{"id":9358,"date":"2018-06-10T22:07:33","date_gmt":"2018-06-10T21:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9358"},"modified":"2018-06-10T22:07:56","modified_gmt":"2018-06-10T21:07:56","slug":"david-calcutt-the-last-of-the-light-is-not-the-last-of-the-light-reviewed-by-ken-evans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9358","title":{"rendered":"David Calcutt, The last of the light is not the last of the light<\/em>, reviewed by Ken Evans"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last of the light is not the last of the light<\/em> by David Calcutt, Fair Acre Press: \u00a39.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

David Calcutt\u2019s first full collection from small, independent press Fair Acre, is pre-occupied with rites of passage, and above all, death, and the transformative power it thrusts upon us. The book opens with a quote from Ovid, \u2018Everything changes, nothing dies.\u2019<\/p>\n

With an elemental stylistic simplicity of few punctuation-marks and little capitalisation, Calcutt\u2019s work suggests a fabular world beneath everyday surfaces, of mythopoeic themes of nature, change and underworlds; of rites, quests, spells, dreams and incantations. Frequently, one of these facets are expressed in terms of another, as buzzards become, \u2018lakota ghost-\/dancers in their fringed shirts.\u2019 Egyptian mythology, Troy, Eden, Nirvana, become fabulously interwoven in fluid, transmogrifying, \u2018half-waking dreams of water\u2019 as the poet follows his own, \u2018dreamland\u2019s crooked backbone.\u2019 There is a reach for transcendence, to get back or crossover, or join with, the lost one, that lies behind much of the poet\u2019s dreamscapes here.<\/p>\n

This will to transcendence seems at once to both reside in, and be obscured or \u2018cloaked\u2019 by, the natural world. A sequence of six poems, collectively named \u2018Tattercoats\u2019, refer to \u2018coats\u2019 \u2013 of cobwebs, rags, roots, water and stars – and most strikingly for me, \u2018nettles\u2019, where the skin, burning from nettle-stings \u2018became another animal\/it went prowling through the streets\/of pain, wherever it trod\/there was dereliction.\/I danced the dance of a man\/ in flames.\u2019 In another of the several sequences in this collection, \u2018Aten\u2019 (which refers to the Egyptian \u2018Book of the Dead\u2019, where \u2018aten\u2019 is the disc of the sun), this balance between the mythic and actual worlds, the grand and eternal and the quotidian and specific, is held with beautiful poise, where:<\/p>\n

\u2018you hang the hook of your gaze
\nbetween the horizons,
\nhold the world stilled,<\/p>\n

the motorway embankment,
\nthe leathery trees,
\nthe clockwork heartbeat of the mouse\u2019<\/p>\n

Calcutt\u2019s career in radio and theatre drama is evidenced not only in his highly visual writing, but also in his attention to sounds, often playful as well as evocative, as in the poem, \u2018Hob Jack.\u2019 A rat in the water, \u2018Hair-twitch-nose-tip\/an inch above the surface\u2019\u2026 \u2018blowflies hum\/and midges strum\/the new dawn\u2019s daystrings.\u2019 Elsewhere, \u2018A moorchick clacks among the reeds\u2019, gathering the \u2018scattered petals of morning.\u2019 Hob Jack, the rat creature, finds, \u2018his joy\u2019s in the frenzy and flood of the kill\/and the calm that comes after.\/Snick snack\/the mirror cracks,\/a tumble and flurry and someone goes down\/to be lost forever.\u2019 There is almost joy in the onomatopoeic language, describing death in the water.<\/p>\n

These quotes highlight the strengths of the poems in this book, where the focus is on nature, precisely observed. However, the insistence on death\u2019s presence \u2013 even closeness to life – can be overwhelmed on occasion, when the reach for transcendence or \u2018meaning\u2019 is stretched into the vague generalities of, \u2018I went beyond the edge\/of the great emptiness\/when I came back\/I was someone else,\u2019 or when \u2018night opened\/its book of wonders,\u2019 or the poet becomes a mouth, \u2018in a jungle of beginnings\u2019 or a \u2018saint of nowhere.\u2019 To conclude, as in Aten (II), a raptor\u2019s \u2018quivering of wingtips\/poised at the zenith\/on the blade\u2019s tip\/before the long slide down,\u2019 with a last-line of \u2018the nirvana of drop\u2019 is brave, and whether it wholly works or not may depend on how much you accept, as a reader, the poet\u2019s sense of dual worlds, co-existing, the mundane and the sublime. An end-line that overreaches like this may capsize the rest of the poem if you\u2019re uncomfortable with these flourishes. This occurs again in \u2018A pale sun rising\u2019, where the fields, whose \u2018edges burn\/with a sullen fire\/a last flame, the light\/of the world.\u2019 The heavy theological influence of this end-line, as if not enough already, is underscored again with a line-space between \u2018light\u2019 and \u2018of the world\u2019, making it thump with significance. <\/p>\n

When the focus is on nature observed, or listened to, there is most success. Without the underlining, nature is animated, as in the poem \u2018Dig\u2019, part VIII, when \u2018that skylark above the field\/is unpicking each stitch of the light\/with its voice.\u2019 Or again, in the first section of the same poem, where \u2018the broken\/bones of words\/listening for voices\/to come clear of the dirt\/speaks a new language\/chopped syllables of light.\u2019 There is sombre beauty and meaning here, but it is not given orchestral strings and an extended drum-solo to ensure we listen.<\/p>\n

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

The last of the light is not the last of the light by David Calcutt, Fair Acre Press: \u00a39.99 David Calcutt\u2019s first full collection from small, independent press Fair Acre, is pre-occupied with rites of passage, and above all, death, and the transformative power it thrusts upon us. The book opens with a quote from […]<\/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":"\nDavid Calcutt, The last of the light is not the last of the light, reviewed by Ken Evans - 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=9358\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"David Calcutt, The last of the light is not the last of the light, reviewed by Ken Evans - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The last of the light is not the last of the light by David Calcutt, Fair Acre Press: \u00a39.99 David Calcutt\u2019s first full collection from small, independent press Fair Acre, is pre-occupied with rites of passage, and above all, death, and the transformative power it thrusts upon us. 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