{"id":9308,"date":"2018-05-13T21:58:24","date_gmt":"2018-05-13T20:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9308"},"modified":"2018-05-13T21:59:08","modified_gmt":"2018-05-13T20:59:08","slug":"three-pamphlets-ling-di-long-finishing-lines-and-the-museum-of-truth-reviewed-by-ian-pople","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9308","title":{"rendered":"Three Pamphlets: Ling di Long, Finishing Lines, <\/em>and The Museum of Truth<\/em>, reviewed by Ian Pople"},"content":{"rendered":"

Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, Ling di Long<\/em>, Rack Press \u00a35; Ian Harrow, Finishing Lines<\/em>, Rack Press \u00a35; Nicholas Murray, The Museum of Truth<\/em>, Melos \u00a35<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch has been cited as a successor to the \u2018narrative\u2019 school of British poetry; a school which perhaps reached its apogee in the writing of James Fenton and Andrew Motion in the seventies and eighties. Of those two poets, Wynne-Rhydderch is perhaps nearer to Motion; Fenton\u2019s riddling, ludic, slightly bricolage writing is not Wynne-Rhydderch\u2019s style. Andrew Motion\u2019s earlier work often presented fictional narrators, and Wynne-Rhydderch\u2019s writing has also been described as \u2018uncanny ventriloquism\u2019; not least in her last book, Banjo<\/em>, which explored the lives of the Scott expedition to the South Pole in 1912. <\/p>\n

The title poem of Wynne-Rhydderch\u2019s Rack Press pamphlet, Ling di long<\/em>, presents a daughter who, \u2018For two-and-six she\u2019d scrape barnacles from\/ every vessel that docked, the closest she got\/ to Boston, lowered in a rope seat, and in this act\/ of dangling kept, part of the way, with him.\u2019 The \u2018him\u2019 here being \u2018my father [who] missed his step\/ on the gangplank in Boston harbour\/ in December \u201928, fell sixteen feet\/\/ down the corridor between ship\/ and shore.\u2019 Such a poem and such writing suggest some of Wynne-Rhydderch\u2019s method. The \u2018subjects\u2019 of these poems are either in extremis themselves or seem to react to such situations. There is a quiet, unadorned quality to much of the writing, the effect of which is to heighten the more poignant, resonant moments. In the title poem, it is the parasol, which is delivered to the daughter\u2019s mother with the father\u2019s effects, \u2018where she opened\/\/ its wings to see one painted bird sing\/ something she could not hear, to another.\u2019 This neat, warm pamphlet is threaded with these telling, evocative images.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ian Harrow\u2019s empathies are triangulated through the pronouns, \u2018I\u2019, \u2018you\u2019 and \u2018we\u2019; and most poems in this achieved collection move in that way. There are moments of what might be seen as clear autobiography, as in \u2018Rothbury Terrace\u2019, \u2018Every year the bonfires blistered\/ stunted back-lane doors;\/ we set the jumping jacks\/ on the fearful and the old.\u2019 As we can see here, Harrow\u2019s style is slightly denser and adorned than Wynne-Rhydderch\u2019s. Harrow\u2019s line is never over-written, but he isn\u2019t afraid of reaching for the adjective or the slightly more unusual verb. <\/p>\n

In Finishing Lines<\/em>, the poems are often coloured by a measure of regret, of things not put right, or things unlikely to be completed. \u2018Rothbury Terrace\u2019s final verse begins, \u2018Should we play the politician and apologise?\u2019, and, of course, Harrow is only too aware that politicians actually don\u2019t often apologise. So the poem ends with a moment of both uplift and nostalgia, the people the politicians serve \u2018smiling into the sun\/ on days when it was possible\/ to be stylish, poor and happy -\/ all at the same time.\u2019 The poem, \u2018Against Completion\u2019, ends, \u2018The House that is\/ as you have always intended\/ is the house you are about to leave.\u2019 But this is all sadness ameliorated by the sense that there have been opportunities and roads taken. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Rack Press\u2019s publisher, Nicholas Murray, has a new pamphlet, The Museum of Truth<\/em>. Murray is an accomplished satirist and his pamphlet A Dog\u2019s Brexit<\/em> was \u2018warmly greeted by the TLS [and these pages, too] as a valuable and rare example of successful political poetry.\u2019 Murray is also capable of piercing empathy for the victims of politics as in his last pamphlet The Migrant Ship<\/em> whose title poem poignantly depicted the lives of those undertaking voyages across the Mediterranean to Europe. In this pamphlet, Murray describes \u2018The Lampedusa Cross\u2019, the cross created by a carpenter on the island of Lampedusa from the fragments of the boats the migrants travelled in across the Mediterranean. The poem ends with the migrants \u2018carrying their grief\/ like a question put\/\/ again and again\/ to the snapping wind.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Murray\u2019s new pamphlet exhibits all the vivid precision of his earlier work. There is a wide variety of subject matter in this publication; from the Lampedusa Cross just mentioned, to \u2018Ballad\u2019 in which Murray\u2019s satirical bent is unleashed on a the variety of sights met, \u2018As I went out one morning\u2019; from a poem written after seeing a scene from a film by the Greek filmmaker, Theo Angelopoulos, to a variation on a Welsh language poem. <\/p>\n

