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Astonishing poems Kathryn Maris reads three superior and markedly contrasting collections |
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DALJIT NAGRA CAROLINE BIRD JOHN HAYNES
Knowing very little about contemporary British poets when I moved here in the early 2000s, I concluded that Daljit Nagra must be one of England’s most famous. His name was everywhere. When he received a BBC 4/First Verse Award, his work was broadcast on Radio 4. From 2000 onwards his poems continued to be aired, mostly on evening slots for BBC London radio. In 2001, for Poetry International, he was paired with a tutor, Stephen Knight, and gave a reading at the festival in conjunction with Apples & Snakes. And over subsequent years his poems appeared in high-profile magazines like The Rialto, Poetry London and Poetry Review until – in 2004 – ‘Look We Have Coming to Dover!’ won the Forward Prize for best individual poem. Perhaps forgivably, I was surprised to learn that in all those years of head-turning achievements, he had yet to publish a book. What does not surprise me, however, is that his long-awaited debut is astonishing. There is so much to praise in Look We Have Coming to Dover! that it is hard to know where to start. Do you begin with his faultless ear when transcribing regional and ethnic accents? Or with the never self-pitying and always complex reflections on being Asian in a country that has xenophobic tendencies? Or his skilled and varied writing, and a voice that glides from persona to persona? Or the shining intelligence that is evident in narratives that are never simple and lyrics that balance joy with regret? Let’s start with the ear. Some of Nagra’s poems are caricaturist Asian monologues that use malapropisms, incorrect idioms, and an Asian accent that is laid on thickly. That unabashed exaggeration is there for a reason: it gently ironises Anglo-Indian culture from the point of view of someone inside it who seems to feel a mixed affection for it; and it ironises the perception of a culture. It’s a sort of Kumars at No 42 aesthetic: it appeals to those inside the Anglo-Indian community, but it also confirms stereotypes and is therefore satisfying to a wider audience that wants to believe in those stereotypes. And the exaggerations – and spot-on imitations – are funny. In the deftly entertaining poem ‘Singh Song!’, a newly-married speaker describes closing up his shop in the middle of the day: cos up di stairs is my newly bride Nagra can do other accents too. In ‘Parade’s End’, he imitates Yorkshire ‘council mums’ who complain that ‘darkies’ (i.e. Indians and Pakistanis) come
op ta And in ‘Yobbos!’ a racist and ‘scruffy looking git’ says, on the London tube: ‘Some Paki shit, like, / eee’s lookin’ into!’ These bits of believable dialogue interrupt the narratives in the right places, augmenting an already flawless pacing. They provide some comic relief as well. Another source – a surprising source – of comic relief is the almost constant use of exclamation points, as in ‘Yobbos!’, which is an otherwise unnerving poem about racism that is made slightly less serious by the punctuation in the title. Or ‘Karela!’, a poem about a bitter gourd used in Indian cooking which partly represents to the speaker the ‘shame of blood desertion’. The effect of these exclamation points is something akin to the stylized exuberance of Bollywood. Which stands to reason, as these poems are, more often than not, works of exuberance. There are some deeply sad poems such as ‘Arranged Marriage’ (which acquires in the fifth stanza a formal shift that echoes the desperation and internal conflict of the speaker), but such unequivocally dark poems are rare. And anyway ‘Arranged Marriage’ has a happier companion poem, ‘On the Birth of a Daughter’ which, though also poignant, ultimately celebrates the new life that has emerged from treachery and marital misery. If I had a worry about this collection – and I don’t really – it’s to do with the focus on cultural otherness. The speaker of ‘In a White Town’ recalls that he used to ‘bin the letters about Parents’ Evenings’ because he was embarrassed by his mother ‘who never looked like other boys’ mums’. This subject, valid as it is, is perhaps reaching its saturation point. In America, for example, practically everyone (or everyone’s parent or grandparent) has experienced some comparable shame, and there have been books after books by, among others, Greeks, Jews, Chinese and African-Americans about these very humiliations. Perhaps things have moved on – or perhaps they haven’t – and perhaps it’s becoming harder to get away with a mode of writing that exoticises, that exposes the quirks of an immigrant culture, or that is primarily post-colonial in subject matter. On the other hand, racism and post-colonialism do not seem to be going away. And anyway: who says this book is written specifically for a white British audience? It has resonance within the culture described, which is arguably more important than what it does or says to a majority population. This fine collection is neatly wrought and impeccably edited. There isn’t a single weak poem, and there is a shrewd logic behind the ordering of the poems. The poems themselves are smart, as is the book as an entity. Like a Shakespearean comedy, the collection ends with a marriage and, cannily, with the word ‘baby’. This book is a celebration, and will be celebrated.
