Narratives of birth and death and all that there is in between: 5 poetry collection reviews

Work and writing projects have kept me from adding much to my blog recently, but I love this little space of mine and so will continue to “slow blog” in my own unique and eclectic manner. Of late, poetry has been on my mind for various reasons, and in a desire to give back to Poetry World I am reviewing the following collections. I can highly recommend them all.

 

Land and Sea and Turning by Kate Garrett is a pleasingly substantial pamphlet given its slimness; the paper of the pamphlet is relatively thick and I like the black endpapers – a most striking and fitting touch given the cover art. The poems balance light and dark, leaving and arriving, so skilfully that, often, I do not know how the trick is done. In general, the themes are dark and disquieting, but Garrett has such a light, skilful touch that even the most macabre of topics – for example, an obscure medieval tradition of mutilating corpses in case of possible reanimation – becomes an entrancing, rewarding read. Then, in between, there will be a poem about a more general subject such as mothering which, to my mind, opens the whole collection and provides it with an uplifting airiness. ‘Witchling’ (about her daughter, Saoirse) is a sweet gem of a poem, though it is still infused with Garrett’s trademark fairy tale sharpness, and ‘From one room to another’ is a gorgeous, romantic poem, its rhythm drawing you on through the couplets.

‘For Josephine’ is one of my favourites in the pamphlet and a beautifully understated poem to a woman

 

“…whose lips prayed their last as she

ran for the train, ran for the tracks

and flew, just once, to land at the feet

of strangers in a station, to land in a grave

 

belonging to “The Girl in Blue”….”

 

 

Kate is fast becoming one of my favourite poets and I very much look forward to reading more from her.

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Angela Topping’s latest book, The Five Petals of Elderflower, is a compelling collection by a poet truly at the height of her powers. Topping’s poems make for easy reading, in that the language is straightforward and unfussy which, actually, makes them all the more remarkable. To convey so much power in such a direct yet subtle way is extraordinary and marks out Topping as a poet through and through. I also love the way she can’t be boxed-in into any particular ‘type’ of poet. When reading her poems on nature – ‘Seed Time’ is a favourite – I can’t help thinking: this is her forte. And then she will blow me away with a poem about an apparently small moment – a mother and daughter posing together for a photo – with its insights into the mother-daughter bond:

 

“…For this studio photograph

they are stitched together, a book bound dos á dos.

It has always been this way with mothers and daughters.”

 

From ‘They Pose Together’

 

This is a gorgeous-looking book, put together with real love, and I really hope that Topping’s next collection, small or large, comes out soon.

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On the other hand, in Loneliness is the Machine that Drives the World, Grant Tarbard, another poet through and through, uses language in a more tricksy, mysterious way. The sometimes uncanny images he conjures are striking in their juxtaposition.

 

“Gathering a rich patchwork of echoes

in the desolate breakfast of wild hair,

dyed white under the cracked sun – he ventures to

speak with the sand for forty days and forty nights.”

 

From ‘Sage of the Wastes’

 

Through his poetry the reader is able to perceive the world through a rather uncanny lens, simultaneously otherworldly though, often, rotten within:

 

“all lilies, all buds,

stink of life’s rotten sweetness,

the scent of a wreath”

 

From ‘I’ll Be No-One Again’

 

His is the kind of writing I would most like to emulate, yet it is frustratingly difficult to achieve. So, instead, l’ll leave the likes of Tarbard up to it and make do with my own style, while admiring his so much. I also want to add that the quality of the pamphlet is very high. The pamphlet is a real object of beauty in its own right and I am very glad to have discovered the press, Platypus Press, because of it.

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Out of all the poets I can “hear” Cathy Bryant’s voice the most. When I read her poems it is as though she’s in the room with me, sitting beside me, having a poetical conversation. Her poetry is warm and witty, yet sharp and precise when it needs to be, the themes she writes about, as well as the voices she uses, eclectic. Her latest collection, Erratics – with its striking and fitting cover art – is rather like a hug from a good friend, her poem ‘Warmer Places’ a fine example of the poet’s warmth:

 

“then her eye catches mine at the right angle

and we laugh ourselves into a new season

and a warmer place.”

