“Pretend Cartoon Strength” (£8.99, Broken Sleep Books), the premier work of Alicia Byrne Keane, presents a poet with a novel and imperfect gaze on the world. The compositions revolve around the intimate spaces of indoor settings and the unseen wilderness of natural settings, meticulously delving into our grasp of reality. Wildflowers are described in a variety of intricately observed ways in the poem “Wildflowers (I’m Not Sure)”, depicting minute details that change the familiar into something rare. The first piece, “Resolving”, does this by scrutinising a garden table in an unanticipated manner.
In this anthology, constructed edifices depict the passage of clock hands and possess an alluring energy that Byrne Keane’s writing highlights with precision. The poem “McAllister’s Garage” is a beautiful rendition, recalling the panorama of place and drawing broader contemplating from minute details within:
“…McAllister’s Garage represents a place I have only external familiarity with. I have merely glimpsed the faint items on display, I have merely gauged the lateness of time while waiting at this traffic signal…”
Later pieces in the collection offer a fresh perspective on homely settings during quarantine. It is intriguing to observe how these strains weigh on Byrne Keane’s moderated style. An underlying sense of unease infiltrates her musings on external reality, as seen in poems like “Sticky Terms”, where observing our environment imparts unexpected inferences:
“I monitor the solstice repelled by the glow of floodlights
& the way boughs maintain the sky’s near-silvery rim
in an ambiguous state of evolution,
& am envious of the arboreal giants
& am mortified for their sake.”
Byrne Keane’s poetry provides a uniquely surreal and consistently unanticipated view of the world, as perceived through his perspective. Similarly, the masterful incorporation of the ballad in numerous poems by David Wheatley showcases the resurgent strength of this poetic format.
Wheatley adds to his sixth anthology, named “Child Ballad” (published by Carcanet and priced at £12.99), both the themes evident in his previous compilations as well as new topics revolving around the experience of parenthood. Wheatley’s propensity to wander is evident as he derives inspiration from the breathtaking landscapes of the Scottish highlands where he currently resides, expanding his scope to include the shores across the Irish Sea, his birthplace.
Many of his verses often depict a conversation between these varying facets of himself, recounted against historical settings. The inaugural lines in the anthology can possibly be interpreted to represent the journey of a migrant, “If I never go home it is because the tides, I have noticed, flow in one direction only” (cited from ‘The Companions of Colmcille’), but they remind the reader of the attempts by Irish missionaries to convert Scotland to Christianity.
His historical poems resist the temptation to remain entrenched in a nostalgically blurred past, instead highlighting the jarring association between history and the present-day industrial era through verses expressing ecological distress, for example: “…I would number the oil-fields named for saints and seabirds: Ninian, Columba, Shearwater, Auk. Sea-spray and thunder; kittiwake’s egg of a scarred moon” (cited from ‘Adomnán’s Sermon to the Oil Rigs’).
The deft handling of the ballad in numerous poems by Wheatley conveys a forcefulness reminiscent of its revival. Poems dedicated to parenthood are often composed in a subtler tone, even though the anthology’s namesake poem brims with jubilance that aligns with a child’s arrival into the world: “Nine months I sailed within my mother, now head up, now down, a fitful questing prow in search of wider seas. Now you are the tide I plough, wide world; grant my sails godspeed.”
Themes in Child Ballad coalesce while also breaking apart in the concluding poem, A Curious Herbal, which warrants more comprehensive exploration than I can provide here. This poem provides a close examination of Scotland’s plant life, and expands into reflections on perception, language, connection and translation – encapsulating the collection’s motifs: “one language/ darkening into/another’s gleam.”
Rachel Mann’s poetry is consistently imbued with an emotional transparency, conveying a depth of understanding and compassion that might revive an individual’s belief in spirituality.
In Eleanor Among the Saints (Carcanet, £11.99), Mann also explores the metamorphic power of language. Drawing inspiration from the life of Eleanor Rykener, a medieval trans woman, sex-worker and seamstress, Mann highlights the liberating potential of poetry in a world bound by rigid binaries. The poems, crafted with skill, reflect on acts of self-definition, as seen in Embroidering a Priest and Eleanor, in the Beginning:
“Evil’s entity, all self-command, finally liberated from what
You’d have me become; stitch me a getaway, O
God of thread, shoddy, scrap – You recognise, you recognise
Text corresponds to textile texture textus…”
Despite the linguistic complexity and active exploration of meaning, these poems remain emotionally accessible, demonstrating an insight and sensitivity that might renew a person’s faith in spirituality. They skillfully portray the beauty and chaos that love can inflict on a person’s body and spirit, and are peppered with humorous interjections (“Heaven’s a yawn”) and poignant climaxes, as seen in “…Child’s inaugural shaky query: Why is fear labelled ‘love’?” in Eleanor Constructs a Father.
They don’t shy away from the numerous struggles plaguing the trans community, including the persistent menace of violence. Poems such as Eleanor as a Sixteen Year Old Murdered Trans Girl, What Is Known provides a terse, fragile and powerful read, defensive like a person coerced into defending their right to exist: “I was unaware that a body could be murdered multiple times/I suspect this might be one such effort.”
Ishion Hutchinson masterfully intertwines the terrors of trench warfare with the normalcy of daily life in his book, School of Instructions (Faber, £12.99). By enmeshing numerous layers of history into a narrative as fluid as intertwined strands of silk, the book becomes a palimpsest. At its core, the narrative combines the experiences of West Indian soldiers in the Middle East during the first World War and the childhood story of a Jamaican schoolboy, Godspeed, in the 1990s. Untangling these narratives can be challenging but this is exactly what Hutchinson aims to reflect; history influencing our actions subtly, whether we realise it or not. And so, we see Godspeed by his grandma’s side, boxing with his cousin, or studying Shakespeare while war narratives march through the poems, their locations highlighted in uppercase.
In Hutchinson’s writing, we see a seamless shift from detailing the rustic life in Jamaica to eliciting wide-ranging images of the devastation of trench warfare. Hutchinson’s prowess lies in anchoring this frightening larger vision to the mundane, familiar experiences, compelling readers to confront the uncanny during their journey through the mire of war:
“Scabies mud. Mumps mud. Memra mud. Pneumonia mud. Mene mene tekel upharsin mud. Civil war mud.”
To Hutchinson, personal growth and awareness necessitate the destruction of the old self; a concept symbolized by the inherent tenderness in the burning of the old prominent in his writing. A belief in the potential of love to lead to harm underpins his writing. This belief is reflected in the rhetorical questioning, inquiring why laws against such harmful actions exist if not for this belief, and why one would otherwise find the need to sharpen a knife, underlining the dangerous potential of love.
Utilising British English, recreate the text so it differs in the sentence structure and the choice of words. The revised text should not be a direct translation of the initial text.
Original Text: /”And their abode shall be the gloom and the worms in the swamp mud.
Mud of the Yaws. Mud of the Gog and the Magog. Mud of the Divine.”
(quoted from His Idylls at Happy Grove)
As the tale progresses, garnering intensity, the young life of Godspeed is constantly disturbed by sickness, confrontation, and violence. The specifics of wartime fatalities accumulate, expressed in a frighteningly nonchalant manner: “Pte I McKenzie 6322 of Section C met his demise from pneumonia, under the yabba embers” and “B Section’s Apprentice. C. H., number 921, was accidentally killed by a grenade”. Godspeed is persistently grappling with the burden of colonial expectations imposed on him: “He attached a lacerated poppy to his uniform shirt and it started bleeding again.” (LIII) This anthology, being both a testament and an act demolishing, is undoubtedly a grand accomplishment.”/