Rain Dog
'Through
the Cat Flap’ Poetry Review
These reviews have appeared in issues of Rain Dog. They're
listed
here in alphabetical order of author. If you've got a pamphlet (or
book)
you want reviewing send it in to: Rain Dog, Manchester, M19 2XD
Rain Dog likes being positive about the poetry she
reviews so
she only tends to review those pamphlets she likes. If she doesn't like
it she won't review it (though she might chew it up).
| Arkady, Emma-Jane: Bipolarity:
Poems of a Disorder |
Coren, Pamela: The Blackbird
Inspector
|
| Gilfillan, Caroline: Drowned in
Overspill |
Hadfield, Jen: Almanacs
|
| Johnston, Joan: What You Want |
Kinsey, Chris: Kung Fu Lullabies
|
| Knaggs, Peter: Cowboy Hat |
Leckey, Dennis: No, Not Sonnets
|
| Longstaff, Marilyn: Puritan Games |
| Mangnall, Jim: Song Cycle |
| McColl, Thomas: The Beast in the
Bag |
| Matthews, Lisa : Postcard from a
Waterless Lake |
| Nagle, Frances: The War in Fraxinus
Excelsior |
Noakes, Kate: Ocean to
Interior
|
| Pridham, Francesca : Red Jam |
| Woodford, Anna: The
Higgins' Honeymoon |
Wilson, Robin Lindsay: Ready
Made Bouquets
|
Winslow, Pat: Skin & Dust
|
Anthologies
|
Velocity: The Best of Apples and Snakes ed.
Maja Prausnitz
|
A Twist of Malice: Uncomfortable Poems by Older
Women ed. Joy Howard
|
What You Want: Joan Johnston
(Newcastle: Diamond
Twig, 1999):
One of the eye catching, A6-sized black shiny books of
Diamond Twig’s
Branchline series, Joan Johnston’s What You Want stands out
from
the jostling pamphlet crowds. It is a collection I loved instantly. I
saw
myself in nearly all of the 30 short poems. Ordinary incidents are made
poignant because the humanity is there radiant in each poem. Urban,
comfortable
things from the past capturing everyday life, reminding me of Apostle
spoons,
hat pins, petticoats, Playtex. The observations are striking, the
emotions
familiar: ‘And the next day, missing her, / in order to feel how
she’s
real and dead / I look in the cupboard. / You can always find your dead
mother / in her kitchen cupboard’ - Subjects include death,
marriage,
divorce, schoolgirl crushes – whatever she tackles the result is
successful and strikingly moving: ‘Just last night / she cried out
to
me / “I’m exhausted being dreamt. / It’s been years’. It’s an
accessible
evocation of a Northern up bringing and well worth the price.
Drowned in Overspill: Caroline
Gilfillan
(Manchester: Crocus, 2000)
Humour is the first thing that grabs with this colourful
collection
of very very competent poems. The phrases are short and terse as is if
she knows time is short in poetry-land She says exactly what she wants
to say. The poems made me want to find a pen immediately - to see if I
could do it: ‘I strawberry your / milky neck, / then gather brine
within
my mouth / and learn the taste of pale.’ Weddings are a recurrent
theme
so are seaside resorts: (Morecambe, Brighton, Clacton…). The
descriptions
are clear, evocative, original : ‘I’ll hire a saw. Hack off a
branch.
/ Remake you as a chiselled queen / with breasts big as goldfish
bowls.’ Towards the end the nastier side of human nature comes
more to the
fore.
Red Jam: Francesca Pridham
(Manchester: Crocus,
2000).
This is a wintery collection of human truths and evocative
description.
The darkest time of the year is evoked again and again in poems about
the
little truths of everyday living. Subjects are loneliness, fear, and
most
of all failure. In a poem about a broken marriage she says: ‘If
only
failure were an independent thing / a plastic bag to fold away
forgotten
in a drawer’. The poems are accessible, personal and at their most
successful in those moments where she steps out into the surreal: ‘They
have slid my head into another skull’ - to convey personal moments
of fear and confusion with original imagery. The poems convey
resilience
in a bleak landscape combined effectively with the minutiae of everyday
life.