 

Though, as I said earlier, she can sting when she wants to:

 

“Yes, England welcomed the uncommercial,

artistic and odd, said Sylvia.

And didn’t we make her stay special.”

 

From ‘Sylvia Plath Talks About England’

 

A sucker for good storytelling (and Cathy really is a natural when it comes to storytelling) I will look forward to reading more of Cathy’s poetry.

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Lastly, Moon Milk, by Rachel Bower is a pamphlet on the themes of new motherhood and family life – topics close to my heart. Having read a lot of poetry on these themes through my publishing work I feel quite well-versed in the various approaches writer-mothers take when tackling these subjects and see a fair bit of familiar imagery. What I particularly liked about Rachel’s pamplet is how different it is, and yet it still manages to be fresh and full of warmth, something that I feel is very difficult to achieve well in this context. ‘Slow Ship’, ‘Oyster’ and ‘Amber’ are beautifully crafted and some of my favourites – resonating as they do with my own experiences.

 

“I hope to remember the woman I was

before he was born, the sculptor of rain

 

but when his small cry balloons

I become the milk that surges in,

his face a pearl in my arms.”

 

From ‘Oyster’

 

The pamphlet is a gorgeous book in its own right – the paper pleasingly thick, the interior design elegant and the cover striking. Well done to Valley Press for publishing a book that I would’ve eagerly taken on. I will keep my eye on what Rachel does next…

Imagination, Inspiration, and Ursula Le Guin

 

Since my husband is a scientist and I’m an ex-scientist, we both love science fiction (reading and writing it). We often discuss science fiction and enjoy having a good old rant, or rave, about the plausibility of the science within the stories. When I’m reviewing science fiction for Shoreline of Infinity I very much consider the book from a scientist’s viewpoint, and am strict about the plausibility of the science. (Though this occasionally gives me the wobbles – the tame woman in me not wanting to be disliked for saying something not 100% pleasing to the masses. My wild woman sighs and roars off the tameness that has a habit of clinging on.) Just the other week my husband, wanting to give me some encouragement, emailed me two of Ursula Le Guin’s articles – about plausibility in imaginative fiction and literary snobbery and, once again, I was eminently comforted by the fact that such a great writer continued to be such a passionate champion for the SFF genre (as well as a champion for the importance of plausibility in the genre).

So when social media became awash with the news of her death, I, like many, was saddened by the news. People were sharing her poetry, snippets of her writing; what her books had meant to them. These quotes stood out for me:

 

Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality…

…Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.

Ursula Le Guin from her speech at the National Book Awards

 

To make something well is to give yourself to it, to seek wholeness, to follow spirit. To learn to make something well can take your whole life. It’s worth it. Ursula Le Guin from Steering the Craft

 

I don’t have anything particularly insightful to add to what others have said (indeed, I questioned whether I should even write this blog post), but I had an urge to say something. To write something. For as a woman who writes science fiction, who passionately believes in the genre and the importance of plausibility within the genre, and who wholeheartedly believes that the act of creating something requires a “surrendering”, I wanted to say ‘Farewell’ and ‘Thank you’ to Le Guin. She will continue to inspire me and countless others.

Reviews of Books by Women – Are There Enough?

Although there are many successful women authors in the science fiction genre today, it still feels, at times, as though it’s a genre very much dominated by men. This came into stark relief for me when I attended a sci-fi panel at a lit fest a couple of years ago; the panel consisted of four white men, and I remember thinking: Really? What does this say about the genre? Do I, as a woman, have a chance of breaking into sci-fi? Am I confident enough to submit to a magazine where I don’t see that many stories by women being published? I was pleased to hear the chair of the panel apologize for the lack of diversity, saying that this wasn’t really representative of the genre, but when I questioned him on why, if this wasn’t representative of the genre, it had still come about, and whose responsibility was it – readers, writers, publishers, event organizers? – to ensure that panels (and the genre as a whole) were diverse, a good answer wasn’t forthcoming. But then I got heckled by a man at the back of the audience who called out, ‘But it’s all about the story!’ (the implication being a good story was a good story, no matter if a man or woman wrote it, but evidently these four men were superior at writing good stories… hmm). So that told me.

