69 poems about 1969

For those who followed my abandoned Ulysses Diary (a failed attempt to document my journey through James Joyce’s famously difficult novel) I now have another project for you to laugh at. I’m attempting, for little good reason, to write 69 poems about the year 1969.

I noticed that an uncommon number of my cultural touch points came from this year (Abbey Road, Stones in Hyde Park, Ted Hughes’ Crow – well almost) and that it was also a year of unusual innovation (Concorde, the moon landings, the Jumbo Jet). In a sense it can be seen as the start of the modern age. Here’s a sample from the work in progress, inspired by an incident that took place on 19 March 1969 – when a 1200 ft television mast collapsed in Yorkshire wiping out Coronation Street or whatever happened to be on TV that grey Wednesday evening. Jolly stuff!

THE EMLEY MOOR MAST COLLAPSE

19 March 1969

Tethered to the earth,
yearning for the sky
claimed by the ice and wind,

in the mist, you can still see
the mast on Emley Moor,
as thin as a signal on a winter’s day.

And beside it the ghost
of the one that fell that night
like a Russian rocket

crash landed on Yorkshire:
shredded steel in the hedgerows
a chapel scythed in half.

You could forgive its wavering,
under the weight of weather
and the babble of television

but only the sheep, heard
the oscillation; the hum and groan
as it gave up the ghost

to leave an impression of itself
scratching the sky; a finger
pointing to heavens.

Billy’s Jig

Like buses, first no music at all, and now I’m posting tunes all the time on the blog (okay this is the second time). Billy’s Jig is something I wrote over the last four days while experimenting with an open C tuning (CGCGCE for all you guitarists out there). It’s for my grandfather who would have been 93 on 8th June.

Not all of it is a jig – just the bit in the middle – but ‘Billy’s Jig with Intro and Coda’ isn’t half so catchy. I would also like to dedicate it to my father, who is considerably younger and more sprightly and celebrating his birthday today. Happy birthday dad!

Yodeling on The South Downs

My pal Nick (currently suffering with a bad back – commiserations mate) turned me onto the prog rock madness that is Dutch band Focus and especially their barmy, riff-tastic song Hocus Pocus that helped yodeling make a return to the charts in the early 70s. They truly must be seen and heard to be believed. It’s Roy Rodgers meets Megadeth.

He was introduced to them in turn by his Uncle Barry, who took him for wild car rides across the South Downs with the music blaring from his Rover 90, complete with its odd inner opening doors.

I’ve composed this tribute to Nick, his bad back, Uncle Barry, the Rover 90 and the laughing Dutchmen. Surely there can’t be too many poems like this.

THE SPELL

Uncle Barry, what visions I have of you,
still skimming the South Downs in your Rover 90,
your bonnet like a streak of grey cloud.

With me at your side, eyes as bright and wide
as your steel hubcaps, the doors opened inwards,
like something from Dan Dare.

On b-roads we flew into England’s horizon,
past fields of poppies and pools of light,
pub signs whirring like football rattles in our ears.

Under the dash you kept an eight track,
that blew Focus from road; we scared the cows
with Sylvia and Hocus Pocus.

We yodeled together like a sorcerer
and his apprentice, while the car filled with smoke
like a genie’s lamp as if we’d captured a cloud.

What hours and what sounds as we chased
the tail of the runaway kite, you the crimson king
of the chalk road, me the boy in your spell.

We snaked down ancient hills, blasting blues at the sky,
to Brighton, where I left you, going up and over
the Western Pier, wheels spinning into the heavens.

Martha’s Song

A bit of a first for the blog – an attempt at a recording of an original acoustic guitar instrumental, called Martha’s Song.

For added authenticity, Martha joins me as recording engineer and makes an (audible) guest appearance towards the end). It all ends in chaos but it’s the closest we came to a complete recording.

 

Following swifts down the Boudica Way

In my stinky old UEA running top outside Norwich station, I assemble with brother Joe and friend Winston for a pre-match photo at the start of our attempt at the Boudica Way.  It’s a thirty six mile traipse through farmland and villages roughly along the warpath of the first century Iceni queen. The route that once put her on a collision course with the might of Rome and towards the sacking of Colchester, London and St Albans would lead in our case to nothing more dramatic than my car parked up at Diss station.

