{"id":5125,"date":"2015-11-08T21:17:55","date_gmt":"2015-11-08T20:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=5125"},"modified":"2016-01-23T14:33:44","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T13:33:44","slug":"tariq-latif-smithereens-arc-publications-6-00-reviewed-by-ian-pople","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=5125","title":{"rendered":"Tariq Latif, <em>Smithereens<\/em> (Arc Publications) \u00a36.00"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tariq Latif\u2019s three previous Arc volumes have shown considerable dexterity over a variety of subject matters.\u00a0 The first of these is, clearly, that of what it means to be an Asian writer, writing in English in contemporary Britain.\u00a0 His last book, <i>The Punjabi Weddings<\/i>, noted some of the aftermath of the Rushdie affair.\u00a0 In the poem \u2018Variations in History\u2019, Latif contrasted, with real tact and delicacy, the Muslim book-burning which took place in Manchester, with the reactions of a Jewish onlooker.\u00a0 And the title poem riffed brilliantly off Larkin\u2019s \u2018Whitsun Weddings\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>This lovely new collection also deals with that subject matter.\u00a0 And Latif often uses food as a metaphor for describing and discussing how culture manifests itself.\u00a0 In <i>Smithereens, <\/i>the poem \u2018College Road\u2019 describes beautifully a family gathering in which the cooking appears to be undertaken by father and siblings.\u00a0 At the same time, one of the brothers, Amrish, is putting up a telescope to look at Saturn.\u00a0 The end of the poem brilliantly captures that both that trope and cooking, and uses a most adroit \u2018surprise ending\u2019 to indicate how \u2018family\u2019 might be constituted, \u2018Rotis bend and fold like space\u2026\/ and though Amrish has not seen\/ his father\u2019s living face\/ for a good few years, now sometimes in the stars\u2019\/ dreamy light, he hears his haunting voice,\/ still calling him in for supper.\u2019<\/p>\n<p><i>Smithereens <\/i>also contains some beautiful poems about the Scottish landscape. And the best of these offer moments of considerable delicacy, \u2018the only prints\/\/ in the snow \/\/ are mine\/\/ the stag\u2019s and\/\/ his light-footed doe\u2019s.\u2019 \u2018Argyll Symphonia\u2019.\u00a0 Elsewhere, these portraits of the landscape are yoked, in the manner of \u2018College Road\u2019 with surprising and poignant contrasts.\u00a0 In \u2018Fractions\u2019, Latif\u2019s background in physics is used to point up the way landscape has its own vibration.\u00a0 That vibration might manifest in sound. But the poem finishes with something larger and more transcendent, \u2018above my head the slight\/ pressure of other presences\/ living concurrently\/ on the finer frequencies of light.\u2019<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nIan Pople<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tariq Latif\u2019s three previous Arc volumes have shown considerable dexterity over a variety of subject matters.\u00a0 The first of these is, clearly, that of what it means to be an Asian writer, writing in English in contemporary Britain.\u00a0 His last book, The Punjabi Weddings, noted some of the aftermath of the Rushdie affair.\u00a0 In the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"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 - 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