{"id":12496,"date":"2024-10-11T16:46:58","date_gmt":"2024-10-11T15:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12496"},"modified":"2024-10-11T16:46:58","modified_gmt":"2024-10-11T15:46:58","slug":"a-c-bevan-poundlandia-reviewed-by-andrew-mcculloch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=12496","title":{"rendered":"A.C. Bevan | Poundlandia | Reviewed by Andrew McCulloch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>\u2018Selling England by the Pound\u2019: A.C. Bevan finds a way to halt the slide<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/poundlandia.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"377\" height=\"556\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>A.C. Bevan | Poundlandia|<\/strong><strong> Mica Press: \u00a310<br \/><\/strong><strong>Reviewed by Andrew McCulloch\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A.C. Bevan has found the perfect title for his well-plotted and immensely readable first collection &#8211; a critical, compassionate look at a cut-price world of unconvincing simulations and cheap substitutes, epic only in how far it has fallen. One of its voices is that of the provincial \u2018little Englander\u2019 looking for refuge in a more knowable past \u2013 \u2018some statute acre of an English field\/that is for ever Poundland\u2019 &#8211; although the deeper malaise is late capitalism and its cultural consequences. But it is also a protest about the fact that language has become as worthless as everything else. Part of Bevan\u2019s purpose, here, is to find a register that will restore meaning and value to a world from which they seem in danger of disappearing.<\/p>\n<p>In \u2018Lego Land\u2019, for example, real places shrink to a table-top layout where objects dissolve into their own plastic shadows. The country has become a playpen, its inhabitants infantilised, pushed around \u2018the isles of <em>Toys \u2019R\u2019 Us<\/em>\u2019. People live in \u2018Duplo starter duplexes\u2019, visit a \u2018Pleistocene model of Stonehenge\u2019 and spend money generated by \u2018pop-up &amp; startup\u2019 (\u2018Anti-Monopoly\u2019). The past only dramatizes the sickness of the present. \u2018Bill of Mortality\u2019 presents the pathology of our own times in the language of the eighteenth century and reveals disturbing new threats: \u2018Drown\u2019d in the Kenti\u0283h Channel . . . Found \u0283tabbed in the Wrong Po\u0283tcode . . . Trold on \u0283ocial Media\u2019. In \u2018Saturnian\u2019, the litter of orbiting space-junk on which we rely for GPS and satellite TV is evoked in a verbal pile-up that throws the title\u2019s other meaning \u2013 the Golden Age of the god Saturn &#8211; into darkly ironic relief. Here, heaven is being able to \u2018watch your free-to-air TV, or geoparse\/your personal coordinates as you navigate your car\/round the loop roads &amp; orbitals\u2019. The gravitational pull of the poem\u2019s 14 lines manages to stop things falling apart completely: the centre holds, if only just. Elsewhere language appears less safe: \u2018The AI Romantics no longer die young. In\/fact, with their cognitive neural networks\/context-free seed phrases &amp; source texts\/gradient descents of linear regression. . . they don\u2019t die at all\u2019 (\u2018The Practice of Writing\u2019). Beneath the jokiness of \u2018a tweet to a nightingale\u2019 lies a serious concern that bot, app and predictive text might destroy the ability \u2013 even the will \u2013 to wrestle with words until they actually mean something.<\/p>\n<p>The second section, \u2018Terra Sancta\u2019, is a dialogue between a latter-day Galahad and two \u2018hooded brothers\u2019. The quaint Englishness of one and the truculent nationalism of the others are equally self-parodic \u2013 a cardboard Quixote in search of lost Albion and a couple of \u2018<em>Sun &amp; Mail<\/em>\u2019 readers prophesying war \u2013 but the antagonisms they illustrate are real enough and in the final section &#8211; \u2018Sub Urbia Rediviva\u2019 (\u2018Under the Recycled City\u2019) &#8211; Bevan looks for what common ground he can between them and us, then and now: \u2018Neolithic\u2019 conflates modern brutalist architecture and ancient stone circles \u2013 \u2018A lithic machine\/for living in\u2019 \u2013 while \u2018The Foragers\u2019 maps modern urban poverty onto \u2018A preagricultural society\/<em>connecting with its food source<\/em>\/in the wastes behind the Co-Op\u2019. Connections emerge, too, between poems: \u2018Eclogue the Last\u2019, a seventeenth century shepherd\u2019s request for a woollen shroud, anticipates the final poem, \u2018Allotment\u2019, where the speaker asks to be allowed to \u2018run to seed . . . in the midst of must &amp; matter, mould\/&amp; litter.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>By the end of this collection, Bevan has earned a right to the language of Domesday \u2013 \u2018As Fyftyeth Moste Elygyble\/Bachelore I holde this\/demesne as he afore me\u2019 \u2013 and the Exeter Riddle Book \u2013 \u2018<em>we are risen from creation\/myth &amp; mystery religion\/\/in weather lore &amp; cycle of\/the grain we are born again\u2019.<\/em> Smart connectivity is clearly no more than an instrument of capital and control. The algorithm \u2018crashes your financial systems\/hacks your referendums\u2019. The only way to get safely beyond the virtual, it seems, is to put down roots into real earth.<\/p>\n<p><em>Reviewed by Andrew McCulloch<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Selling England by the Pound\u2019: A.C. Bevan finds a way to halt the slide A.C. Bevan | Poundlandia| Mica Press: \u00a310Reviewed by Andrew McCulloch\u00a0 A.C. Bevan has found the perfect title for his well-plotted and immensely readable first collection &#8211; a critical, compassionate look at a cut-price world of unconvincing simulations and cheap substitutes, epic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A.C. 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