When I became serious about reading more contemporary science fiction, I came across the then new(ish) sci-fi magazine Shoreline of Infinity. In search of a good read, I took a look through the reviews page and was immediately struck by a) how few books by women were being reviewed and b) how few of the reviewers were women. This wasn’t anything particularly startling; if, like me, you’re aware of VIDA, and their collated statistics, their findings over the past 8 years make for a depressing read – in pretty much all of the literary magazines/broadsheets they found that reviews of books by women, along with women reviewers, were in the minority. And yet it is women who are in the majority when it comes to being book buyers.

It can be easy to throw up one’s hands and say: ‘Oh well, what a shame, these things will never change!’ but they will never change unless we all say, ‘Enough!’ and do our bit to read more books by women, more books by BAME and marginalized authors, and, crucially, to review those books so that they can get more attention and thus (hopefully) more sales, which will send publishers the message that yes, we want to read more from these writers, which should give them the impetus to publish more by these authors. (And as an aside, being part of the indie publishing world I can’t help but notice that it’s the indies who are leading the way in this respect – ever much more so than the risk averse let’s-publish-another-book-by-a-celebrity-it’ll-be-a-hit conglomerate publishers. The message from this article by Danuta Kean is certainly encouraging – that small indie presses are publishing more diversely and reaping the benefits in increased sales and new readers.)

I am now a reviewer for Shoreline of Infinity (in the main, I review books by women); I genuinely enjoy ‘doing my bit’ PLUS I get free books and get to exercise my critical reading skills. Bargain! And what I love about Shoreline is that they’re taking their low number of fiction submissions by women seriously. In fact, issue eleven will be a women-only issue. So if you’re a woman sci-fi writer, do check it out.

Other exciting things happening right now are this: the well-respected indie publisher And Other Stories will be making 2018 a year of publishing women only (in response to Kamila Shamsie’s original call for a year of publishing women). Influx Press have a current call for submissions from women of colour only. And Linen Press and Mslexia are continually open to submissions by women only. My press, Mother’s Milk Books, considers submissions from both men and women, but I tend to get a lot more submissions from women than men. I think some male writers may consider my press too “motherly” or too “milky” for them!

I would actually encourage any writer/reader to take up reviewing for a magazine, or, if reviewing for a magazine isn’t for you, then there’s other platforms to review on – a personal blog, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon, Goodreads etc. These are all good places to help spread the word about books by women.

I will leave you with the following reviews and a little nudge: go write a considered review of a book by a woman (bonus points for it being published by an indie press!).

 

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Pseudotooth by Verity Holloway

‘Never judge a book by its cover’ so the saying goes, but of course we all do, and Unsung Stories, a fab indie press, have a particular skill in creating great covers, so I wanted to read Pseudotooth the moment I set eyes on the cover.

Since most of my writing this year has concentrated on short stories, most of my reading has been of short story collections and anthologies, so I became rather worried about whether I’d actually be able to read a whole novel. And at just over 400 pages, Pseudotooth is a long novel. But, considering its length, it was a compelling read, and I seemed to fly through it.

Pseudotooth is a difficult-to-categorise novel though. It’s not exactly magical realism, but not quite speculative fiction either; yet the writing is lyrical, the narrative dreamlike, the themes – trauma, mental health, otherness – powerful and thought-provoking. The protagonist, a young woman called Aisling Selkirk who is having unexplained blackouts (pseudo-seizures), is a well-drawn and sympathetic character, the milieu (first, the austere and chilling parsonage, and then the is-it-real-is-it-not realm of ‘Our Friend’) fascinatingly image-rich. I’m not entirely sure the more open-ended ending is for me (I love a good strong resolution) but I think that’s very much up to the individual reader. Pseudotooth really got me thinking about the issue of how best to support young adults with mental health issues, and I would love to discuss it with any one else who has read it.