Like Ian Harrow\u2019s pamphlet, Murray\u2019s pamphlet has a slightly elegiac feel to it. The poem based on a Welsh original is called \u2018Old Llywarch\u2019, and its third and final section adumbrates the narrator\u2019s disgust at his own old age. The section ends with a warning to the young, \u2018You think yourselves certain and your progress so steady,\/ but my fate shall be yours, and your future as hateful.\u2019 In \u2018God\u2019, Murray wonders \u2018when our dialogue ended\u2019, and the poem meditates, musingly and ironically, as if the narrator and God had simply drifted apart. At the end of this poem, also, Murray is more circumspect as to whether \u2018that is it, if the party is truly over,\u2019 and ends the poem on the shortened line, \u2018or whether\u2026\u2019 The longer and wonderfully built \u2018The Dead\u2019 is also a meditation on words unspoken, deeds undoable. This poem too shows Murray\u2019s gift <\/p>\n

for a telling, but unforced, ending,
\nthat nothing we say can possibly change
\nwhat runs like a river under the stones
\nwhere we walk, where silence is natural,
\nwhere talking\u2019s approximate, and nothing
\nis something, something to say. <\/p>\n

It seems difficult to know why Nicholas Murray\u2019s talent isn\u2019t more celebrated. These poems touch on our contemporary world and its difficulties with a quiet but forensic wisdom. <\/p>\n

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

Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, Ling di Long, Rack Press \u00a35; Ian Harrow, Finishing Lines, Rack Press \u00a35; Nicholas Murray, The Museum of Truth, Melos \u00a35 Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch has been cited as a successor to the \u2018narrative\u2019 school of British poetry; a school which perhaps reached its apogee in the writing of James Fenton and Andrew Motion in […]<\/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":"\nThree Pamphlets: Ling di Long, Finishing Lines, and The Museum of Truth, 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=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9308\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Three Pamphlets: Ling di Long, Finishing Lines, and The Museum of Truth, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, Ling di Long, Rack Press \u00a35; Ian Harrow, Finishing Lines, Rack Press \u00a35; Nicholas Murray, The Museum of Truth, Melos \u00a35 Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch has been cited as a successor to the \u2018narrative\u2019 school of British poetry; a school which perhaps reached its apogee in the writing of James Fenton and Andrew Motion in […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9308\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-05-13T20:58:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-05-13T20:59:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/i65.tinypic.com\/29biqo7.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ian Pople\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Ian Pople\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9308\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9308\",\"name\":\"Three Pamphlets: Ling di Long, Finishing Lines, and The Museum of Truth, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2018-05-13T20:58:24+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-05-13T20:59:08+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/1e4c20066db3d71097155619e6d443a9\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9308#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9308\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9308#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Three Pamphlets: Ling di Long, Finishing Lines, and The Museum of Truth, reviewed by Ian Pople\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"description\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/1e4c20066db3d71097155619e6d443a9\",\"name\":\"Ian Pople\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"caption\":\"Ian Pople\"},\"description\":\"Ian Pople's Spillway is published by Anstruther Press.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=21\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Three Pamphlets: Ling di Long, Finishing Lines, and The Museum of Truth, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9308","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Three Pamphlets: Ling di Long, Finishing Lines, and The Museum of Truth, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review","og_description":"Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, Ling di Long, Rack Press \u00a35; Ian Harrow, Finishing Lines, Rack Press \u00a35; Nicholas Murray, The Museum of Truth, Melos \u00a35 Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch has been cited as a successor to the \u2018narrative\u2019 school of British poetry; a school which perhaps reached its apogee in the writing of James Fenton and Andrew Motion in […]","og_url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9308","og_site_name":"The Manchester Review","article_published_time":"2018-05-13T20:58:24+00:00","article_modified_time":"2018-05-13T20:59:08+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/i65.tinypic.com\/29biqo7.jpg"}],"author":"Ian Pople","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Ian Pople","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9308","url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9308","name":"Three Pamphlets: Ling di Long, Finishing Lines, and The Museum of Truth, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review","isPartOf":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website"},"datePublished":"2018-05-13T20:58:24+00:00","dateModified":"2018-05-13T20:59:08+00:00","author":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/1e4c20066db3d71097155619e6d443a9"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9308#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9308"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9308#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Three Pamphlets: Ling di Long, Finishing Lines, and The Museum of Truth, reviewed by Ian Pople"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website","url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/","name":"The Manchester Review","description":"The Manchester Review","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/1e4c20066db3d71097155619e6d443a9","name":"Ian Pople","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif","caption":"Ian Pople"},"description":"Ian Pople's Spillway is published by Anstruther Press.","url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=21"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2PuXo-2q8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9308"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9308"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9312,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9308\/revisions\/9312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}