initially indicate that the collection involves some connotations of failed empire building, etc, thus limiting its range of interest and blocking routes to readers. However, closer inspection soon demonstrates that these are poems of universal humanity that reach out to everyone.

For instance, the poet makes a conscious decision not to tell the story as such. He takes it as read that we already know the outline of the plot, and uses this shared knowledge as a point of departure to explore a specific set of relationships in extreme conditions, alongside the consequent roles that are played out.

However, all of the above shouldn’t imply that The Penguin Diaries simply offers up 65 individual portraits or vignettes. Instead, James interweaves his characters. First of all, he highlights the differing geographical and social origins of each member of the group. Secondly, he allows them to appear in each other’s poems, building up a wider picture of the social and human dynamics that developed in this isolated set of individuals. One such example is Harry Pennell. He might have his own poem, titled The Master, but his presence is significant elsewhere, thus layering his character, as in the following extract from The Baptism, which is dedicated to Raymond Priestley:

The current swept you under, claiming you
for the quiet and the dark. But in that
moment you felt a calmness, looking up at
the turquoise floe, the thin crust mottled
like clouds above a world in flood.
You were a dead man with a whale’s eye view.
When Pennell plucked you out, a hand under
your arm, you began a second life…

The above lines also possess one of the collection’s most interesting qualities: its attitude towards the second person singular.

Each and every eulogy is addressed to the person in question. This person is, of course, long dead. Furthermore, they seem to be told what their feelings are, what happened to them, how it happened. Such a technique would appear patently absurd. Nevertheless, there’s method in James’ technique. By using the second person singular throughout the book, he not only brings his characters back to life, lending their stories a greater immediacy and relevance, but he also establishes an implicit dialogue with them.

In other words, Christopher James’ achievement in The Penguin Diaries lies in his ability to portray the lives behind Scott’s expedition, reaching far beyond mere historical events to reflect on many aspects of the human condition. Once we start reading these poems, we’re immediately drawn in to their tremendous implied sensibility and a heightened awareness of our own miniscule place in history. The challenge now is to enable more readers to get hold of a copy…!

Subverted pronouns, Oliver Comins' Oak Fish Island

It’s relatively easy to identify certain very English qualities in Oliver Comins’ first full collection, Oak Fish Island (Templar Poetry, 2018), but there’s also a slippery something that makes his poetry stand out from the crowd and resist any attempts to pigeonhole him.

Twenty-five years in the writing, Oak Fish Island features restrained lyricism, quiet observation and subtle layering of detail, yet a list of these characteristics undoubtedly sells Comins’ work short. Here are snippets from four poems, all of which hint at the poet’s idiosyncratic traits:

…My heart – or was it yours? –

flying solo on the Jubilee line,

already gone for what was

beginning to seem like forever.

(from ’Day Trip to Brighton’)

It wasn’t me, as such, kissing the organist

when you slipped through the church

looking for your poem…

(from ’All Saints’)

…Someone is walking down a street

past this row of terraced cottages,

their gardens silent and still…

(from ’Old Cold’)

When I send this to you

it is a boy writing to a girl

and I am sorry it has to be

like that – knowing the tide

of your want can change…

(from ’What Sort of a Man am I?’)

These seemingly disparate poems are united by the doubt they cast on the reader’s assumptions, by the way roles are undermined, by the way pronouns stand on shaky ground.

One of Comins’ main achievements in Oak Fish Farm is the subversion of the English lyric tradition. At first sight, he seem to fit snugly into its check list, as mentioned at the beginning of this review, but that’s only until those pronouns start to unsettle us, bit by bit. We begin to wonder about the particulars of the poet’s or the speaker’s relationships, and our frustration grows as we find them difficult to discern, as if Comins were holding back on us, afraid to show his life or flesh out narratives and contexts.

Of course, as the collection progresses, it becomes clear that the exact opposite is true. Comins’ technique plays with our aesthetic and thematic expectations, enabling us to cast off facile suppositions. This approach is not an affectation, nor is it a mere device. Instead, it’s a poetic method.

Moreover, one potential problem with the reading of Oliver Comin’s work is that an individual poem, taken out of context, might appear unsatisfactory. Only in the context of his full collection can the magnitude and coherence of his vision be recognised and understood.

Oak Fish Island is not only a tremendously enjoyable book but also a terrific achievement. It reaches out beyond the specific to the universal, homing in on the key issues of life and poetry. As such, it’s one of the most significant collections I’ve encountered in recent years. I’ll be savouring Oliver Comins’ poems for a long time to come.