Still, spirits are high, water plentiful and the weather finer than expected as we set off past the multiplexes and Boots superstore, wondering whether we have enough in the way of blister plasters and freeze dried apple to last us to the finish. True to form, we are lost within five minutes walking along the newly developed riverside. A friendly, bearded cyclist pulls up and asks if he can help. ‘We’re trying to get out of Norwich,’ we tell him. ‘I know the feeling,’ he replies. Across a busy road and a bridge or two, and we see that not all of Norwich has been redeveloped: some old industrial red brick buildings with broken windows and a clock telling the wrong time, lie waiting for a developer to turn them into apartments for lecturers, accountants and solicitors.

But soon we have drifted into the pretty village of Trowse, with its organic bistro and curious line of Victorian terraced houses, each with a single front window bricked up. Why? A building or architectural error? Surely these are too late to have fallen foul of a window tax. We leave the mystery behind us as we cross into our first field.

As if on cue, a steam train thunders past, belching white smoke, a more common sight than you might think in Norfolk, and it succeeds in scaring the herd of young horses grazing there, which buck and whinny at the sight of this technological wonder. Like a scene from a Western, they actually race it across the length of the field. It allows me to take the picture of some horses I promised my five year old son. ’You will probably see some deer too,’ he told me, somewhat enigmatically, before I set off, ’but I don’t need to see those.’ I remember his slightly crestfallen face up at his bedroom window as he watched me make my way up the street to my car with my rucksack and circular pop up tent. Why wasn’t I invited along? He was still there as I drove down the street again on my way out of town.

Now we are on the trail proper, a freshly mown path about eight feet wide, which has been immaculately maintained by an invisible team of Boudica way supporters. This is the team that has laid the trail of arrowheads in neat yellow circles and even left information for our convenience in old telephone boxes. We joke that they run a 24 hour helpline for those on the trail answering questions such as how many Cs in Boudica, and what time does The Globe pub open? As it transpires, they wouldn’t have much to do, as for some reason, and despite the late May Bank Holiday weekend, there is hardly a soul to be seen. Joe tells us that the route has only recently been revamped, and that word of this lost wonder of the world has yet to get out.

Following hedgerows, and down tunnels of light woodland, we are rewarded with views of cascading fields through snickets and brambles. Yellow and blue wildflowers skirt the paths and the charms of the Boudica Way begin to reveal themselves.

Presently, we find a bench overlooking a sloping field and feast on some excellent sausage rolls and flapjack, courtesy of Joe’s other half Roberta, who used to make and sell them from a living (‘the finest sausage rolls I have ever tasted.’ according to Gary Rhodes). On the horizon, we can see the Norwich skyline, still exceptionally modest except for its two cathedrals, clock tower and the monolith of the county hall. An American would barely recognise it as a city. It’s our last sight of it as we pack up and head back on the trail.

The joy of walking is to disappear into woods and away from yourself; you can almost physically feel your emotional, work and other baggage falling off (though hopefully keeping hold of some of your other, more useful baggage.) The shady woods are relieved by the open fields and the walk is punctuated by towers of all descriptions – huge, complex, pylons like rocket ships, churches with round towers (all named St Mary’s for some reason – including the lovely ruin hidden in the bluebells, and windmills old and new.We meet a campaigner along the route who tells us why she is objecting to them – the blades are as big as the wing of a jumbo jet and they make a constant noise; they glint in the sun and can be seen for miles around. Why not put them out to sea with all the others? We nod sympathetically, unsure of our own position. In true Norfolk style (‘Do Different,’ they say) a contrary neighbour has a sign in his garden warning people to ignore the campaigners and to bring on the wind farms. There’s certainly plenty of wind and not many people, but it’s difficult to know who to believe. They produce sustainable energy, but are seen by some as unsightly. You don’t know truly where you stand until you’re told they’re going up in your back garden.

Leaving such tribulations behind, we are met with a warm welcome in Tasburgh where the good folk at The Countryman pub have allowed us to pitch in their back garden (no sign of wind turbines there). The sight of the pop up tent miraculously pinging into shape, a pint of Adnams bitter and a plate of freshly dressed crab is ample reward for a good first day.

