In the session, ‘Verse Novels’, William Letford remarks on how conversations with his sister inspired his yet untitled work-in-progress book about a working-class family using a forest garden to survive in a dystopian future. (Letford’s sister had raised questions about the point of poetry in a post-apocalyptic world). Letford read a blackly hilarious scene of a naked grandmother on fire written in prose; he follows this with a poem discussing the traumatic aftermath. This structure repeats, though that might change in the final release. Letford’s writing comes across powerfully, and with poetic flair. The world he constructs is of Scottish ruggedness, anti-capitalism and a struggle to survive. “Turning everything that was thrown at us into hope.” His writing is thoughtful, taking in childhood in a dystopian world and also considering deeply the points of view of his characters. Despite the dark subject matter, there is sardonic and scatological humour throughout, even homemade toilets and barmy Uncles! His reading ends with a mourning for lost knowledge: “Where are the hard drives now?”
Sarah Corbett joined Letford in the same session with her 2015 verse novel, And She Was. Corbett reads from the poem ‘E Major’, from the opening section of her book, ‘Nocturne in Three Movements’. She begins with a list of “and she was____” alternating with “and he was____”, starting with short phrase then moving onto longer sentences. The longer descriptions change, never settling on a single image, shapeshifting in the reader’s head. Corbett then goes on to tell a story of an amnesiac whose every experience is a sensory shock. Corbett’s writing shows immaculate attention to detail; sentences are long and flowing, like a beautiful stream. Her rhymes are subtle, almost sneaky. She constructs a layered noirish world, with a multitude of darknesses. “If this is a dream, anything can happen.”
After lunch came the Poetic Café, a Cabaret Style performance by Georgi Gill from her collection, Limbo, and Keith Hutson from Baldwin’s Catholic Geese. Gill makes a powerful introduction, talking of the hidden places in Berlin during the Nazi regime and in particular an appropriately named club named Limbo that is filled with lost souls. “Here, everything is hidden, but everything is seen.” She constructs a world of contradictions. Even the MC welcomes both Nazis and Jews with a introduction that’s dripping with sarcasm; his intro is witty in its rhymes. The characters in Gill’s poems are outcasts; one such is the club’s intersex manager who couldn’t stay in the suburbs and whose encounters with a Nazi spy are incredibly tense. The contrast of the horrors and fear in Nazi Germany with the chaotic escapism of the club is stark and palpable. Her reading ends atmospherically with a train evoking darkness on the horizon.
Hutson’s collection, Baldwin’s Catholic Geese is a collection about strange performers from Music Hall history to today. The first poem centres Georgie Doonan, who kicked his own bum in tune to a drumbeat, transfixing guffawing audiences but baffling outraged critics. There is a delightful old-fashioned humour in his descriptions. The next poem he reads concerns Professor Cheer, the man with the xylophone skull. These poems have a childlike wonder and very funny rhymes. “Concussion! Mild first, getting worse.” Hutson’s poems come thick and fast, mostly sonnets as he notes. Appropriate for a cabaret, Hutson brings showmanship to his reading. There’s a dark mean edge to the poems, but also an affectionate one. This collection is a joyful celebration of weirdos, hucksters and failures
In the session, Women Reworking History, we are asked to consider “Who gets to tell stories?” Victoria Kenneflick reads from her TS Eliot prize shortlisted, Eat or We Both Starve. The first poem she reads, ‘Learning to eat my mother where my mother is the teacher’, is a visceral description of a daughter eating her own mother. The metaphor, made apparent when the daughter discusses the eating of the brain, concerns how a child absorbs elements of their parent. The next poem she reads is about memories of choking on boiled sweets, with the narrator longing for her mother to shove sweets down her throat, evoking a desire for a closer relationship with her mother in an incredibly disturbing way. Her hunger strikes poems tie in with the session’s theme of reworking history. The images are striking; one poem angrily describes the bodily horrors of the Irish Famine, “baby skulls curved like little moons”.
J.R Carpenter reads from An Ocean of Static. ‘Once upon a tide’ is a very evocative piece on the environment. Like an old sailor’s ghost story, it’s also a wordy piece. One passage discusses ringing of bells and the pauses in-between, with each ring savoured. The repetition is almost hypnotic, but also terrifying, like the repetition of tempestuous waves, “wild waters in this roar”. This poem is a remix of The Tempest, exploring the idea of how and what the weather signifies for us.
Judith Wilson’s Fleet is a fragment of a true story of two children that disappeared, and the mother who is punished for their vanishing. It’s a haunting tale, and Wilson’s poetics does it justice. The poem is intricately detailed and this attention to detail is a defining factor in Wilson’s writing. She talks about the contradiction of wanting to write the children as “present absences”. The esoteric subject matter (telescopes, old photographs, cage-making) is given heft by Wilson’s descriptions. Wilson’s wonderful comment is something that I would like to finish off with: “I think poems can be both eye-pieces and collective lenses sometimes.”
by Sam Kidd, on behalf of Dundee University Review of the Arts (DURA)
