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City State, like Voice
Recognition (Bloodaxe), is one of a new
generation of poetry anthologies aimed at mapping the field of younger
writers now being published in Britain. Editor Tom Chivers has a very modest
aim in his succinct introduction to this stimulating collection, simply to
introduce his 'subjective snap-shot' of young, London-based poets (27 writers
aged between 16 and 36) to a wider audience. There is no sense of a
'manifesto' and little suggestion of 'schools' of poetry yet influences
abound and a key reference -mentioned in Chivers' introduction - is the work
of the psycho-geographer/poet/novelist Iain Sinclair. Various publishers and
performance venues are also mentioned in passing. As you might expect there
is quite a range of approach indicated by these poems and a high degree of
sophistication is a common feature. To my mind City State is a rather more interesting collection than Voice
Recognition although there is a slight
overlap in terms of writers as the work of Ahren Warner and Jay Bernard
appears in both volumes.
Jay Bernard's work combines an often-visceral trajectory with the
highly-focussed penetration of a conscious observer: 'Twice; I am behind a
lens, behind an eye; again, behind a skull, behind a brain, behind a mind; my
view is ragged.' Yet I suspect this is also a poetry that works well in
performance. Caroline Bird's 'Last Tuesday' has energy, attitude and a
wonderful sense of ongoing rhythm, succinct and celebratory in a vaguely
dystopian way. Ben Borek's mainly-14-liners are linked by reference
(Camberwell Green, Wall Street, Pan) and he delights in playful language
which questions its function and turns cliché on its various heads; while
Siddartha Bose's 'Shoreditch
Serenade' is a mini-epic, a hymn to the city, a cinematic celebration which
sings its complex of darkness and light in a manner which reminds me - in a
less desperate sense - of Ken Smith's masterpiece Fox Running:
He
sins-
Overhead, sky
forms a light-wedge.
Construction
cranes in the distance
Gleam like flamingos. On Fashion Street, orange sun, sari-
red clouds
Roll towards me in four horsemen. I hear
Thunder lift like elephants. A woman in
veil
Slits towards me, her eyes cry as
knives.
She keels herself, kneel in
chin, summoning
God in trousers.
I am sane in tortured times.
I
dream your salt.
You are gone.
There are other lyric voices here too, in abundance. Tom Chivers'
entertaining 'The Islanders' plays with notions of cyber-reality, with
language which splices techno-speak with mock-epic narratives which are
mildly subversive of colonial exploitation, while also being witty
encapsulations in their own right. His work is elegant and has an impressive
range, something he shares with Swithun Cooper. The latter manages to combine
a rich lyrical tone with an effective nostalgia, which also has a streetwise,
sassy feel, which hints at satire and still appears light and authentic:
quite an achievement. Alex Davies' work here is a sort of updated Swiftian
disgust, filled with language which mixes the archaic with the
bang-up-to-date; energetic, funny and 'critical' in the sense that Barry
MacSweeney's poetry was, fuelled by mad erudition, anger and a celebration of
excess. If Davies' work is slightly more restrained than MacSweeney's and
closer to Iain Sinclair's cooler, more brittle critique, this is not to its
disadvantage:
Peel the rancid Intel sticker from the
horse's hoof
with a sonic screwdriver. The stone on which the city
fails lies
beneath a bank, caged in smog. If Brutus knew the fate of
the heart of
the city, he would have ferried posterity elsewhere.
(from 'In which the Mad Dean climbs the dome of St Paul's')
Inua Ellams is another poet who achieves something new by combining the
traditional techniques of poetry with an interest in popular song, in his
case, rap idioms. His poetry is more celebration than satire, mixing a rich
lyricism with a streetwise energy and the result is sophisticated, effective
and very impressive. I'm not a great fan of hip-hop myself but Ellams' work
shows what can be achieved by cross-fertilisation. I think the historian
Richard Starkey should read this material and if he's unable to find any merit
in it that might speak volumes about a certain kind of blinkered, limited
'high education':
The sky sways
on the safe side of tipsy
and it's all
together an alien time of half
life and
hope, an after-fight of gentle fog
and city smog,
where debris of dew drips
to this
narrative of progress, this city tale;
this story is
my story, this vista my song.