It’s easy to approach Bird’s work with scepticism because it’s hard to imagine someone so young writing great poetry. But her work is winsome, intelligent and startlingly mature. ‘Precocious’ is a word often applied to her, and she is precocious – but in the best possible sense. One of the most noticeable things about Bird’s poems is her distinctive voice, inventive modes and modulations of expression. Her poems can be wild and fantastic, suggesting an original mind and a singular vision. One of the devices that serves this originality is her use of surrealistic imagery. This is not to say that she is the first or only poet to use this device, of course, as is seen in Surrealist poetry from the Continent during and after the First World War, in American poetry such as that by Ashbery and his New York School contemporaries, in plenty of poetry by young American poets writing today, and in contemporary British poets such as Selima Hill. But her surrealism is her own – it is episodic, mixed up in narratives that are otherwise linear and naturalistic. One of the themes of Bird’s new book, a theme that sometimes hides behind surrealism, is loss of innocence. There is a fairy-tale quality to the first poem that echoes poems in Looking Through Letterboxes. This is the poem in which the turnip of the title appears. It has a sing-songy nursery rhyme quality: When trouble came to the village, When trouble came to the capital... Each stanza begins with ‘when trouble came’ and each describes a surreal journey in which the speaker and her love ‘swim’ or ‘flit’ or ‘squirm’ or ‘repent’, always ‘wrapped’ in something. It is a poem in which repetitive form, simple diction and jingly music suggest youthfulness and innocence. But that is a subterfuge. It is faux-naivety, and what follows is dark, complex and knowing. The second poem, ‘Virgin’, is a coy address to a (possibly imagined) lover in which the speaker equates loss of virginity with the end of being adored and idealized: If I were a virgin, you wouldn’t look at other
girls, This poem is merely a hint of more devastating examples of loss of innocence to come. In the tour-de-force ‘This Time Last Week’, Bird describes her experiences at a club that were so disturbing she ‘had to read Enid Blyton books and drink warm milk all week to recover from it’. This is a long poem – unrestrained and prosy, without ever being lazy – with excellent pacing. She describes how in the club she ‘kissed a man / and kissed a girl and pissed in a toilet / that stank of sperm’. However, it was none of those experiences that unnerved her, and neither was it kissing a junkie or wearing the same clothes for three days or vomiting in her hand ‘in a hotel covered with expensive dust for people with very expensive noses’. What did alarm her, and what she continues to replay in her mind while safely in Oxford waiting for her university interview, is: that girl that I haven’t even mentioned. This poem is part rant, part self-examination, part story, part elegy and part celebration. Despite its longwindedness, one is happy to read it through, and read it again, and then even a third time. Bird has an excellent sense of narrative and suspense. She also has a good handle on directness, and she is very frank about sex. The word ‘crotch’ comes up as often as Nagra’s exclamation points, and in one poem she bravely states, ‘It takes more than pants and zips to hide my cunt’. Sex becomes a saving grace in the context of relationships that, more often than not, are doomed for failure. ‘The Lady With the Lamp’ is one such chronicle of a relationship gone bad. It’s another long and sustained poem that depicts two days in the life of a woman who begins the first day by buying a pair of shoes and by the end of the second day expels her lover with no explanation. The complications suggested are hidden behind surrealist gestures and fantasy, such as: That night she started her period Or there is her description of a trip to the beach, in which she unbuttons her shirt and a man says, ‘Nice tits’. The fantastical quality of so many of her poems can seem a little tired after a while. Bird nearly comes across as a one-trick pony, but ultimately doesn’t, because she demonstrates versatility in other ways. However, the book is probably too long, and some of the poems are perhaps too weak to have been included. But one of Bird’s most charming qualities is self-mockery. She knows better than anyone where her work stands. Self-deprecatingly she writes, ‘at least my poems are improving / if you can call this a poem’. She is young, and this collection is more accomplished than many books by far more experienced writers. Doubtless she will write much in the years to come, and her work will grow into itself, becoming yet more impressive than it already is.