The Beast in the Bag: Thomas
McColl (Nottingham:
Poetry Monthly Press, 2000). 20 A5 pages £2.00
These 16 poems are sparsely written offering whimsical rye
cynical comments
on life. Imagery is scarce until the third poem: Tom’s Presentation,
where the battlefield and guns metaphor make the poem come alive
because of their originality. Some of the ideas were interesting and
funny
- The Pub that thinks it’s a Bus and The Gamble Account
worked
well because of this. Coming of Age has the teenage
son ‘caged’ in his room - this kind of visual aspect, expressed through
a concise image, makes the poem memorable. The Silent Call and The
Teachers first day - were other good examples of what this writer
is
capable of in terms of imagery (especially the budgerigar in Silent
Call). The poems do occasionally fall intothe familiar trap of
telling
readers what to feel. The Queen of Dooley Street does to some
extent,
but it also tells a good story: ‘the whole world ignores her / even
her plants / which bow instead towards the sun.’ Overall a good
taut
collection of poems, of which I liked The Silent Call best for
its
economy of style and effective use of imagery.
Bipolarity: Poems of a Disorder
Emma-Jane
Arkady (Redditch: Flarestack, 2000). 28 A5 pages £3.00
‘Bipolar affective disorder’ is the more correct name of
manic depression.
The 18 poems in this pamphlet swing between despair and mania,
there
isn’t much hope but there is humour and always a fierce
detachment.
The dramatic poems in which there’s a character, something
tangible,
are the ones which work best for me: Sarah in Sarah’s Very Exciting
day, Paul and Jan in Precious Metal the conversations and
interplay
between characters in Response When Sober and Ellipsis.
In
these poems, through the consciousness of others, we are allowed to
glimpse
the emotion lurking behind the events, which are otherwise related in
quite
a dispassionate style. Even when the character is merely an anonymous
figure
like the farmer in Relapse, he gives us something tangible to
hold
on to. Against the seeming normality of these characters, the emotional
turmoil can be properly displayed. I found these external examples of
misery
worked better than more internal cerebral poems like: Spaceship
Understanding Despair or Contrast in Paradise. I found
many
poems I liked here, but particularly Four weeks of Mania,
Regenerated
Bus Stops, and Ellipsis stand out because in poems like
these
the humour that permeates the collection is at its grim best.
The Higgins' Honeymoon: Anna
Woodford (Liverpool:
Driftwood Publications, 2001). 22 A5 pages £3.00
A collection of mainly short, clever poems. Many of them
read in a kind
of direct ‘bulletin’ style but then surprise with an oblique take on
things.
It gives the overall impression of a set of sketches shown with a
slightly
tongue-in- cheek narrative. Evening Class was brilliant and
stood
out for me as easily the best poem in the collection - giving a funny
precise
description of people attending various classes before unexpectedly
depicting
the misery that can sometimes be behind such self-betterment. I did
like
the longer poems best - feeling that the more I was given to read the
better
I understood / liked the poem.
Song Cycle: Jim Mangnall
(Liverpool: Driftwood
Publications, 2001). 26 A5 pages £3.00
This collection has really grown on me with re-reading –
there is some
very strong work here but I couldn’t help but feel disappointed with
some
of the pieces. To me they lacked sufficient music to call themselves
songs.
The pamphlet consists of 14 songs and 6 apparently unrelated poems. The
songs start off strongly with a surreal and strangely hesitant version
of creation: First there was light, / I think and the poets
song
is a weapon against the bleak wilderness. This theme continues with:
imagination
having the potential to heal the urban landscape, but nobody looked up/
and everything stayed wrong. I started to feel a bit confused as the
cycle
continued; suddenly the sun causes madness and darkness is healing.
When
the poet turns to love gone sour and love unrealised I found the songs
less convincing. The cycle ends with dislocation and only a sort of
sunrise.
Maybe Icarus who closes the collection is the key So many strange,
illusive
things to find / and having found them fall.
Of the other poems I liked the Lorcaesque Les Chiens
Andaloux.
The others seemed to me weaker and in the case of Five Travel Tankas,
surprisingly clichéd. But overall an enjoyable collection and at
its best an original and interesting voice.