Next morning we walk, as if in a dream, through yet more fields, dodging sheep dung and taking one or two short cuts along country lanes to avoid some peculiar detours which take you needlessly off to the east or west (we‘re keen, but not that keen). Towards the end, and with t-shirts wrapped around our heads to ward off the relentless sun, we start to resemble vagabonds as we pass through (or veer close to) places with names like Shimpling, Garlic Street, Dickleburgh and the splendid Colegate End, which sounds like someone’s just run of toothpaste.

If you’re looking for breathtaking views and dramatic scenery, then this is probably not the walk for you. Instead there are gentle inclines and gentle descents. It is a walk of barley fields, dung heaps, brooks and streams; it is a walk beneath swallows and swifts swooping and diving, stitching the sky as they snap horseflies from the air. It is a walk across footbridges made from old railway sleepers and of paths that suddenly lead you into glades of vivid colour. There are some surprises too. There are wonderfully unusual farmhouses painted in blues and reds that you might otherwise expect to find in the middle of Kansas or Iowa.

For two days, you step out of civilization and live in a kind of purgatory of woods and fields. Apart from the people you meet in the scattering of villages and pubs along the way, you pretty much have England all to yourself.

Just before we arrived back in Diss, the path is blocked by a ford. Unusually long and deep from the recent rain, it seems there is no choice but to wade across. Picking what I think is the shallowest route, the water soon creeps over the top of my boots and the freezing water gushes in, a wonderful balm on my aching feet. With my staff in hand, and t-shirt tied about my head, I acknowledge that I am cutting a somewhat biblical figure and living up to my namesake St Christopher. It’s then that I hear Joe‘s slightly apologetic voice: ‘Er, Chris, sorry about this mate, but I’ve just seen a bridge over there.’

Pincher Martin – Born Survivor?

Despite being reasonably familiar with William Golding and his work, I somehow missed this strange, unsettling novel about a shipwrecked sailor. That is, until I heard about an adventurer from Scotland, Nick Hancock, who was planning to spend 60 days on Rockall. The news report mentioned that the island in the Atlantic (off the Hebrides and known only by name to most from the shipping forecast) was the location for this, Golding’s third novel. So I picked it up for 40p in a lovely old orange Penguin paperback edition. It would look good I thought, peeking out of the pocket of my new brown jacket.

Essentially it’s Robinson Crusoe meets Bear Grylls meets Life of Pi set in the 1940s and in the bleakest possible surroundings. The setting is a large rock (the real Rockall is barely 25m across) totally exposed to the elements without trees, soil, or any vegetation beyond that which can cling to it.

In the novel WWII British Naval Officer (named Chris Martin, all you Coldplay fans; the ‘Pincher’ is an unexplained nickname, but one which hints at some past misdemeanour) finds himself flailing in the freezing, black Atlantic after his ship is torpedoed, before being washed up on the island. Despite being an actor in civvy street, Martin is impressively clued up on his survival skills and fans of Bear Grylls will enjoy his displays of resourcefulness.

He prises mussels and sea anemones from the sides of rocks to eat, and finds a pool of fresh water in a crevasse, precariously sealed in by a red, reed-like slime and uses his oil skin to catch more rain. He finds a hole in the rock for shelter and even makes a pattern from seaweed to create a land to air signal. So far, so Haynes’ Survival Manual. He builds a mannequin from boulders (‘The Dwarf’) to attract attention from passing shipping and wraps silver foil from the remains of a chocolate bar around its head to catch the light.

In the first few pages of minutes described action (each scrape of the knife, each breath of wind is meticulously relayed) you begin to wonder how Golding is going to sustain your attention. With a single protagonist, and a barren landscape, it begins to feel like a lost Samuel Beckett play – and something of a chore.

But as you would expect from William Golding, things soon take on a sinister dimension and it becomes clear that two dramas are unfolding simultaneously – one on the rock, and one in the survivor’s mind. Dehydrated and malnourished, the Dwarf with its loose stone balanced at the top, becomes a ‘nodding’ companion; it is the dark voice of his subconscious. He is revisited by childhood nightmares and haunted by the guilt of betrayed friendships, thwarted ambition and unrequited love. A specific, significant incident – a sin – is revealed late in the book, damns him by the reader and his own conscience.

Golding’s achievement is in two parts; the first is the brilliant, poetic description of the natural world. The descriptions of the play of the light on the sea are deeply impressionistic and the meaning is double layered:

‘The water was smoother today, as though the dead air were flattening it. There was shot silk in swathes; oily looking patches that became iridescent as he watched, like scum in a ditch’

Martin’s own character is clever reflected here; his lapse into pessimism; the blemishes on his soul and self loathing are all revealed in what he sees around him; the pathetic fallacy of the storm, like Lear on the heath is indicative of the onset of his true, self destructive madness.

