Out-of-body experiences, Maria Taylor's Instructions for making me

If I liked Maria Taylor’s first full collection, Melanchrini (Nine Arches Press, 2012), I love her new pamphlet, Instructions for making me (HappenStance Press, 2016). She has somehow made the almost impossible leap from being a very good poet to being an outstanding one. The question is how.

At first sight, Maria Taylor’s verse can seem disconcertingly heterogeneous. In fact, even the blurb on the back cover to this pamphlet states “There’s no telling what she’ll do from one poem to the next, which is one of the things that makes reading her such a pleasure”. Of course, the potential drawback is we might also consequently struggle to come to identify Taylor’s work. Even in the space of the seventeen poems that make up the chapbook, she employs numerous different forms and deals with all sorts of thematic concerns. And yet, somehow, it all hangs together. These days, I immediately recognise a Maria Taylor poem when I encounter one in a journal, long before spotting her name at the bottom.

So what is the specific aspect that Taylor has most developed since Melanchrini? What element makes her poetry different? Well, it was already present and discernible in certain poems from her full collection, but it’s becoming her defining quality and shines throughout this pamphlet: I’m referring to her knack for out-of-body experiences. It’s now more surefooted and powerful than in the past, as in the following example from “Hypothetical”:

“A friend of mine asks if I’d sleep with Daniel Craig.

Before I have time to answer, I’m in bed with Daniel Craig…”

... and from “The Invisible Man”…

“My daughter pushes

The invisible man on a swing

under the apple tree.

I’ve know him for years.

I recognise him by the dust motes.

I ask him out. He stood me up…”

and from “My Stranger”…

…He’s the only stranger I can afford,

a middle-aged man in a plaid shirt

smiling for an artist. Nothing to me,

but I still hang him in the hallway

and call him “Dad”…”

Taylor’s primary underlying technique and concern is the nature of self, the blending of identities, the interweaving of voices, the merging of fact and fiction through ever-shifting perspectives, never allowing the reader to rest on solid ground. The result is verse that’s laden with highly specific intensity and insight, all this in language that flows naturally and never seems forced. Sentences, expressions and line-ending are inevitable yet surprising.

Pamphlets between collections are often under-reviewed and under-read. Maria Taylor’s Instructions for making me deserves an opposite fate. It’s a pivotal landmark in her development, our chance to encounter a set of poems that have her unique stamp running through them. They show us a poet who’s hitting her stride and reaching maturity. Her second full collection will be a mouth-watering prospect, but in the meantime we have these delicious morsels to relish. 

Martyn Crucefix on metrics

So many emerging poets (and even a few workshop leaders) seem to think that metrics are an irrelevance when creating verse, as if we can break every single rule before learning any of them, as if almost all top-notch abstract artists weren't first excellent draughtsmen. As a consequence, it's been a real pleasure to read Martyn Crucefix's blog over the past week or so.

Crucefix has been doing some teaching for the Poetry School, concentrating on metrics, and has then written two terrific posts on the back of his sessions. You can read them here. Apart from being entertaining and accessible, they are backed up by a formal rigour and knowledge that can only help any poet to understand the nuts and bolts of how verse is constructed. Wholeheartedly recommended!

The missing poets

On encountering a list of Eric Gregory Award winners the other day (see here), my wonky thought processes didn't view it as a roll call of those who were summoned to poetic fame. Instead, I homed in on the missing poets, the names who vanished overnight or gradually disappeared. Have they given up on verse or has it given up on them? Or do they still write and hoard their poems only for themselves?

Their names are a reminder that poetry hasn't been enough for certain people, as if verse has in some way failed them. The missing poets scare me: I can't imagine life without writing poetry.

Twitter and Facebook for poetry blogs

Now that Rogue Strands has reached the figure of 2,000 followers on Twitter (click here to join the happy throng!), it's a good time to reflect on how Twitter and Facebook interact with poetry blogs in general and specifically with this one.

First things first: I don't see social media in isolation. Instead, I make use of them as a means by which my posts on Rogue Strands might reach the greatest number of potential interested parties and readers. In other words, Twitter and Facebook help to spread the word.