Cowboy Hat: Peter Knaggs (Hull:
Halfacrown
Publishers, 2001). 86 A5 pages £6.99
The titles of the poems read like captions of pictures or
titles of
how to manuals. They were urban poems quick accessible serious bleak,
&
grim. There was a strong sense of place which I liked (though it meant
some mysterious words: nash, shan, gratey, radgy, chaver, bimph,
rek
o’t’een. etc..) They were concerned with minutiae of daily life:
tin
openers, toast, chippies, conkers, the lives of working people.
Of the 4 sections in this book by far the best for me was
the 3rd: Wake
up it’s the Slubberdegullion which contained some excellent poems.
Eudipe - a nice understated poem about the Grand National . The 4th
section was also very good: The Tombola Prize was a
quickfire
set of portraits of people with good detail and imagery. The 1st
section
(mainly poems about domestic violence) was the most accessible and also
the one I liked the least. Related dispassionately the
tell-rather-than-
show style made it hard to empathise. The violence of Knife was
chillingly well expressed but undercut because the point is spelled out
for us at the end. I liked the anomaly: Neighbourhood
Watch
best which was more subtle. The 2nd section: Conjecture was
similar
but more successful for me having some continuity - recurring
characters
and a story of a missing boy. On the whole the book was a very
good
effort but would have been stronger without part one.
Puritan Games: Marilyn
Longstaff (Darlington: Vane
Women Press, 2001). 32 A5 pages, £4.
An accessible and enjoyable collection set in various
Northern towns:
Stalybridge, Ashton, Saltburn, Whitby, Jarrow. The pamphlet begins with
a short prose piece explaining the nomadic Salvation Army life which
inspired
these poems. It’s a unified collection, occasionally surreal but
reassuringly
matter of fact. The best poems focus on a single incident: Pub-booming,
Puritan Games, Circling the Rectangle. Good use is made of
repetition
which works like music at times: ‘Rough edges tossed in grit
smoothing
and soothing / Rounded and grounded; ground down, down’. I
was
also impressed with the originality of the imagery which leapt out from
time to time (such as the cherry blossom - ‘Rizla thin / like
dead wasps wings’. I liked the subtle humour which sometimes came
to
the fore, as in: Ned – Animal Rights Activist, Savaged by released
mink.
The only poem that didn’t work for me was Lament – a bit too
didactic.
On the whole very competent and enjoyable.
The War in Fraxinus Excelsior:
Frances Nagle
(West Bromwich: Dagger Press, 2001). 32 A5 pages, £3.50.
Probably one of the most memorable pamphlets I’ve read.
Frances Nagle
imparts a quite breathless, conspiratorial feel to these poems. And
there
wasn’t one duff one here. The imagery is succinct and spot on. I
especially
liked the ‘fluffy acrobats’ (squirrels) of the title poem. Even
with light almost flippant subject matter there is an urgency and drama
invested – something lesser poets often try unsuccessfully. ‘Priceless’
was my particular favourite (although there were many favourites here).
The subject matter was varied, always interesting, it seems anything
Frances
Nagle chooses to muse on is worth listening to she engages emotions
&
intellect equally. So go and buy it.
Postcard from a Waterless Lake:
Lisa Matthews
(Newcastle: Diamond Twig Press,
2001). 36 A6 pages, £3.95.
One of the very impressive Branch Lines series. Looking at
the contents
page of Postcard from a Waterless Lake I was initially reminded
of a list of workshop exercises. On closer inspection I found a series
of 4 sequences of well crafted poems which work very well together as a
whole. The poems I liked best (though they were all good) were the 9
‘postcards’
about personal relationships, loss, stolen illicit moments. Lisa
Matthews
is the kind of poet you read and then end up saying ‘yeah…I know what
you
mean’. The poems find a deep emotion underneath the everyday –
sometimes
conveyed in an everyday gesture: You do that thing with your hand,
/
that means the subject is closed or depicted with an original exact
image: How she can take a room / and turn it on its side.
They are poems that raise questions, nothing is over-explained but the
underlying pain is unmistakable and often the build up of passion ends
in an explosion of short terse phrases. I like the starkness of
the
language: all you revealed / was the side of your face (Hotels).
A writer I would love to read more of.