The second is the seamless interweaving of memory, the inner voice of the mind, and his own utterances. He is intelligent (as he constantly reminds himself) resourceful and determined. The revelation of character through action and observation is skilfully done and Martin’s vanity and arrogance is both a survival technique and a flaw. As an actor, he declaims Shakespeare and classical verse – like Prospero from the rock – although pointed, unlike Shakespeare’s magician, he fails to master the island.

As in life, there is a constant struggle between hope and despair; sanity and madness; good and evil, strength and weakness (his hapless friend Nathaniel is the virtuous counterpoint to his own flawed character) . The narrative is packed with repetitions and mirrors of itself and is a deliberate echo of Martin’s confusion. The island’s unbearable nihilism playing against Martin’s human response to impose order and normality creates great tension; it is unclear how long he spends on the island – days, weeks? With jumps between past and present; fractured speech and dislocated images, Golding deliberately wrong foots the reader. There is also an ironic distance in the language – eyes are ‘windows‘; his hair becomes ‘curtains‘, as if to emphasise the loss of the self. Recurrent images, initially abstract and inexplicable, gradually reveal their meaning.

There is humour too, of a sort; a sequence on the relief of Martin’s constipation, set to an imaginary, slowly building crescendo of majestic classical music is a comic tour de force. The survivor’s conceit and self regard is darkly comic; his antics and raving are at times slapstick. He feels himself mocked by lobsters, birds, his stone companion and even the island itself as he anthropomorphises his surroundings. It would not be so cruel if he were not so aware of his fate and so skilful at delaying it; his own resourcefulness prolongs his ordeal. He is also able to analyse his desperate situation; understanding that controlling his mind, not his body, is the real test of his survival:

‘The sane life of your belly and your cock are on a simple circuit, but how can the stirred pudding keep constant?’

Like Life of Pi, this is a less a ‘who dunnit’ than a ‘did it really happen?’ Is it an adventure story, a fable, a fantasy or all three? The narrative takes cruel twists and its focus is relentless and there is little pity or compassion as his cry ‘I am so alone!‘ rings across the rock and vast sea; it a lament for the loneliness of the human soul not just for this man, but all of us who carry our original sin; who live with our weakness of character and carry the delusion of hope.

Above all, the novel is marked by Golding’s strange imagination, a warped, luminous vision that sees the whole world through the prism of morality and of course the dazzling originality of his linguistic invention. (language itself is an affirmation of sanity, Martin believes). So, what reading material should Nick Hancock take with him on his 60 days on Rockall? Maybe some Bill Bryson instead.

Rockshow – The rehabilitation of Paul McCartney and Wings

This great concert film, and soon to be re-released triple album Wings over America, captures Paul McCartney and Wings in their 70s pomp. From the clowning Denny Laine, resplendent in his pink flamingo suit, to the rake thin Jimmy McCulloch and Linda’s blonde peacock hairdo, it’s pretty rare to see a band so happy and relaxed. Yes, there is some posturing, but mostly it’s brilliantly played, melodic rock and roll, all delivered with smiles and reassuring winks from Macca.

Paul is on blistering form and he knows it. He celebrates a breakneck version of Lady Madonna (with extra helpings of boogie woogie) with mock bows. His playing is fantastic throughout, hammering the piano like Rowlf from the Muppets, his mullet flying in all directions. His bass on Silly Love Songs is laugh-out-loud good, his fingers appearing to find a completely different song to the one he’s singing.

But it is his voice that constantly astonishes. In recent years it has lowered and weathered, crumpling in the upper range, but here it is a thing of raw power. From the rasping blasts through Jet and Rock Show, when he unleashes his full Long Tall Sally voice, there is complete control of pitch and power. On Maybe I’m Amazed he ascends to helium level heights with complete ease. What amazes more is that can return almost immediately to more tender fare such as Yesterday and Blackbird without a trace of the vocal lacerations that came before.

