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📂 Category: Books,Culture,Poetry
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Namanlagh by Tom Bullen (Faber, £12.99)
More than a decade has passed – “long empty days/With the blank page” – since Pauline’s The Fire of Love. His tenth collection was inspired by depression and recovery from it: “If an idea / finds its way / through enemy territory / I will finally start / looking up at the sky.” His lyrics still roam the page, but the linguistic fireworks have been replaced by clear, unadorned, more poignant language. This also gives his thoughts on recent shifts in the history and politics of Northern Ireland greater impact. But it is in its most private moments that the book truly shines: “Heed my rhythms then and live only now. / Never care about tomorrow. / Only pick, today, the full roses of life.”
Foretokens by Sarah Howe (Chatto & Windus, £12.99)
Ten years after winning the TS Eliot Award with her debut Loop of Jade, Howe’s second collection is a reaffirmation of the keen intelligence, probing and ability to incorporate the detail that underpins her poetry. Tackling the biggest themes – genetics, the relativity of time, becoming a mother – as well as revisiting her mother’s forbidden history in Hong Kong, there is now an anger in the range of Howe’s tones, lending a pleasing poignancy to her investigations: “Child of a hoarder / I am not immune / To this obsession, this distress / This inherited dream / of an archive / of nothing being perfect / that can ever hurt again.” Foretokens are a very impressive comeback.
Maryville by Joel Taylor (Bloomsbury, £14.99)
Taylor’s latest book takes the four gay characters we meet in TS Eliot’s award-winning C+NTO and Other Poems and expands it to include a comprehensive 50-year history of lesbian culture and LGBTQ+ rights. Maryville was filmed as a TV series because, as Taylor says, “I want you to see us.” The device runs while the poems and surrounding screen directions are filled with urgent, unforgettable language: “Inside / Women left their breasts at home / And brought up someone else’s teeth / Women wear their hair / Like a town wears a riot.” What remains is the tenderness Taylor has for her heroes. She knows that liberation never comes without a cost.
Hekate by Nikita Gale (Simon & Schuster, £18.99)
The first novel in a trilogy, the latest verse novel of a generation, is a retelling of the life of Hekate, the Greek goddess of plants, magic, and more. We follow her from her youth, as she discovers why she came to the underworld, and what her divine powers are. Making use of fast-flowing prose poems and poems, it is a propulsive read, although the needs of exposition sometimes distort the poetry into flatness. However, Gil is adept enough to slow down events and allow moments of insight to emerge. In Sonship, Hecate pauses and reflects: “The shifting sands of time have taken my father from my features. Is this what aging is all about? Leaving behind the things you once knew and loved to become something entirely new?”
The Goat’s Song by Phoebe Gianesi, translated by Brian Snedden (Fitzcarraldo, £14.99)
Also grappling with the Greek gods and what their mythology might mean today is Phoebe Gianesi. Goatsong is a collection of three recent books, all united by a rigorous intellectual style, as befits a professor of architecture. However, the emphasis is on the material underpinnings of the poem: “I open my mouth to speak / But my teeth grind / You are a shell / A hidden word.” Giannese’s work does not give up its magic easily, but it is worth continuing. Its strangeness and mystery brought me to mind of Auden’s The Orators. In her own way, Guatsong says something important: “I say take me / In your embrace / In your violence / And gently / Let me go.”
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