Reviews

A Review by Beth McDonough

Firth John Glenday Mariscat Press (2020) £6
Where I Was Diana Hendry Mariscat Press (2020) £6
Quiet woman, stay Jane McKie Cinnamon Press (2020) £9.99
The Ages of Water Walter Perrie Grace Note Publications (2020) £11.50
Stone the Crows Dilys Rose Mariscat Press (2020) £6

In this time of restricted travel, the following collections offer both close examinations of home, and take us to distant places and times.

Returning to any home area after considerable absence likely provides its own echo and releases queuing ghosts. Presumably, John Glenday's beautiful meditations on the Firth of Tay would have been entirely different had he lived there uninterruptedly, or had Firth been written on brief visits. Deep places, like that water.

to catch that fish you've been hunting
all your life,

first of all you must
spear your own reflection.
(GREY HERON, nine coastal birds)

Alhough there are Biblical intonations, and classical references, Firth is inherently spiritual, mindful, rather than religious. At the  'least used railway station' he celebrates non-human traffic:

a single skylark

close-by and invisible – listen to him – rehearsing
and rehearsing the abandoned stations of the air.

(at barry links)

Then, in Firth's intermittent prose poems, each entitled 'wild flower' (followed by the plant's name):

look at us for once, just for a moment, down here, but please don't look down on us,

      (bird's foot trefoil)

there's that closely inspected extraordinary ordinary, which Glenday does brilliantly. Every poem is as quirky with wonders as the jar of 'vintage porcelain tap tops from the fore-shore west of the caravan park, washed out from the fifties foundry slag-pile by the tide.'

For those familiar with the area, it's especially precious, but Firth is for all walkers, for everyone with someone who 'lies on the far side of language' (my mother finds grass of parnassus).

In her fascinating memoir, Where I Was, Diana Henry's childhood home's role is potent indeed. Akin to organising a doll's house, the poet lets the

thought
it a good place to grow our three girls despite
the grief that exuded from the walls like damp
(Before Us)

develop its Gothic quality. Henry's abilities as a children's book writer intensify her imagery. Perhaps the book's dark heart is fully revealed in the poignant 'Their Room', but clues thread throughout. Nor should these shadows imply this is solely a woeful tale. The right kind of nostalgia is always around; spying on a big sister meeting boyfriends from 'On the Landing', the 'glossy black magic of Japanese lacquer' of the Singer machine, and the charms of period scents' names.

where under the table, beneath the
damask and linen cloths the paper dolls lead
their riotous lives.
(The Breakfast Room)

So much magic happens in those choppy line breaks, and these undercover activities. A forbidden trip into Mother's sewing cupboard (Her Room) has nightmarish traits which are also Yeats-like in their beauty.

Cleverly, the penultimate poem steps outside the interior's claustrophobia to build a strong metaphor, shedding light on the choices introduced from the first poem onwards. The sequencing is both gripping and moving.

Travelling further, Quiet woman, stay, Jane McKie's ninth collection, is hallmarked by her fascination with collaborative processes. Not only are her ekphrastic poems powerful, but she draws less directly on fellow creatives' output (including the remarkable sequence celebrating Ithell Colquhoun) with sustained intertextuality. She demolishes the barriers built between 'art' and 'science'. As much chemical as alchemical, adept at harnessing myth, nature and science in tightly-made shorter pieces, these are remarkable, and often ultimately subversive poems.

I love a mind that can't be contained.
I try to unravel your skittish thoughts
from the branches of a pine.
(The Snow unfurls in Dancing Figures)

McKie has been called 'surrealist', among other labels. None are quite adequate to describe her examination of the strangely luminous, and the liminally strange:

In the wood a fungus ticks. It has no alternative. It waits
The hoof-falls of a pair of a pair of muntjac won't yet
smoke undergrowth with its powdery shrapnel –  
(The Plant's Chemical Laboratory)

Opening with the potent 'Port Glow', the poet finds 'hot flowers', ' dragonfly wings' and 'rose quartz' in a possible Grangemouth. Nevada, Las Vegas and other artificially-lit places are given the same care as a hospital stay. Consider her poignant study of dementia in 'The Memory Clinic':

how she wants to be noticed,
And listened to.
And left alone.

McKie's subject-matter is wide, her similes marvellous:

Her thirteenth summer will stretch
and flex like a salmon.
('You should see me in a crown')

These poems offer themselves gradually, and are all the better for that.

Established editor, critic and publisher Walter Perrie's latest collection is drawn from six years of work, but spans millenia, enbracing classical and Celtic sources, through Titian, Mary Queen of Scots, and the poet's South Lanarkshire boyhood. Unafraid to tackle some major themes, The Ages of Water is dense with Christian references, considers humanity's destructive relationship with the planet, the origins and development of language, and more. Running throughout these powerful currents, there are several very focused short poems, with a haiku-like quality.

Three crow-crones on a crooked branch
warn against love with black dismay.
Love who you will, defy their shrill
crowcophony.
(Love who you will)

This collection knows considerable certainty, and deals with the heart, soul and great beyond, in ways steeped in great learning and appreciation:

Wherever I go, forever up to my knees
in peat-bog bloody histories.
(Test)

Referencing both the poet's and Dungavel's past, without its present, may prove disquieting for some, but Perrie's sources run deep.

Crows set more scenes, as Dily Rose's titular poem in Stone the Crows opens gloriously:

We really should be more nocturnal. Roosting
at dusk- think what we're missing: mole tartare,
spatchcocked frog, toad hash!

A sequence playing with collective nouns follows – who knew budgies also congregate in murmurations? There's linguistic playfulness here, but be wary; this poet is adept at pulling away the metaphorical carpet. She does this hauntingly in the final lines of the 'Lamentation of Swans'.

Whether referencing Sri Lanka, Greece or Italy, using both Scots and English, these are indelibly Scottish poems. In a gutsy series giving huge character to clothes, from the disintegration of the 'Black Lace Dress' 'never meant to see the light of day[.]' to the 'too much palaver, extravagance' of the 'Red Dress', there's terrific rendering of colour, shape, texture, plus that developing narrative.

The poet has a wicked way with the initially familiar, the 'well-kent face' of phrasing. Note the crafted sharpness of dealing with the 'Catwomen couchant of the Enlightenment' (Twin Sphinxes) and the 'Drop-chinned, splay-kneed, bellies like sandbags'  in the 'bollock-shrinking Baltic'  of old men at leisure (Season Ticket for the Turkish). Recognisable and revealing.

There's great delight here, from a writer often relishing her inner curmudgeon.

A poem is unemployable.
It is just a poem. Take it or leave it. Either way, it couldn't care.
    (The Unemployable Poem)

Finally, I must commend these vivacious independent presses, and their excellent production values. Elegant, affordable books.