There’s a generosity shown by McCartney throughout that sometimes threatens to backfire. He allows other members of the band, especially Denny Laine, several spotlight moments. On the face of it, why would we want to hear Denny’s songs from mid seventies Wings albums when we could hear McCartney sing Paperback Writer or Sgt. Pepper? But that isn’t in the spirit of the exercise. Paul is making the point that they are a ‘real band‘, in the same way as the Beatles, where a certain level of democracy and taking turns to show off was the accepted order of the day. He’s also smart enough to know that this makes for a happier band, more motivated and their total commitment to him and the music is obvious.

Denny is sometimes maligned, but his virtuosity here is impressive, moving between his twin necked electric guitar (’Just like the one played by Jimmy Page’) to bass, to piano. His singing is terrific too on Go Now (almost an upstaging moment) and it’s clear how important his harmonies were to the Wings’ sound. It’s easy to think of McCartney recruiting him to be another Paul McCartney, but his personality and distinctive contributions are spot on. His driving, Romany-inspired acoustic guitar contribution to the sing along (the drinking songs’) down the front is one of the many highlights. Songs like Bluebird with its swathes of three part harmonies, woodwind interludes shows their musical sophistication. They are easily as adept at folk and jazz as flexing their rock muscle.

The sound is rich and deep without being over driven; all of McCartney songs are melodic, but they are beautifully arranged too. The four piece horn section (profusely thanked by McCartney at the end) give a fantastic extra dimension. Some tunes are lightweight – Hi Hi Hi and Soily, but are played with such gusto – powered by the unstoppable Wings, including the lovable, Bear-like drummer Joe English, that it’s beside the point.

Linda is an unflappable, droopy eyed presence behind the Moog. Now totally confident with her instrument she is both all American cheerleader and backing singing. Her vocals are genuinely fantastic. There is surprisingly little husband and wife interaction on stage, partly because Paul is focusing on the music and partly because he doesn’t want to upset his female fan base. But when Paul and Linda share a mike (George and Paul style) for the backing vocals on Go Now, it’s clear they are still smitten.

Posterity brings added poignancy to this dazzling show. Not only do we know that Jimmy McCulloch was to die just three years later of a heroin overdose, but that we would later lose Linda too. Although there were further successes, including the squillion selling Mull of Kintyre the following year, the line up never gelled in quite the same way and Wings never commanded this kind of respect again. But for a time, as someone said, ‘It was like The Beatles never happened.’

What’s happened to all the scarecrows?

An alien with a large white head and purple jumpsuit flaps around a pole at the centre of a Suffolk field. High above, two plastic kestrels are pinned to the sky on wires. In the opposite field, futuristic silver blades flash and glisten in the sun as they spin in the wind. They are mounted on a kind of translucent plastic ball like a prop from an abandoned low budget science fiction film. Welcome then to the world of the 21^st century scarecrow.  

While improvements in scarecrow technology might mean higher yields for hard-pressed farmers, it is rather a shame for those of us who have enjoyed the sight of the more traditional looking hay-man. The classic image of the vagabond in tails, top hat with the missing lid, turnip head and body stuffed with straw is now more myth than reality. Nowadays, you are hard pressed even to find something in human form.

Cycling through Essex into Suffolk I did a mini audit, where gadgets, for want of a better word, out-numbered scarecrows at least four to one. What scarecrows there were, were sorry looking creations; little more than a knotted bin bag with the suggestion of a head tied to a post. No flippy-floppy hat, no dungarees, no ghostly Christ-like figure just as likely to scare the local school children as much as the birds.

Scarecrows (or Tattie Bogles, Guys or Murmets depending on where you live) are part of the iconography of our countryside. They form part of the cultural as well as the agricultural landscape of rural Britain and are as much art installation as bird deterrent. Their value in preserving crops and seed has always been somewhat spurious – and in fact there is an argument that says that birds are more useful in fields (devouring insects and other pests) than out of then. They are a link to a more ancient time – when superstition gripped the land and determined a farmer’s fortune even more so that the wind and the rain or birds of the sky. They are mannequin, voodoo doll and false god, bundled up in a slightly tatty Paisley shirt.     

For most, scarecrows are object of fascination rather than affection. To me anyway, Jon Pertwee’s comic grotesque, Worzel Gummidge, was always more hide-behind-the-sofa TV than Dr Who. They are not to be approached, especially from behind for fear of springing into life; hovering on the edge of the animate, they are totally effective in enforcing the unwritten rule never to cross a farmer’s field.

