Vanguard #2 Poetry Anthology

In May of this year I read at Vanguard Readings, a monthly series (currently at the Peckham Pelican in south London) featuring sometimes poetry, sometimes prose, and sometimes both. These evenings are organised by Richard Skinner (novelist, poet and director of Faber Academy) and they have a friendly, non-hierarchical and varied vibe.

I was then delighted to be included in #2 Poetry Anthology, published by Vanguard Editions and featuring poets who have appeared at Vanguard. I'm in exceptionally good company in this anthology, with poets such as Catherine Ayres, Ian Duhig, Victoria Kennefick, Charles Lauder Jr, Kim Moore, Dan O'Brien, Rebecca Perry, Tara Skurtu, Kelley Swain and Tamar Yoseloff, among many others.

To find out which poem of mine is included you will have to buy the anthology, but I can tell you that it is one of my Sherlock Holmes poems.

Favourite 2015 Collections: Kim Moore, Sean O'Brien, Dan O'Brien

I'm pretty sure I've said before that I'm not much for end-of-the-year lists (I like reading other people's lists, but I'm not that excited about compiling my own.) However, I wanted to give a quick rundown of my three favourite new collections of 2015.

Kim Moore, The Art of Falling (Seren). Kim Moore's poems have both a lightness and a strength to them which is very appealing. They are personal and deeply rooted in her own family and community connections ('My People', 'A Psalm for the Scaffolders') but many of them also have a movingly timeless quality. The centre of this collection is the cycle 'How I Abandoned My Body To His Keeping' which is a spectacular sequence of poems about an abusive relationship. In poems such as 'He Was the Forgotten Thing' and 'On Eyes', the elements of such a relationship are depicted with images that seem to arise from an archetypal place, conveying the physical and emotional pain undergone by the speaker on a very deep level. You can read the poem 'How I Abandoned My Body to His Keeping' here, on Josephine Corcoran's And Other Poems blog/e-zine.

Sean O'Brien, The Beautiful Librarians (Picador). Sean O'Brien's poems live in the company of such great poets as Philip Larkin and WH Auden, but I prefer his wry, loving, sometimes sardonic depictions of British society in poems such as 'Another Country' and 'The Beautiful Librarians'. His poetry has a very strong sense of place but it also breaks the boundaries of place, and his England represents much more than just one country. I was blown away by 'The Lost of England', an epic, reflective, self-deprecating train journey. Sean O'Brien is the kind of poet I don't find often enough in contemporary poetry - really technically assured in a classic way, but also thought-provoking and funny at the same time. You can read the poem 'The Beautiful Librarians' here.

Dan O'Brien, New Life (CB Editions). This collection is a sequel to the 2013 collection War Reporter, and my only caveat is that you should probably read War Reporter first and then New Life - but do read both. New Life carries on Dan O'Brien's unusual collaboration with the war correspondent Paul Watson. This poetry blurs the lines between non-fiction and poetry - it's a dizzying film-reel of the poet's thoughts, the war reporter's thoughts, emails and phone calls, and the nagging sense that the poet and the war reporter are not only two different people, but also aspects of the same person. War Reporter started with the terrible consequences of Paul Watson's photo of the dead American soldier in Mogadishu in 1993, and ricocheted through many other countries and wars. New Life spends time in Syria and the other countries affected by the Arab Spring, but it also explores O'Brien's personal life, Watson's view of the discovery of Franklin's ship Terror in the Canadian Arctic, and many other stories. New Life, like War Reporter, is often graphic and a difficult read, but I found both collections extraordinarily powerful and quite unique in contemporary poetry. New Life is probably my pick for collection of the year. You can read the poem 'The War Reporter Paul Watson and the Room Across the Hall' here, again on And Other Poems.

Kim Moore's 'The Rabbit and the Moon': Revisiting Watership Down Yet Again

A couple of weeks ago, Inpress sponsored a Poetry Garden at London's Southbank, to celebrate their 10th anniversary. This included readings from various of their poets, but I totally failed to get out of bed in time (ie. I got up really, really, really late) and missed the readings. It was still pleasant to drop by, though, and see the tables of poetry books and the Poetry Bouquets, featuring real flowers adorned with quotations from Rilke (appropriately) and others.

I ended up buying Kim Moore's pamphlet If We Could Speak Like Wolves. It was quite prominently displayed as she'd been reading earlier, but the title drew my eye, and when I had a peek inside I realised that I was likely to enjoy it. I later got in touch with Moore and asked if I could reproduce one of the poems on my blog, which she kindly gave me permission to do.

Moore is from Barrow-in-Furness in Lancashire, and the imagery of many of the poems is distinctly northern. When I read 'Sometimes You Think of Bowness', I remembered my visit to Windermere and Bowness in the Lake District, some years ago. Most of that weekend the weather was good, and I was quite taken with the Lake District's beauty; a bit like north Wales, but softer. It rained when we went to Windermere and Bowness and a picture of that afternoon came back to me through these lines:


[...] but mostly you think of the people, drawn to water,

and how it looks in the rain, as if the very shops
are made of water, of ducking into a doorway
and carrying the smell of rain inside.


The title poem, 'If We Could Speak Like Wolves', has the muscular power of the creatures it describes:


[...] if a mistake could be followed
by instant retribution and end with you
rolling over to expose the stubble and grace
of your throat [...]


It builds and builds to the payoff at the end; this is not just a stunning portrait of wild animals, but a picture of a relationship "more simple than marriage." The poem works as a kind of slanted nature poem, but the final lines make the reader see it all in a new light.

I loved 'The Wolf' as well, which populates the reader's mind with dark, archetypal images from what seems to be a particularly sinister lost fairytale. 'The Ferryman' goes back to the figure of Charon, who has been much written about, but I found the fusion of modern and mythological imagery especially strong; the dead "sit on chair-shaped rocks,/as if they can still feel the shunt/of the tube", and some carry mobile phones. Again, the ending skilfully calls everything which has led up into it into question, and makes the revisiting of this ancient theme more than worthwhile.

Inevitably, I really loved 'The Rabbit and the Moon'. Kim Moore said she was very pleased I had picked up on the fact that the imagery was drawn from Watership Down; my old obsession, how could I not spot it immediately? She'd been drawn to the cartoon especially, as a child, as I was to the book. This poem weaves in the book's themes beautifully, almost as a travelogue with perspective shifting from humans to animals.

(The painting featured on this entry is, of course, Dürer's famous image. I know that it is actually a hare, but I had it in my mind to go along with this post and it wouldn't go away.)

You can purchase the pamphlet on this link, from The Poetry Business: http://www.poetrybusiness.co.uk/shop/792/583/If-We-Could-Speak-Like-Wolves-Kim-Moore



THE RABBIT AND THE MOON (Kim Moore)


Let me tell you the story of a high, lonely place
where sight and sound carry with the pylon
that gives its shadow to the hill, and the farm
many fields away, and the long straight road.

A bird calls kehaar, kehaar to the moon
and trains are falling, falling into the night.
The black rabbit waits outside the caravan
and come morning, the booted feet of gulls

will be telling us to leave, but if we stay,
the dogs will lie like rugs at our feet.
Somewhere, there are other rabbits, and a river
to sail away on. Somewhere, there's a boat.


Poem © Kim Moore, 2012. Used by permission.