{"id":8224,"date":"2017-07-22T11:59:11","date_gmt":"2017-07-22T10:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8224"},"modified":"2017-07-22T12:03:25","modified_gmt":"2017-07-22T11:03:25","slug":"three-pamphlets-reviewed-by-ian-pople","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8224","title":{"rendered":"Three pamphlets, reviewed by Ian Pople"},"content":{"rendered":"
Julie Mellor, Out of the Weather<\/em> (Smith Doorstep, \u00a35.00); Nigel Pantling, Kingdom Power Glory<\/em> (Smith Doorstop, \u00a39.95); Nicki Heinen, Itch<\/em> (Eyewear Lorgnette Series, \u00a36.00).<\/h5>\n

In Julie Mellor\u2019s poem \u2018Propolis\u2019, she writes \u2018In truth, it\u2019s not propolis I\u2019m talking about,\/ but those unwanted spaces where words land and rest\u2019. There\u2019s an interesting mixing of metaphor here. Previously, Mellor has written about \u2018the bees, busy with their work of sealing the gaps,\u2019 and it is perhaps the bees that the words resemble. But what Mellor actually seems to be doing is playing poetry at its own game, using the ability of the poem to slip and slide around meaning, seemingly under the writer\u2019s control, but not. Therefore propolis with its known healing properties is aligned with work of the bees and the work of words, each of these entities shape-shifting slightly to become both more alike and more unlike each other. One could take this too far, of course, and allow the poet\u2019s shape-shifting to become slip-shod. But in Mellor\u2019s case, there\u2019s a lovely deftness in her writing, which is often pulled into hard-hitting perspectives; as in the image which occurs later in the poem, \u2018What I\u2019m really saying is, here is my heart,\/ raw as lamb\u2019s liver, leaking on a white plate.\u2019 What the narrator of the poem is asking for is healing and comfort, but the world isn\u2019t providing it.<\/p>\n

And Mellor is particularly good at this movement from the outer to the inner; resulting in an adroit and empathetic engagement with \u2018the casual undressings of the heart\u2019. Because Mellor knows that these undressings are never really \u2018casual\u2019. As she writes in \u2018Architecture\u2019, \u2018A torch will give you all the facts,\/ how the curls in my hair crumble to dust\/\/ and love has become a word so underused\/ it settles on my chest like the weight of books.\u2019 So there is a movement from the bland and disingenuous \u2018all the facts\u2019 through to the notion of love settling on the chest. Mellor sees that the torch reveals one thing, but that the heart contains another; a well-worn trope, perhaps, but Mellor\u2019s engagement with that trope results in achieved and poignant poetry.<\/p>\n

Nicki Heinen\u2019s Itch<\/em> is a first volume and she will have to forgive me for saying that it feels<\/strong> like a first volume, too. It is a first volume in that, though it is a short pamphlet of some twenty poems, each of the poems is very different. And the poems are different in that way that a first volume is often various, as different strategies, different subjects are tackled and worked through, such that sometimes the voice will vary from poem to poem. This is not to suggest that Heinen has<\/strong> no voice. In fact, the voice is often very strong and clearly felt. There is often a lapidary, incised feel to many of these poems. The best of these poems circle round their subject matter, carving, if you like, the space around the central conceit without quite revealing what that thing might be. \u2018The Abandoned\u2019, for example, begins, \u2018I imagine you in a glass box,\/ which I have kept secret and hidden.\/ It is rectangular and sits in the living room like a blood stain.\u2019 The \u2018you\u2019 here remains concealed throughout the poem, and Heinen is skilled enough to both hold that \u2018you\u2019 at one remove, but also to maintain interest in it.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere the subject matter is more conventional, as in \u2018Lebowski\u2019, a poem about the narrator\u2019s cat. Clearly, there are cat poems and cat poems, and not all of them end up on the West End stage. Heinen\u2019s cat poem is in four prose sections, each a small love letter to the animal, and so far so normal, but, here again, Heinen\u2019s nicely observed details etch the animal\u2019s individuality into the reader, finishing with \u2018His tail is sometimes curled under his body for safekeeping, like a pearl earring in a trinket box.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Nigel Pantling\u2019s Kingdom Power Glory<\/em> is a first volume from a much older writer. And it is a book with a consistent theme: the absurdity and inanity of much that passes for governance in this country. Pantling, an ex-soldier, and ex ministerial private secretary, writes with a light, but fastidious, touch about some of the inner workings of government, in a way which is fascinating and deft. In the early section of the book, Pantling writes with considerable sympathy about the ways in which soldiers go to war. \u2018Church Parade\u2019 describes the exhortations of the brigade chaplain on the night before B Troop, the day before they fly to Belfast. The poem finishes with the couplet, \u2018As my soldiers fall out to earthy pleasures, I ask the Chaplain\/ by which side of the religious divide God prefers us to be shot.\u2019 In contrast to Heinen\u2019s lapidary style, Pantling\u2019s is direct and unadorned. His is a gift for satire and that gift contains a considerable way with timing and the kind of sardonic humour those two lines contain.<\/p>\n

On the opposite page to \u2018Church Parade\u2019 is \u2018In the Interrogation Centre\u2019 in which he walks in an interrogation beating of \u2018a boy in jeans and Wolfe Tone T shirt\u2019. The middle verse notes, \u2018My sergeant, arm still raised,\/ turns his head. His eyes say\/ \u201cMind your own fucking business, Sir.\/ I know these people better than you.\u201d The poem ends \u2018Sweat glitters on our faces. The only noise, our breathing.\u2019 What\u2019s interesting in these, to this outsider anyway, is the use of \u2018my<\/strong> soldiers\u2019 and \u2018my<\/strong> sergeant\u2019. This use of the first person has the wonderful effect of not only placing the poem squarely in the consciousness of the poet, Pantling, but of drawing the reader into a kind of complicity. These poems are exceptionally emotionally skilled.<\/p>\n

But not all these fine poems are quite so \u2018serious\u2019 in the later sections of the book, Pantling\u2019s fine skill as a satirist comes to the fore. One such is \u2018Head-hunting\u2019 in which a head-hunter is head-hunted by a \u2018head-hunter\u2019s head-hunter\u2019, \u2018who wants to recruit an experienced head-hunter\u2019. The convolutions of this relationship are teased in both senses in the rest of the poem to reach a neatly laugh-out-loud conclusion. Pantling\u2019s fine book from Smith Doorstop is yet another of those books which is likely to slip rather unnoticed beneath the average poetry buyer\u2019s gaze. That is a great pity, because as a kind of \u2018state-of-the-nation\u2019 volume it is exemplary. And even that undersells Pantling\u2019s rich, adroit, poetic skills. <\/p>\n

Ian Pople<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Julie Mellor, Out of the Weather (Smith Doorstep, \u00a35.00); Nigel Pantling, Kingdom Power Glory (Smith Doorstop, \u00a39.95); Nicki Heinen, Itch (Eyewear Lorgnette Series, \u00a36.00). In Julie Mellor\u2019s poem \u2018Propolis\u2019, she writes \u2018In truth, it\u2019s not propolis I\u2019m talking about,\/ but those unwanted spaces where words land and rest\u2019. There\u2019s an interesting mixing of metaphor here. […]<\/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":"\nThree pamphlets, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8224\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Three pamphlets, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Julie Mellor, Out of the Weather (Smith Doorstep, \u00a35.00); Nigel Pantling, Kingdom Power Glory (Smith Doorstop, \u00a39.95); Nicki Heinen, Itch (Eyewear Lorgnette Series, \u00a36.00). 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