While scarecrows may be disappearing from our countryside, they live on in poetry and song. Syd Barratt, the boy genius of British pop knew the slightly sinister nursery rhyme world the scarecrow inhabits, with his song from Piper at the Gates of Dawn: ‘His head did no thinking/His head didn’t move except when the wind cut up.’ Walter de la Mare brilliantly evokes the doomed man: ‘All winter though I bow my head/beneath driving rain.’ His scarecrow is reawakened by the turning of the season: ‘But when that child called Spring, and all/his host of children come/ . . ./ some rapture in my rags awakes.’   

Read my own poem, The Extraordinary Meditation of the Scarecrow, which suggests where scarecrows travel at night, in my first book The Invention of Butterfly.

Compassionate surrealism – the poetry of Bob Mee

It is most useful to think of Bob Mee’s The Maker of Glass Eyes (Cinnamon Press) as a man trying unsuccessfully to lead a quiet life. The poet’s days are given to the strange, the absurd; afternoons are disturbed by curious, unexplained incident and interrupted by a constant stream of outrageous, uninvited guests. From Gustav Mahler spotted sipping an espresso to Mr and Mrs Shakespeare nursing bacon sandwiches in a café, characters from history, literature and the imagination make continuous, unexpected appearances.  

Many poems are unresolved; beguiling sketches where you are left to draw your own conclusions. The Hat involves a man returning from the fields to find a woman’s hat that he doesn’t recognise on the peg. He goes ‘from room to room’ and calls out: ‘Is anyone there?’ Receiving no answer, he simply returns the hat to the peg. The language is plain and the narrative straightforward and on the face of it, there is nothing particularly poetic about it, but the effect is pleasantly strange and gently philosophical.

Events unfold around us, the poet seems to be saying; we can either resist, wasting our energies, or simply give them room and watch what happens.  Perhaps not all of these work, such as Early Morning, Herefordshire, where a white haired man pushes a barrow, followed by a black dog. It’s little more than an image; a rural snapshot, balanced pleasingly in black and white, but the poet presents it anyway – almost with a shrug: Here it is, it’s up to you what you do with it. He is not afraid to be simple, and does not pursue the self-consciously poetic line. What makes it poetry is the frame placed around it; its selection from reality.

The family is at the heart of The Maker of Glass Eyes and is the inspiration for some of its best poems. His studies of his son, Jack, as he finds his way with woodworking are acutely observed and admirably restrained: ‘nails in his teeth, in the rain astride a branch/bow saw slung across his shoulder.’ Elsewhere, father and son are fishing together ‘at the edge/of the pond/without need/of words.’ A series of mundane actions ensue; tea is poured, lines are cast – and with a comic’s timing, he concludes: ‘it doesn’t matter what happens.’ The subtext is everything – and the ability to imply tenderness, connection and respect between these two anglers is enviable. These are portraits in words that will be treasured in years to come.   

There is plenty of humour here; some comes in the form of anachronistic observation; Mee has a (glass?) eye for the unusual image – a nun plays cricket on the beach ‘fielding in the sea’ with some boys in football shirts; her laughter ‘floats out across the waves./It should reach Holland by nightfall.’ But there is a tenderness and humanity as well as humour in these images that take them beyond the anecdotal; they are small reminders of our potential for vivacity and shared experience.

Other poems have more elaborate constructs and are increasingly absurd; we stumble upon Nelson and Hardy playing Scrabble before Trafalgar, where the pair argue as to whether ‘URGH’ is a word. A man stands on one left for four hours for a bet, while the wonderful ‘Aunt Mary’ begins: ‘I bought Aunt Mary on the Shopping Channel yesterday’. The conceit is spectacularly well executed and the invention is sustained throughout. It works brilliantly well in performance, but is equally enjoyable on the page; the deadpan delivery is controlled by judicious line breaks and clever repetition, which changes rhythm and pace.            

This is an accessible collection and one that is easy to like; but that is to take nothing away from its seriousness. The sequence about the poet’s father is richly evocative and moving; the period detail of woodbines, Third Class travel and Carnation milk is expertly chosen; it allows us to touch and taste the past. Mee has both a magician’s box of tricks and a painter’s pallet; whether working in simple lyricism or acrobatic surrealism, Mee presents modern fables that resonate in the most profound and unexpected of ways.