(from
'GuerillaGardenWritingPoem')
Laura Foreman's work is various in its subject matter but has as its 'common
denominator' a sharp focus on the immediate and up-front, more microcosm than
macrocosm, let's say. This works well in the short-line brevity of 'Summer. Ha!' where we get:
'Diagonals from the sky/faintly crosshatched/by wet winners of/gravity v
surface tension/battles at roof corners.' I was charmed by her 'Rollerblading
in theory and practice' and also by 'Dogs of New York' which may well be
simply a poem about dogs. Christopher Horton's poems here are primarily
concerned with housing issues and the relationship between living space,
homelessness and health. There's no underlying sociological analysis here but
'Goldfinger Moves into Balfron Tower', prefaced by a factual quote, seems to
suggest the beginnings of one though it's difficult to determine the tone.
'Tenancy: 2678AM' has a more obviously satirical theme, undermining the
language of bureaucracy with chilling intent: 'Now tell me, when can I
collect the keys?'
'Coco Lachaille' by Wayne Holloway-Smith has a retro-burlesque glamour while
Kirsten Irving's 'In the fantasy of screwing your teacher' maintains an
equally glossy surface and has a 'fairytale' ending: 'Either it doesn't
end,'/or at the door, neither of you/asks what happens now.' Annie
Katchinska's writing has a busy, energetic cosmopolitanism to it - her poems
are romantic and descriptive, full of imagery, restless, affirmative and
kinetic. She reminds me a bit of Rosemary Tonks but I'd have to read more
before I could really establish the validity of such an analogy. Take this
extract, for example, from 'Summer in the City': 'There must be others who
notice/rain-beaten café tables and secluded spots in parks/where someone is
missing,...'.
I quite liked Amy Key's poetry, particularly 'Dry Stone Walls', with its
listing device and acerbic, curse-like conclusion: 'Go, I think. Snag
yourself on it.' Chris McCabe is one of Britian's best younger poets and it's
good to see his work represented here by five particularly strong pieces. His
poetry is frequently 'unexpected' in that you can't determine what's going to
follow on and I love that quality. His work often has a direct political
element - relatively unusual in this collection - and combines an ongoing
rush of energy with an often oblique disconnection which manages to combine
charm with intelligence:
She accepted
the can. The pram rolled down the tube.
She stood up
in dark music & danced in red silks.
She carefully
fed the child & poured more shiraz.
A vulva of
red lipstick around the neck of the glass.
(from 'Red')
Marianne Munk appears to mix found language with elements of rant and a more
measured conversational tone. Her range of register is wide and she combines
streetwise patter with a flow of apparent 'stream of consciousness' spiel,
which hints at information overload and is often very funny. In a manner
similar to Hannah Silva, Holly Pester chops up her material, playing with
units of language for its 'sound' quality and along the way introducing
elements of wordplay and, perhaps, creative mishearing, to further the
entertainment/confusion. This is poetry I'd like to hear read out but it
works well enough on the page: 'all wet on the bus/a low wedding the bus/he's
not ded and she's allowed/on the bus/Where can we eat in the bus...' Heather
Phillipson brings a new slant to the 'domestic poem' in her attractive
'vignettes' where a mood of boredom seems to fuel a need to translate the
everyday 'trivia' into promising material. There is also some serious
wordplay at work here:
oboe, hobo,
flambeau, mambo, combo, rainbow,
poncho,
rondo, rouleau, tableau, pueblo,
memo, Sumo,
lino, rhino...Should I stop?
(from
'Winter Evening with Nuts')
There appears to be an anti-hierarchical 'levelling out' of language in Nick
Potamitis' poetry. His no-caps justified prose blocks embrace a range of
vocabularies and surreal juxtapositions in a cool and detached manner,
writing the author out of the equation. 'anti-gravity belt projects, or each
man for himself & god against them all' is framed by location - 'a
derelict hotel' - and the repetition of this phrase creates a sort of motif,
which probably leads you up a garden path. There are suggestions of narrative
and even a pared down hint towards nostalgia - 'I went once with my dad to a
barber's shop in haringay. we took turns getting our hair cut.' - yet his
refusal to set a mood by disrupting the text with 'explanation', as in '(bricolage as morphological
innovation)', for example, enhances the material nature of the writing
without him appearing cocky or 'oh-so-clever'. This is work which is clearly
influenced by conceptual art and is not so easy to do. I quite enjoyed
reading it though an entire book in this style would probably require
occasional 'dipping-in'.
