Skip to main content

Guest Review: Stainton On Edwards

Ben Stainton reviews
by Rhian Edwards


At a time when contemporary poetry seems to be leaning towards the anti-lyrical, the anti-personal, the irony-heavy and the ‘shrugging’ (to use Jack Underwood’s description), Rhian Edwards’ debut collection – autobiographical, image-laden, crafted and musical – takes its cues from more traditional sources. This is a poetry of the expected, inasmuch as it does what poems are ‘supposed to do’ – speak about the writer’s firsthand (quirky, affecting, disturbing) experiences in a relatively uncomplicated, feelingly anecdotal way. No bad thing for those who require or admire such qualities in poetry; and this approach is sometimes telling. The absolute clarity of ‘Parents’ Evening’, for example, offers up some attractive lines and even the weaker-seeming units function in the abbreviated manner of a school report –

            She has failed to grasp the planets…

            has proven violent in games…

            has learned to darn starfish

As an opening indicator of the autobiography to come, this works well – there is humour, familiarity allowing a subtle collusion with the reader, and a blackly comic denouement – (she) ‘insists upon your death / as the conclusion to all her stories.’

The trouble with this kind of biographical re-rendering though, is that the poet has to make us care, as readers, about the time a bird hatched in their airing cupboard (‘The Hatching’), or ‘the school holiday we played knock-a-door-run…’ (‘Camposuil’). Luckily, Edwards’ arsenal of charming anecdotes is substantial – the childhood / adolescent pieces are likeable, down-to-earth, and stocked with immediately striking imagery, and as we progress from adolescence through deep-seated angst (‘Unmentionable’) and the melancholy of rediscovering a childhood toy –

            you are… moribund,
            a Rosebud, a relic
            put out to pasture, living
            proof we were once something else

            (‘Steed’)

Edwards cleverly encourages empathy and identification by dealing with familiar subjects – teenage jealousies, one-night-stands, dissatisfaction at work (the excellent, ambiguous ‘Alison’) – allowing herself some linguistic breathing space in the process. Metaphors bob up and down; obliquity creeps in.

In its second half, the book’s speaker is embroiled in domestic, sometimes bleak situations; extra-marital affairs, drunkenness, and the language understandably takes a darker, less ebullient turn. The feeling remains of reality reflecting back at us, as if these are experiences the poet needed to slough off or unburden herself from – not quite confessional in the fevered sense of Plath or Sexton, they nonetheless occasionally take on the manner of well-crafted therapy sessions; enjoying improbable metaphors – ‘the house turned against you… / pushed you down the stairs, / stabbed you in the hand’ (‘The Good Hand’), cute reversals – ‘pick-pocketing five more minutes / from a clock that rolls its eye’ (‘Quotidian’) and witty half-rhymes –

            Looking me dizzy
            licking me drunk
            in the face of our nudity
            I am not nearly naked enough

            (‘Eyeful’)

Edwards’ register shifts impressively when she casts her eye around her hometown for characters. ‘Going Back for Light’, an anomaly within the collection, is an earthy, entirely convincing portrait of ‘Danny’ who ‘got blacklisted at the colliery for making ructions’. Semi-prose, half-affectionate and almost satirical, it contains something rich of the world the poet once inhabited. Similarly, in the concluding ‘Girl Meats Boy’ (winner of the John Tripp Award, 2011), the voice abruptly becomes huge and essential; the language overflowing with an inventiveness reminiscent of Dylan Thomas but also entirely her own; as if a tap has been trickling in secret and is now manically flooding the bathroom. We are reminded, through such energy, pace and playfulness, that this is a poet actually in love with poetry, rather than half-mocking it from the margins. At a time when sincerity and ‘the personal’ are generally viewed as badges of uncool, Clueless Dogs is like two fingers in the face of fashion; proud of its constructions, unselfconscious in the act of remembering.

Ben Stainton’s poems are forthcoming in Coin Opera 2, SSYK (5) and the Bloodaxe anthology Dear World and Everyone in it.  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".