Circling the Core with Myra Schneider

Myra Schneider’s luminous collection of poems: ‘Circling the Core’ (Enitharmon) explores remote places – of the mind, the memory and the planet. From Scottish Islands, to powerful recollections (reading the headline in Rome: ‘Kennedy Assassinata’) to the self-questioning: ‘Why did I wake this morning remembering a day decades ago?’ this books travels long distances to find simple answers. Paradoxically, these remote places are often signposts to the core – the undiscovered self.  The experiences have made her what she is, and yet her innermost being remains elusive and undefined.

She is drawn to deserted, ghostly vistas, often bordering the sea. ‘Blakeney’, the Norfolk fishing village, famous for its seals is ‘that pale strip/pulling me like a magnet.’ The sea (its ‘ever shifting glitter’ so different from ‘everyday clutter’) is a tantalising prospect – so emotionally charged; so inscrutable. It offers the promise of escape, release even. Her language is as interwoven as nature, internal rhyme and half-rhyme binding poems together: while ‘low tide water dribbles’, gulls ‘stand/on their doubles.’      

‘Nothing’, is another poem located in an undefined, shifting world, (most likely the gloom of an English winter) where we find ‘grass greying in hollows and humps/seeping into lightlessness.’ It is a disconcerting study of grief or depression – or at least its memory. It is haunted by images of absence: from the ‘vacant cradle/of delicate bones that was once a bird’s head’ to the skin shed by a snake. Landscapes become ominous, filled with significance, threatening to tip the darkness of old memories back into the present. It is one of the most startling poems in the book, but it is artfully conceived, from the acute observation of nature (‘the heavy bellied sky’) to the skilful interweaving of an actual journey with a psychological one.

There is another journey and another absence in ‘Going Back,’ where the poet revisits a childhood home – a dangerous pursuit for those who prefer to think of their past as a place that continues to exist somewhere, untouched by time. Her worst fears are realised: ‘Not there: the sandpit where sister and I invented worlds/only a garage.’ She documents the changes, but finds her mind slipping back to the past: ‘I click my camera but when I leave the present peels away.’ While the physical world changes around her – with the seasons and passing years, memory works in a less sequential way providing another parallel narrative.

There are rest-bites on this emotional journey and ‘Goulash’ is one of them: a poem with which some readers may already be familiar. It was deservedly shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. It takes the form of a precise set of instruction for the preparation of a delicious dish – a prescriptive poem somewhat in the manner of W.H. Auden meets Delia Smith. It is genuinely mouth-watering (and entirely accurate if you wish to cook along) but peppered with delightful ideas and turns of phrase: ‘bless the mixture with stock’ she advises.

The poem is almost fetish-like in its detail; almost religious and like much of her work takes you to unexpected places. Stirring the dish, ‘it dawns on you how much you need darkness’. It lives in the ‘airing cupboard where a padded heart pumps/heat.’ At first I found this and other images in the poem out of plac:e an unwelcome incursion on the otherwise tightly focus on food; then I realised this is what gives it its fourth dimension – an emotional response to the physical world.

There are links between poems and recurrent images which give the book itself a strong sense of unity and cohesiveness. Certainly the theme of darkness is prevalent throughout, as well as birds, domestic spaces (cupboards in particular) Kennedy (?), the sea, and nature in abundance. There is so much to absorb and admire it is foolish to attempt the book at a single sitting; but in both individual poems and its cumulative effect, it is collection of undeniable power.  

Possibly the finest piece for me is Bird, where the poet imagines herself as the creature: ‘I am wings/springing from breast, sweeping back,’ and elsewhere ‘See how/ I enfold head and heart in flight. Map out my hungers and dangers.’ It is almost shocking in its physicality. Many poets attempt ventriloquism in poetry, but this goes a stage further – truly inhabiting the animal, which in turns helps her discover a fully realised self.

For those looking for value in a poetry collection, Circling the Core offers plenty of it. Not only does it benefit from several ‘hit singles’ – a fistful of first prizes, many poems are multi-faceted, multi-layered things that tackle subjects many different ways; scenes are shot from several angles. Undeniably it is a dark collection, but it is tempered with humour and there are few poems that do not hint at redemption – whether in art, in food, in love, in nature or the simple promise of tomorrow. All of these poems are exercises in circling the core, where she concludes:         

‘The further in you go/the nearer you come to the mystery.’