 

Bone Ovation by Caroline Hardaker

Bone Ovation is a debut poetry pamphlet, published by Valley Press, another indie press I greatly appreciate. As I’ve mentioned before, I find it takes me a long time to read a full poetry collection, but pamphlets are a brilliant way to slip some poetry into your day. You can carry them in a coat pocket or bag and dip in (and out) of them easily.

The theme of the pamphlet is ‘bones’ and in many of the poems the theme is obvious, in others, not so much. Many of the poems are written from a woman’s point of view, or are about a particular woman; I loved some of the characters – the girl from ‘The Girl Who Fell in Love With the Mountain’, the enigmatic being from ‘The Paper Woman’, the woman from ‘The Woman is Like a Picasso’. But my favourite is definitely the soul-gobbling grandmother from ‘The Rains’.

 

The Rains

 

Each raindrop contains a soul

I’m told, and sleet is nought

but the urgent need of the dead to meet

their loved ones once more in the mortal world.

To stroke their skin, to leave a living trace;

a tear drop – a thin, translucent meridian.

 

My grandmother never used an umbrella

and would tip back her head and eat the rain.

She said it made her feel alive again.

 

CAROLINE HARDAKER

 

Reading this collection I was struck by how, in places, it reminded me of Angela Readman’s The Book of Tides, a very fine collection indeed, due to the striking imagery, the layered and rich vocabulary, the magical/fantastical themes throughout. Yes, there were (to my mind) some poems that weren’t wholly successful, either because they were too opaque for my taste, or they had the occasional line which had end rhymes or internal rhymes that didn’t quite work, but overall, I felt this to be a strong debut, and one that makes me want to read more from this up-and-coming author.

 

Waking Mama Luna by Jessica Starr

This is a slim, self-published collection of 5 tales about womanhood and motherhood. I actually read this a fair while ago and meant to review it a lot earlier, but of course, life got in the way. The stories remind me of traditional fairy tales since they are plainly-written, with no literary frills added for effect. Some of the tales are tragic, some are resolutely happy, some are instructive. The whole collection makes for an easy, uplifting read and I remember really looking forward to ‘treating myself’ to another story because they felt so full of love, so familiar, so comforting. And really, what more can a reader (especially one who loves fairy tales) ask for from a book? Thank you Jessica!

 

And finally… huge thanks and WELL DONE to Sara for all her hard work on The Prompt linky. I am sorry to hear that this is the last ever The Prompt link-up (this week’s prompt was ENOUGH) but I am sure that Sara will continue to keep on inspiring and connecting (in particular) women writers.

Narratives of Water and Earth: 4 poetry collection reviews

Although I write, edit and publish poetry, I genuinely find reviewing poetry challenging. It inevitably makes me think of the way we used to pick apart poems at school (I have a particular memory of sitting at my wooden desk in my English class and dissecting one of Wilfred Owen’s most famous war poems, ‘Dulce et Decorum est’). Now I’m sure there’s a great deal of value to studying a poem in this way, because understanding the mechanics of any art gives you a better appreciation of how a skilled work of art is created, but it cannot, in any major way, alter the viewer’s (or reader’s) subjective reaction to the piece of art (book, poem etc.). When I first read Wilfred Owen’s poems they caused an emotional response in me. Then, later (in critical, objective mode) I was able to study the poem to work out precisely how he’d used language to produce that emotional response.

 

There is always some debate about exactly what a review is – is it a critical (and objective) analysis of the piece of writing? – or is it a reader’s emotional (and so, subjective) response to the piece? And with poetry, there’s the added problem of the much-argued-over-question – what exactly is poetry for? What is it supposed to do? Well, it’s not really going to offer escapism like a commercial fiction beach read will. Nor will it provide detailed information like a useful non-fiction book. I suppose it’s closest relative in terms of form is the literary novel (or flash fiction length-wise) due to their shared emphasis on the crafting of words and insight into the human condition. Yet poems can also be funny and political and peaceful and about things like shoes and goldfish and Newtonian mechanics. During the years I’ve spent editing poetry I’ve come to the conclusion that the poem’s main raison d’etre is to make the reader feel something: to create an emotional response. Otherwise it’s little more than a list of ingredients on a cereal packet. Diverting enough whilst eating breakfast but not memorable. So coming at it from that angle (and also with the knowledge that, technically, all these writers produce high-quality work) I wanted to share my reactions to the following four poetry collections.

