The natural flow of language, Ruth Beddow's poems on Wild Court

As a reader, I'm especially keen on poets who show a knack for trapping and then heightening the natural ebbs and flows of language. Of course, many don't even want to. However, their forced and artificial turns of phrase tend to leave me cold despite their popularity with certain editors and judges. I seek an apparent simplicity in a poem, accompanied by an almost imperceptible tightening of its cadences and layering of its potential ramifications. This is difficult to achieve and notoriously undervalued, but it moves me far more than linguistic fireworks that don't earn their corn. 

In the above context, I was especially drawn to Ruth Beddow's two poems on Wild Court last week (you can read them yourself via this link). Their connection to experience is clear, while their capacity to reach way beyond mere anecdote is also startling. In other words, I thoroughly recommend them and I'll be keeping an eye out for more work from this excellent poet whose name is new to me. Yet another example of the role of a fine editorial eye at a poetry journal: spotting talent and bringing it to readers...

Stand Magazine

I finished Uni in June 1995 and decided to move to Spain, where I intended to live, work and write. A few months later, I came back to Farnham for Christmas and made the first of what would be many day trips up to London to the National Poetry Library (every time I visited from Spain!), where I'd browse their collection of poetry mags, making notes on those that might be worth a subscription and/or a submission. In those days, that was the only way for me to keep abreast of developments!

On my afore-mentioned first trip up, I also stopped at the bookshop on the ground floor of the South Bank Centre and bought as many poetry journals as I could. Chief among them was this one...

It's the Winter 1995 issue of Stand magazine, edited (of course) by the legendary Jon Silkin and featuring the likes of R.S. Thomas and Harry Smart, who passed away only last month. I must have read it dozens of times and it still inhabits my bookshelf!

In other words, Stand has been a constant presence throughout my poetry life. As a consequence, the news that the current editorial team (John Whale et al) had accepted three of my poems for publication was especially significant. I'm delighted to report that they've been included in the new issue (Nº229,19.1) alongside work by the likes of Zaffar Kunial and Alison Brackenbury, etc, etc. 

I very much look forward to getting hold of my contributor's copy whenever I finally make it back to the U.K., just as I also yearn to visit the National Poetry Library once more...

Richie McCaffery's Coping Stones

Richie McCaffery has very kindly sent me a copy of his new pamphlet, titled Coping Stones (Fras Publication, 2021). Being a one-man band, I try to spread my work as widely as possible in order to optimise the number of poets that I feature, so I won't be reviewing Coping Stones as such. This is because I wrote in depth about Richie's previous pamphlet, First Hare, here on Rogue Strands just eight months ago (see here). However, suffice to say, it carries all the hallmarks of his poetry: terrific poetic leaps that open up new avenues of thought to the reader, along with enlightening explorations of how objects interact with our inner lives.

Moreover, you can read two excellent reviews of Coping Stones (by D.A. Prince and Vic Pickup) over at Sphinx Reviews (via this link). I very much recommend both pieces, as they give distinct flavours of this excellent pamphlet. A warning though: you'll inevitably end up getting hold of a copy for yourself!

New essay on Wild Court

I'm pleased to report that I have a new essay up at Wild Court, titled Larkin Stateside: implicit dialogues between the poetries of Joshua Mehigan and Philip Larkin. You can read it in full by following this link, but here's a taster...

...As so often in the past, transatlantic poetic exchanges enrich both cultures, the differences highlighting just how much we have in common and to how great an extent our non-literary prejudices colour our enjoyment and judgement of exceptional poems...

Anecdotal Poetry...?

Anecdotal Poetry. What does this term mean to you? In my experience, it's often invoked disparagingly and dismissively by certain critics, reviewers and editors to describe work that seems to take a rooted place or experience as a point of departure. It's used to imply the poems under scrutiny are somehow lacking in imagination and of less consequent artistic value than pieces that have been written via other approaches.

In fact, this perspective isn't just a slight on the poetry in question, but also a misinterpretation of the very essence of the genre's transformational powers. In summary, it encapsulates a wilful confusion of the nature of poetic truth, as if such poems were a simple relaying and portrayal of fact.

What term might be used in its place? Realist Poetry is useless, as it also imposes similar pigeonholing limits that are equally and intrinsically absurd. For example, surrealism is simmering away just under the surface in any decent so-called realist poem. On second thoughts, I'll leave this last question to people who are obliged to answer it by academic demands and constraints...

A poem at One Hand Clapping

I'm pleased to report that I've got a new poem up today over at One Hand Clapping alongside excellent work by the likes of Julia Copus, Samuel Tongue and Mat Riches, etc, etc. You can read it by following this link.

The archaeology of home, Brian Johnstone's The Marks on the Map

Brian Johnstone’s new collection, The Marks on the Map (Arc Publications, 2021), takes those afore-mentioned maps as a point of departure, observing their landmarks and the consequent parallels that can be drawn with our lives, particularly with the ageing process.

One excellent example can be found in ‘Outfield’, which evokes the development of an Ordnance Survey map…

…A slow collapse
to dereliction – flagged as ‘ruin’ there,
in brackets, on the map – then nothing

on the later OS sheets…

The poem comes alive via Johnstone’s deft description of the human changes that mirror the building’s decline:

…The hillside
clear of habitation, bar the farmhouse
standing empty, your father

gone, bedded in a care home,
blind; the light I saw each evening
switched off, disconnected at the mains.

In the above piece, Johnstone draws mainly on implicit comparisons that can be made between the building and the people around it. However, in other poems, he portrays the contrasts, as in ‘Primrose’, which also begins with a reference to the Ordnance Survey before homing in (sic) on the specific connotations and ramifications of a landmark on the speaker’s own life:

...New housed ourselves, and wed the year before,
we wondered what the place had left to share,
what archaeology of home we might obtain.

Some floor tiles, red and heavy fired clay, we left
an age ago in a cottage long moved on from,
and this small plaque still with us here today.

A finger plate, it holds the touch of generations,
the shepherd it depicts guiding them like flocks
to lower pastures for the coming autumn days.

This extract contains a pivotal, beautiful turn of phrase, the archaeology of home, that very much encapsulates the drive behind The Marks on the Map. Moreover, Johnstone’s tracing of the gradual loss of the souvenirs plays a pivotal role in pitching his own ageing process against that of the building. Of course, the evocation of autumn in the last line invites connection with the four seasons of life, human beings, nature and buildings all coming together. There’s no instruction to the reader, just juxtapositions that allow implicit connections to be made.

Brian Johnstone’s interpretation of the role of maps, landmarks and buildings in our lives is not only skilled and infused with experience, but it also provides a personal perspective that encourages us to view those roles afresh, leaving us to ponder the marks on our own maps. It might be time to stow our Sat Nav and dig out those old Ordnance Surveys once more.