{"id":8404,"date":"2017-08-30T17:55:42","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T16:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8404"},"modified":"2017-08-30T17:55:55","modified_gmt":"2017-08-30T16:55:55","slug":"ian-parks-citizens-reviewed-by-ian-pople","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8404","title":{"rendered":"Ian Parks, Citizens<\/em>, reviewed by Ian Pople"},"content":{"rendered":"
Ian Parks, Citizens<\/em> (Smokestack Books, \u00a37.99).<\/h5>\n

Over the years, Ian Parks has produced about a dozen books and pamphlets, from a variety of publishers. His shtick seems to be to have a new book out with a new publisher. But that variety of publisher never seems to diminish or dilute the quality of Parks\u2019 writing, which is, surely, amongst the finest poetry being currently produced in these islands. This short review is of Parks\u2019 latest book, Citizens<\/em>, but it is also a meditation on why Parks\u2019 writing is not more lauded; although Rory Waterman, no less, has presented on Parks poetry in conferences. <\/p>\n

A lot like the late T.F. Griffin, Parks is an outlier of British poetry whose writing was spotted and praised early by figures whose judgement we would do well attend to. With Griffin, it was Philip Larkin who provided the encomium; with Parks, it is Donald Davie, who commented that Park\u2019s voice was \u2018spare, lyrical, memorable and intense\u2019, and remarked on \u2018the sheer force of his poetic identity.\u2019 Over the years, that voice has become more particularised; an Ian Parks poem is instantly recognisable. But the lyricism, which has characterised his writing from those early days, has remained as intense, as spare and as memorable as ever. <\/p>\n

If the political is a major dynamic in a book called \u2018Citizens\u2019, Parks imbues that dynamic with an adroit intensity, which moves the poetry far away from agitprop, or the poetry slam. Parks, who wrote his PhD on Chartism, and whose father was a miner, often embeds the political in lives lived in the North, particularly around the old Yorkshire coalfield. But it is the lives which matter and the message is the life. In the opening and title poem, \u2018Citizens\u2019, \u2018Free agents\u2019 are out \u2018our used car swerving through the new estates\u2019. But \u2018free\u2019 as they may be, \u2018We travelled incognito and we didn\u2019t cast a vote\u2019. And in the final verse, \u2018The cities had no feature and the landscape had no soul.\/ Girls waved from the corner as we hit the open road,\/ our every exit covered by a camera on a pole.\u2019 <\/p>\n

This opening poem sets the tone in a number of important ways. Firstly, Parks shows the citizens as actually deracinated, not really citizens at all; they feel the need to travel incognito and they do not use their vote. When they travel, they are not really \u2018free agents\u2019 either, because they are watched not only by CCTV cameras, but also by these strange and slightly sinister girls who wave at them. But Parks poetic skill is also to use the word \u2018agents\u2019 to deadly effect here; the pun sets up the resonance of the clandestine that runs throughout the poem. <\/p>\n

The other aspect of tone which is evidenced here is the sense that, with Parks, the line is the cadence. Parks\u2019 lines tend to end with what used to be known as a \u2018masculine\u2019 stress, i.e. the lines end with a stressed syllable. Often that stressed syllable is contained within a lexical monosyllable. In \u2018Citizens\u2019 the line-final words are: \u2018way\u2019, \u2018estates\u2019, \u2018rape\u2019, \u2018sky\u2019, \u2018vote\u2019, \u2018beach\u2019, \u2018fade\u2019, \u2018stars\u2019, \u2018blue\u2019, \u2018soul\u2019, \u2018road\u2019 and \u2018pole\u2019. But the line endings never feel clunky or end-stopped. In part that is because the line endings contain subtle assonances and half-rhymes; but also, Parks\u2019 consummate skill is to sway the music along the line both towards and away from those line endings. These lines cry out to be read aloud. <\/p>\n

In the centre of Citizens<\/em>, is a lovely, autobiographical prose piece \u2018Ella\u2019. In its own way, it is as poignant and careful as Robert Lowell\u2019s \u201991 Revere Street\u2019, which punctuates Lowell\u2019s collection Life Studies<\/em>. Ian Parks\u2019 \u2018Ella\u2019 recounts his and his father\u2019s love of jazz, particularly the singing of Ella Fitzgerald. Parks\u2019 father is a miner, who is also an amateur singer in pubs and clubs, but, obviously, a very good singer, who\u2019d had ambitions to become professional \u2018had he not got married, and had me\u2019. Parks father \u2018didn\u2019t sing a song. He embraced it\u2019. When Parks\u2019 father has some spare money, he takes Ian with him to see Ella Fitzgerald sing at what is clearly, Ronnie Scott\u2019s old club in Frith Street. They both feel conspicuously out of place \u2018among the black polo necks, the tweed jacket, and goatees.\u2019 And, then, almost making things worse it seems, when Ella comes on stage, she senses the young Ian\u2019s attention and starts singing Billie Holliday\u2019s \u2018The Man I love\u2019 directly towards him. This is a wonderful piece of writing; crisp, piercing, beautifully turned. Much like everything else in this lovely new book. <\/p>\n

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

Ian Parks, Citizens (Smokestack Books, \u00a37.99). Over the years, Ian Parks has produced about a dozen books and pamphlets, from a variety of publishers. His shtick seems to be to have a new book out with a new publisher. But that variety of publisher never seems to diminish or dilute the quality of Parks\u2019 writing, […]<\/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":"\nIan Parks, Citizens, 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=8404\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ian Parks, Citizens, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ian Parks, Citizens (Smokestack Books, \u00a37.99). 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