 

The Book of Tides by Angela Readman (Nine Arches Press)

As the title explains, Angela Readman’s third collection is (mainly) about the sea. And just like the sea, the poems are full of beauty, mystery and restrained power. There are so many layers to the poems, that as soon as I had finished reading the one poem I had to read it again. On each rereading the poem would offer up more gifts – insights into female power and what robs women of this power, what it means to love and be loved, as well as stunning and original imagery. I came away from the book with the sense of having witnessed the profound (yet almost invisible) turmoil of soul-work in action.

 

And I rushed to your house, a waterfall, ready

to pour whoever I thought I was into your arms.

 

From ‘The Morning of La Llorona’

 

Empires of Clay, by Becky Cherriman (Cinnamon Press)

I think there’s no doubt that earth is less attractive than water. Earth dirties, water cleans. When they mix, as they often do in the UK in the form of soggy clay (or mud) they create a mixture that is both unwelcome yet somehow honest and humbling. Plant life springs forth from soil, and for many of us it is soil that will receive our bodies when we die. The poems in Empires of Clay have been described as “earthy, erotic” by Steve Ely and I completely agree. Of course I love the poems about motherhood (they appeared in Becky’s debut pamphlet, Echolocation, which my press published) but what really struck me about this collection was how skilled Becky is in writing about how we experience our memories and what it is that we do (or not do) with them. Her poems ‘Forgotten Well’ and ‘Stray Rein in January’ particularly impressed on me. Her writing really does have a haunting quality to it.

 

I remember that and approaching the bridge –

the fearsome echo

of something I couldn’t fathom

 

 

reverberated in my bones like…

There was snow?

Yes, I recall the thaw of someone else’s

footprints as I stumbled back.

A train, Karen said and we watch it flash

towards the future, trailing its echo

 

From ‘Stray Rein in January’

 

 

Deadly, Delicate by Kate Garrett (Picaroon Poetry)

This slim pamphlet, like Angela Readman’s The Book of Tides, also contains narratives of water, but the life of the outsider (pirates, specifically) is the main theme. These poems are, as the title suggests, both delicate and deadly; on rereading they reveal a precise yet subtle crafting, but what I particularly enjoy about Kate’s poems are how she manages to get whole stories into the poems. This really is remarkable, considering the brevity of the form. (I also happen to currently be doing my own research about female pirates for a story, so this has provided me with much inspiration.)

 

Now she wakes: deadly, delicate.

She presses her lips to my

breasts – once, twice – my hands smooth

her hips, and we love once more.

But I lose her each time

to breeches, boots and ship.

 

From ‘Crack Jenny’s Teacup’

 

Earthworks, by Jacqueline Gabbitas (Stonewood Press)

 

First up, I have to say that I am a huge fan of Stonewood Press, and the Stonewood Press thumbprints series. Martin Parker’s wonderful design and illustrations always perfectly set off the words within. And what words! In Earthworks, there is the quiet power and timelessness of hills, wood and stone. What struck me about these poems is how much love they contain – for fields and animals, rocks and earth, words and connections between humans. I have returned to this collection often.

 

But pain is a measure, living a delay:

These hills, they promise nothing for sure.

See? How the skies drag blue over grey.

And always the centre is flint, is clay.

 

From ‘High Hills’

 

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Poetry is often seen as inaccessible, unreadable, dry. But I believe that much poetry today is vibrant and accessible, and that some of the best work is coming out of the indie press scene. Slim pamphlets are a lovely “way in” to poetry world; a larger collection is probably for someone with more time and energy to invest in the reading of poems. I won’t lie – poetry collections take me a long time to finish because I read only a few poems at a time so that I can absorb them properly, but a slim pamphlet – time-wise – feels very manageable. All the collections above are beautifully presented and, overall, enriching and satisfying. I highly recommend them, and if anyone knows of any collections to do with fire or air, please let me know. They may well provide a good counterpoint to this post!

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