Imogen Robertson's work feels cinematic, like the text for a screenplay, no
surprise perhaps as she works as a tv and film director. There's a clipped
precision to this writing, which at times feels hardboiled, at times lyrical,
affirmative and full of zest. She plays with clichés in a manner, which at
times feels mannered, yet also effective, amusing and undermining - I can't
make up my mind. I think this is very skilful writing yet I'm not sure how
much I feel convinced by it and I'm not entirely sure what I mean by that.
Intriguing.
I felt less unsure about Jacob Sam La Rose's work - I really liked it,
especially 'The Difficulty and the Beauty' with its extended fishing metaphor
which worked so well when it really shouldn't have, but perhaps this just
shows my bias. Ashna Sarkar's poetry has a youthful energy which has oodles
of attitude and charm, yet is also politically thoughtful and reflective, a
writer to watch out for in the future; while Jon Stone's mix of comic book
storytelling and high art makes for some intriguing narrative collisions,
amusing, jagged and crisply executed.
Barnaby Tidman's sonic explorations mix different vocabularies to create
unexpected sounds and a background music of science fiction filtered through
William Burroughs feeds these texts:
Pheisar,
climbing gas of lightbulbs
muscling
blank space, the fleshing beep of eternity
denting his
head with building merchants
tones up the
rotting steppes of London
boiling with
immigrated hordes
battled
around French phonics, Russian digits
sleep
machines, zone-dead happenings- ...
('Spread
and Division (Basic Perinatal Matrices'))
At times his work feels clotted and impenetrable but there's an intense
dystopian lyricism at the heart of this poetry, which keeps the pages
turning.
Ahren Warner has a more humorous take on genre-splicing with his mix of
classical allusion and popular culture, colloquial language and public
address:
Girl with
ridiculous earrings why do
you bother
to slap the
boy we all assume is your
boyfriend
and is
lolling over
that bus seat shouting
it's a London thing.
In 'Carolina' he plays with a hard-boiled narrative pastiche style, which is
undermined by an offbeat use of cliché and mismatched description:
That night I
swallowed liquor and a lighter
and found her
like moonlight falling on a bed.
I could have
swore her hair was made of rayon
and when we
kissed she tasted like a loaded gun.
(from
'Carolina')
I liked the idea of James Wilkes' review poems more than the actual poems
and much preferred 'Bike Couriers' and 'Fireworks' where the titles generate
some interesting information presented in an attractive manner:
They sketch a
ghostly commons from incandescent specks. It is our
chemical weather, drifting this way and that,
baroque mixture of
earth and
breath. Even for a private celebration, they are sent up
over the
wall.
(from 'Fireworks')
I can imagine hearing some of Steve Willey's poems set to bizarre music and
intoned by somebody with a voice to rival Beefheart's. A minimal use of
conjunctions or connectives in sections of his writing, allied to traditional
rhythmic and rhyme patterns, fuse with intriguing puns and nonsense to create
satisfying sound poems which are a joy to read - I'd love to hear some of
these read out loud:
Unsought all
import quarantine claw
Queue you
dogs of Venus bawd
If not fjord
love flock name
Nested
penurious teak streams
Tracks stalk
clustered bridges
(from 'Venus & Other Noises')
You don't have to be weird to be weird as I believe Beefheart once said!
I can't really sum up this intriguing collection effectively without adding
paragraphs of sociology and analysis and I don't feel up to that at the
moment. Suffice to say there is enough interesting material in this varied
and eclectic mix to satisfy the jaded palate. It's not a definitive anthology
(which is?) and there is inevitably a lack of certain kinds of contemporary
poetry which I admire and relish but let's not be prescriptive here. Tom
Chivers has done a fine job in bringing this disparate poetry together and I
hope his efforts provoke some discussion on the nature of contemporary
writing. Let's have a heated debate.
© Steve
Spence 2011
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