The Compass poetry magazine

New poetry e-zines seem to be springing up on a daily basis these days, just as others fall dormant after an initial burst of enthusiasm. This phenomenon reflects an unsettling and scary speeding-up of time. Verse appears and is then submerged far too quickly after having been crafted for months or years.

In such a context, it’s significant to encounter an e-zine that announces its first issue with the following declaration of editorial intent:

“..Last autumn the editors were chatting about poetry and the internet and it struck us that there didn’t appear to be a strong issue-based poetry magazine coming out of the UK, the web’s equivalent of some of the wonderful print magazines which we all enjoy. We very much hope that this site you are browsing fills that gap...” 

I’m referring to The Compass. A key point here is not only this ambitious statement but the fact that the people behind it (Lindsey Holland, Andrew Forster and Kim Moore) are significant figures in the U.K. poetry scene. Moreover, their work on Issue One of the magazine backs up their words.

The afore-mentioned issue is packed with excellent poems. Personal favourites include new pieces by Maria Taylor, Charlotte Gann and Jonathan Edwards, but there’s plenty more original, top-notch verse to explore. The reviews section, meanwhile, also opens up avenues for future reading with in-depth explorations of several intriguing collections.

In summary, The Compass is already a major addition to the U.K. poetry scene and looks like being around for a long time to come. I’ll certainly be reading every issue!

And the answer is...Maggie O'Farrell

Maggie O'Farrell is one of my Spanish partner's favourite novelists, but she's also an exceptional poet. I'm using the present tense here for her verse, as there's no evidence to the contrary.

I first mentioned Maggie O'Farrell's poems on Rogue Strands back in 2009, praising them as follows:

"...they're visually explosive, musical and carry a strong narrative drive. Most of all, their voice is distinctive..."

O'Farrell hasn't published any new verse for well over a decade and has never brought out a collection. Her work appeared in journals and won prizes such as the Tabla 1996 competition with "My grandmother accepts", which I quoted a couple of days ago.  That poem, for example, seems even better in the context of its having been written before her twenty-fifth birthday. 

Has she carried on writing verse in between her ecellent novels? If so, she could still emerge as a major poet.

A mystery quote

Here's a mystery quote from one of my favourite poets:

"...She sat silent in her father's house,
learning Swahili from a book with pages fragile as onion skins
and making her trousseau in scandalous coral-coloured silk...

...The day we buried her the sky drooped
with a cloud, low and soft as a goose belly.
In each clod of earth that fell on her coffin
I could hear the popping stab
of a needle pushing into silk
held taut between determined fingers."

I'll be back later on this week to reveal their identity. In the meantime, any guesses...?!

Driven repetition, Kim Moore's The Art of Falling

Take a long, deep breath when reaching for Kim Moore’s first full collection,  The Art of Falling (Seren 2015), because you’ll be tumbling with her from the first page onwards through her intoxicating verse.

Moore’s signature poetic technique is repetition. Her work is riven with it and driven by it. There are certain poems that even make explicit, conscious nods towards its use, such as “A Psalm for the Scaffolders”:

“…a psalm for the scaffolders

who fall with a harness on,

who have ten minutes to be rescued,

a psalm for the scaffolder who fell

into a clear area, a tube giving way,

that long. slow fall, a psalm for him,

who fell thirty feet and survived,

a psalm for the scaffolder

who saw him fall…”

Moore’s strengths in her employment of repetition are various. She repeats phrases with slight variations such as in the tense of a verb (“fall” and “fell”), which invites the reader to home in on those small changes. Meanwhile, the repeating of whole structures such as the poem’s title empowers the piece as an invocation. And then there’s the building of clauses in the continual use of “who”, generating a pace that combines with the afore-mentioned invocation to lend this poem a religious charge. In other words, form and content fuse superbly.

Poem after poem, repetition crops up:

“..a fall from grace, a fall from God,

to fall in love or to fall through the gap…”

“And if it be a horse…

…And if it be a swan…

…And if it be a tick…”

“A curse on the children…

…a curse on the boy…

…a curse on the class teacher…”

“And if you saw her…

…and if she set fire…

…and if she threw…”

“…as if one person can’t carry this with them

and be unchanged, as if I could speak seagull…”

And I could quote umpteen more. However, it’s important to underline that Moore is far from being a one-trick pony. There is variation in tone, of course, alongside a deft narrative touch, a gift for delicious turns of phrase and a fabulous ear, as befits a music teacher. Nevertheless, repetition rules for much of the book, creating the sensation of a relentless emotional thrust, charging onwards, seeking an authentic core.

In The Art of Falling, that core is to be found in “How I Abandoned My Body To His Keeping”, a sequence about  “a relationship marked by coercion and violence”. This sequence lies at the heart of the collection. I could highlight any one of several pieces for their power, for their capacity to move and affect, but a personal favourite is “His Name”. Here are the first four lines:

“Because they tried to make me say your name,

the shame and blame and frame of it,

the dirty little game of it, the dark and distant

heart of it, the cannot be a part of it…”

And there’s that repetition again, in Moore’s gorgeous use of the definite article. Of course, it’s even better in the context of the poem as a whole, but you’ll have to get hold of a copy of The Art of Falling to see what I mean. Just keep in mind that piece of advice I gave earlier: don’t forget to take a long, deep breath when snapping the spine.

Sheenagh Pugh's blog

I've been a regular reader of Sheenagh Pugh's blog for several years (it's been going even longer than Rogue Strands!). However, when enjoying her thought-provoking interview with Steve Ely last week, I realised that not only was it missing from my blog list but I've never featured it here. Time to put that right on both counts!

Of course, Sheenagh Pugh is a well-known poet and critic, so the blog acts as a complement to her other work. It's also an excellent place to encounter new verse, be intrigued and go out to buy books. This is because Sheenagh works tirelessly to review, discuss and interview, all drawing on her huge pool of knowledge.

I very much recommend a lengthy trawl through its archive, but I would start with her review of Paul Henry's most recent collection (see here). We share an immense admiration for his poetry.

Poets on Facebook: the nightmare of the news feed

I know it's my own fault virtually all my "friends" on Facebook should be poets, but that doesn't change the terrifying nature of my news feed at times, especially when I'm feeling vulnerable about the value of my own verse.

People are variously delighted to have work included in an anthology, so pleased to be publishing two poems in a magazine, reading at an event next week, bringing out a new collection in 2016, finishing off a new poem, celebrating having been shortlisted, linking to their new title on Amazon...

...what's wrong with you, Stewart?! Just look at what everyone else has achieved while you've been redrafting that poxy line for the fourth time. And deep down, you know it still isn't right even though you're urging yourself to fall in love with it enough to send the thing off this afternoon. If you read any more of that stuff on Facebook, you probably will.

Ian Abbot's Finishing the Picture

The Jul./Aug. issue of The Next Review is now out, featuring my extensive review of Ian Abbot's Finishing the Picture. In it, I address questions such as the following:

"...Does Ian Abbot’s poetry stand up to scrutiny? Does it match the power of his life story? Is he, in the light of Finishing the Picture, a major poet about to be rediscovered and valued at last...?"

To find out more, you can get hold of a copy via this link. There's also an interview with Clive James, plus original work by Eve Lacey, Paul Howarth and others. Here's a shot of the cover: