{"id":9799,"date":"2018-10-14T17:15:41","date_gmt":"2018-10-14T16:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9799"},"modified":"2018-10-14T17:15:41","modified_gmt":"2018-10-14T16:15:41","slug":"zaffar-kunial-richard-scott-hannah-sullivan-at-the-iabf-manchester-literature-festival-oct-13th-reviewed-by-suzi-clark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=9799","title":{"rendered":"Zaffar Kunial, Richard Scott & Hannah Sullivan at the IABF, Manchester Literature Festival, Oct 13th, reviewed by Suzi Clark"},"content":{"rendered":"

Faber New Poets: <\/strong>Zaffar Kunial, Richard Scott & Hannah Sullivan<\/strong><\/p>\n

The International Anthony Burgess foundation saw a great turn out for the Faber New Poets event: a stunning book launch for the work of new voices in poetry, celebrated as part of the Manchester Literature Festival. Unfortunately, only three of the poets were able to attend due to rail disruption. We heard from Richard Scott, Zaffar Kunial and Hannah Sullivan. Each poet in turn enthralled the room with readings from their debut collections.<\/p>\n

Richard Scott introduced us to his poetry by speaking of his life-long habit of \u201cmining classics looking for their violet hour\u201d. The phrase \u2018violet hour\u2019, of course, refers to T.S. Eliot\u2019s The Wasteland<\/em> in which the colour violet, among many plausible interpretations, could be said to evoke a sense of the unknown, that is to say: otherness. And a pervading sense of otherness is an apt descriptor of queer life. However, Scott continues, \u201cqueerness always finds a way\u201d.<\/p>\n

Throughout the poems Scott reads for us (Museum, Oh My Soho!, Crocodile and Cover Boys<\/em>) the \u2018broken\u2019 aspects of having a marginalized and oppressed identity, combined with the views of queer people as \u2018broken\u2019, were juxtaposed and courageously called into question by the brash and unapologetically erotic imagery used. Scott\u2019s brazenly sexual language was something of a two-fingered salute to some of the \u2018I don\u2019t mind the gays, but not in my town!\u2019 attitudes that are still unfortunately present in some segments of society.<\/p>\n

In Oh My Soho!<\/em> Scott feels that he has \u201crainbow warriors to exhume\u201d: he is \u201cto be homo-historian, [\u2026] to turn bio-grope to biography, foreskin to forbearer\u201d. This strange obituary of a poem reveals the extent of trans-historical queer oppression in a radically sexual language. Scott has succeeded in writing a poem which does not mourn the dead. Instead, Oh My Soho!<\/em>, and the rest of the poems we heard from Scott, highlight the inevitability and indomitability of the queer presence in society and in doing so destabilize and threaten the sensibilities of a heteronormative world.<\/p>\n

The title poem of Zaffar Kunial\u2019s debut collection, Us<\/em>, perfectly encapsulates a complex sense of belonging and otherness, of the confusion surrounding an identity both British (through his mother and his birth place) and Pakistani (through his father). This theme is also explored in The Word<\/em>, in which Kunial\u2019s father advises him to \u201cenjoy the life\u201d, a phrase whose uncomfortable \u2018the\u2019 is indicative of a life between identities. And yet, the identity conundrum is far more complex than the implicit \u2018them\u2019 and \u2018us\u2019 idea: an idea which Kunial\u2019s work wisely never touches on. Instead he focuses on the unfixed nature of national identity, comparing it to the undulating sea in Us<\/em> and elsewhere, in Sparkhill<\/em>, a more tenuous link can be found between the \u201cliquidity\u201d of the sky and sea blurring together as he rolls down a hill and the way that national identities blur and merge, never having been, and never becoming, completely distinct.<\/p>\n

Later, Kunial reads Poppy<\/em> for us, a breathtakingly powerful poem concentrating on the futility and inevitability of ongoing conflict worldwide. The refrain \u201cNo, this is not enough\u201d interspersed between imagery of death through conflict seeming to speak for humanity\u2019s vast and impetuous ability to constantly fight one another. Kunial finished his final poem, Prayer<\/em>, (a poem about his mother\u2019s death) by thanking her gratefully, then recounting that on her death bed she \u201cstared on ahead \/ I won\u2019t know if she heard\u201d: an arresting and impactful end to his performance.<\/p>\n

Hannah Sullivan took to the stage last, and she brought us with her on an odyssey across modern-day New York, replete with imagery and scenes of disconnection and loneliness. She read one extended poem for us: You, Very Young In New York<\/em>. With lines such as: \u201cThe lights going off one by one \/ like a diminished Mondrian\u201d, it\u2019s hard not to fall in love with this poem, which, Sullivan admits, \u201ctook inspiration from The Wasteland<\/em>\u201d. Eliot is not there, though, to provide a sense of history, but as an example of work which is rooted in modernity. What she takes from Eliot in particular, but also from other English-Language poets of the past (of whom she is well informed due to her other job as an English Literature academic), is a flair for bending seemingly un-emotive imagery into a whole which effects a desired, often desolating mood.<\/p>\n

Sullivan evokes an absurdly pointless world which feels somewhat Beckettian, an author who is incidentally name dropped in You, Very Young In New York<\/em>. And yet, the poem ends on the line \u201cand through tears you\u2019re laughing\u201d, perhaps a comment on finding the hope embodied by authenticity in the strangest of places? Or a response to the age-old phrase \u2018you laugh or you cry\u2019 \u2013 \u2018in response to this society?! I do both!\u2019 Sullivan seems to say.<\/p>\n

What seems to me to link these poets, beyond their evident skill, is their sometimes rallying cry, sometimes hopeful murmur, against a system that seeks to make divisions between people and communities.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Suzi Clark<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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