Events

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Writing With Clarity

Jean Taylor surveys both what she sees and her own experience with a calm clarity. She is often dispassionate, but never cold. Whether it is the landscape, or her observations of others, she remains objective. ‘Genetic Variations’ is a summary of the inheritance she shares with her siblings. Beyond the list, she hints at more.

In ‘Glass Houses’ she describes a street where a woman has ‘delegated the work / of ordinary living.’ She wryly notes            

          […]  the watchers

draw curtains furtively,

hiding their own entanglements.  

When responding to her own life and circumstances, this level assessment can quietly dismantle the reader. Taylor surveys her situation with wit, a sense of her place, and an absence of self-pity. Her view has self-knowledge; her approach, application. In ‘Summer Blood’ she describes this considered approach. It is a habit of long practice:

I shall sit beside her, stiff-backed

against gaudy stripes, studying my book

and practising

for the possibility of being a woman.

Many of these poems interrogate and coolly acknowledge loss. For example, in ‘You’ she describes ‘Waking that night to find you cold’ before she observes that she had not thought ‘to test / for murmuration of pulse or breath’. It is only at the end of the poem that she allows herself to write ‘my beloved — you.’

In ‘Mayday’ she uses formal stanzas and sustained metaphor to articulate loss:   

Living without him is like flying

without instruments

She does not wallow. Her language echoes her approach; crisp, disciplined. She is self-knowing and her zest for life, sense of the rational and of possibility resurfaces:

Perhaps she will master the joystick

fly over the mountain  

There are poems of recovery, and of hope, again objectively described. The final piece, ‘Sunlight’, again has that clear-sighted, dispassionate view of former gifts of flowers as a preface to her current purchases of daffodils — for herself.

carnations

scented with guilt and petrol.

[…]

She buys them for the pleasure,

the joy

of watching them

becoming sunlight.

These are beautiful, elegant poems.

                         Rosemary Hector

A first line that bites

This is the first publication from a new Scottish imprint based in Dunbar. The three contributors harmonise well, with styles not dissimilar. Emma Møller even has poems in which ‘Ruth’ and ‘Jo’ appear. There’s a feeling of warmth, as though the writers play off each other affectionately. And inside the pages, authorship is indicated by first name only, as though the poets are sisters.

My favourite poems shared a distinguishing factor — an arresting first line, one that made complete sense in itself. For example, Ruth Gilchrist’s ‘In the Springtime’, which opens:

I am to kill you in the springtime,

the instructions are very clear

How could you not want to read on? The same trick (though less violent) works for Jo Gibson in ‘Freuchie’, a village which coincidentally is just down the road from my own home:

Not far from Freuchie we remembered we needed logs.

The stove’s warm heart was cooling.

In both cases that first line has a lovely rhythm. Splendid openings; and what follows does not disappoint.

Emma Møller can do it too. In ‘Pocket Historic’ she examines the contents of the pockets of a particular coat. This is how she begins:

I wore a coat this morning for the first time since late 2011.

Green oilcloth, a sturdy hood and nearly to my knees.

The rhythms are prosy but persuasive. The poet takes her reader through three pages of pockets, and still holds interest.

Emma’s poems about Ruth and Jo have arresting openings (these are their first-line titles): ‘Ruth is nursing a Guinea pig’ and ‘Jo doesn’t wear bright colours’. Of the three, Emma tends to write at greatest length with an emphasis on narrative.

But there are snapshot poems too. I particularly like Ruth’s ‘The Couple’, not least because I feel I have been half of this situation, and not so long ago. I was hooked by the opening statement: ‘Together they approached the checkout.’ The whole seven-line poem is a neatly clever sequence of parallel verbs: ‘He tossed, she tutted / and placed, he snortled’, and so on.

As a debut for a new press, this publication must have worked beautifully in performance on the opening night, full of entertainment and character, with plenty of contrast in tone and content.

                   Helena Nelson