Of course, transience is inevitable these days. Twitter is certainly faster-moving than Facebook, which lends it extra dynamism but also means that more stuff slips under the radar and disappears into the flow of information. Facebook, meanwhile, seems to have greater scope for discussion. On the other hand, one growing problem is that any debate of a blog post now often takes place via a comments thread on Facebook. The afore-mentioned thread then rapidly loses any connection with the post in question if and when readers go back to it a few months later.

Nevertheless, Rogue Strands' constant growth is in no doubt partly down to interaction with social media, viewing them as a beneficial tool rather than a threat or even an alternative. A quick glance at my blog stats shows that clicks through from Twitter and Facebook have trebled over the past couple of years. The latter is inevitably more slow-burning after a post is published, while the former is more immediate. All this is proof that poetry blogs are far from obsolete. They simply need to adapt to the ever-shifting virtual world around them.

I'm in the Poetry Spotlight!

I'm delighted to report that Poetry Spotlight is featuring an interview with me today, along with one of the poems from my forthcoming full collection. You can read it by following this link.

While you're there, why not trawl the treasure trove that's gradually accumulating on the site? Paul Clyne is curating excellent pieces on a wide range of poets such as Fiona Sampson, Alison Brackenbury, Richie McCaffery, Fiona Moore and Sheenagh Pugh, to name but a few.

Electric coherence, Katrina Naomi's The Way the Crocodile Taught Me

Katrina Naomi’s second full collection, The Way the Crocodile Taught Me (Seren, 2016), uses scrupulously portrayed character studies as a fulcrum for a compelling narrative drive.

This is especially true of the book’s first section, which revolves around two men and two women; a father and a stepfather, a mother and a grandmother. The two men are implicitly contrasted in separate poems, the initial focus moving from the father’s absence to the stepfather’s arrival, while comparisons between the women often take place within a single poem. In the latter case, “Gin and Ice Cream”, from the sequence “Poems after my Nan”, portrays one of the hardest human experiences: that of an older generation witnessing the demise of their offspring:

“Even after all the gins, all morning,

you still can’t say the c-word.

Over a weekend, I try to discuss your daughter/

my mum, but your soft blue eyes fill…”

The pivotal slash/line break here is, of course, where “your daughter” leads on to “my mum”.

The invocation of multiple roles in family relationships is pivotal to this book’s story and can also be applied to male characters, as in the following extract from “Letter to my Mother”:

“You lie beneath him,

a measure of mud between you.

This was our final argument – his and mine –

your husband/my step-father…”

A key tension clearly lies in the juxtaposition of your husband/my step-father. A statement of fact is charged with tremendous feeling.

The second part of the collection, while packed with well executed set pieces, inevitably cannot match the electric coherence and cohesion of the first part, although it is complemented by an excellent final long poem, titled “Mantra”, that takes reader and poet back to the first part of the book, literary, temporal and geographical journey meshed together, doubt and belief intertwined. The final lines linger long after their reading:

“…Mum stayed,

repeating her mantra to the mountains, for six months, maybe a year,

before the cord unravelled, and then she’d be free.”

Katrina Naomi’s The Way the Crocodile Taught Me shows that she is a compelling poetic storyteller, capable of creating intimacy via distance, layering characters, bringing them alive and generating emotional resonance.

The best poems...?

I'm grateful to Richard Skinner for having reminded me the other day on Twitter of the following quote from Ian Hamilton:

"The best poems are a strange combination of intense personal experience and icily controlled craftsmanship".

Of course, this typically assertive and implicitly provocative statement by Hamilton is as much a declaration of personal method as a blueprint for others. Its hinge lies in the use of "strange". Predictability can kill a poem.

There's also an intriguing dual interpretation of the word "icily". While consciously advocating dispassionate craft when writing poetry, Hamilton is also unconsciously revealing one of the few stumbling blocks that I encounter when reading his otherwise terrific verse: a lack of warmth and engagement. I hugely admire his work, but struggle to empathise.