Like Russian dolls, John Haynes the Poet, John Haynes the Non-fiction Writer, John Haynes the Teacher-Scholar, and John Haynes the Would-be Activist stand side by side – or one inside the other – in his book-length poem Letter to Patience. And these are only some of his personas – there is also John Haynes the Philosopher, John Haynes the Letter-writer, John Haynes the Political Scientist, and many others where those came from. He is also a polymath who is kind to his readers. His long explanatory preface is useful and even necessary, as are his copious footnotes at the back of the book. The premise of Letter to Patience is exactly what it sounds like: it’s a letter to a woman called Patience. But very little else about the book is self-explanatory. We find out, by way of the preface, that Patience is the proprietress of a small mud-walled bar in Northern Nigeria called Patience’ Parlour. Patience, 30-years-old, had been a lecturer in politics at the nearby university, but gave up her job because of political pressure. This 60-page letter in terza rima is meant to have been written in 1993. But time is elastic in Letter to Patience. In fact so much of this epic letter is about time: the passage of time, the meaning of time. One of Haynes’ three opening epigraphs gives us a clue to this theme – this quote by Cavafy: ‘When we say “Time” we mean ourselves. Most abstractions are simply our pseudonyms. It is superfluous to say “Time is scytheless and toothless”. We know it. We are time’. Indeed the first seven stanzas of the poem, which are divided into 52 cantos (the number of weeks in a year, if you hadn’t noticed), are devoted to time: setting us up in time (and place), and reflecting on time. Cleverly, the first stanza contains the letter-writer’s return address and also the date of the missive: 5 May, an intriguing date for a poem with a motif of political upheaval and injustice. Then Haynes sets us up in time yet more specifically, late at night when: everyone’s asleep, the BBC across the globe to where that watch of mine The point here is that Britain and Nigeria fall in the same time zone, and the speaker-writer makes much of that seemingly minor link, because he’s looking for modes of connection. Instead of talking about timelines, Haynes talks about ‘time’ and ‘lines’ as discrete subjects, both of which become crucial themes. When he’s not drawing attention to time, which he does almost constantly, he’s waxing on about lines – lines of demarcation and boundary but, more often, lines of connection and communication. In canto 11, Haynes brings time and lines together: ‘The times shown on our watches are the same. / Across the map those strangers draw a net / of pure Pythagorean lines to claim...’ Geometry (and lines) come up again in canto 15 with: And I can still now see I learnt, to touch the true geometry The prep school mentioned is the ‘empire-making boarding school’ that the speaker attended. It’s a source of shame, one that forces him to remember that there are the colonizers and the colonized, and that he falls on one side of the line, and Patience on the other. The relationship between the speaker – who refers to himself as John – and Patience is unclear. Are they old friends? Comrades? Former lovers? What we do find out is that ‘John’ is married to a Nigerian woman, and that he has moved back to England with her and their mixed-race children in order to care for his ailing father. The father struggles with memory loss and – interestingly – has no sense of the passage of time. If the themes are clear enough, the narrative itself can be troublesome, and the nine pages of notes are a crucial aid. The terza rima is so watertight that perhaps it forces an element of circuitousness into the poem. Whatever its flaws, this is a work of great intelligence and immaculate formalism. Haynes’ rhyming energy never flags, his writing stays dynamic, and at the end he employs one of the best imagistic sleights-of-hand I’ve seen since William Carlos Williams. Through the description (in canto 51) of how John imagines Patience is sitting, and how he himself is sitting, the writer (John) and the reader (Patience) become superimposed figures. They are mirror images of writer and reader – ’mon semblable, mon frère,’ as Baudelaire and, later, Eliot would say. And we as readers, having seen the colours ‘black’ and ‘white’ appear again and again as objects, clothing, celestial bodies, ghosts and emblems of race, now see John and Patience as an image of black on white – very much like words on a page. When John signs off, dawn has broken and ‘it’s getting light’. It’s getting light in the sense of sunrise, but also in the sense of epiphany, self-discovery, and making sense of a troubled world. Now that he’s left Patience’s Nigeria, he can at last see it clearly. He lets Patience into his clear new vision; and he lets us into it too.
Kathryn Maris, a poet from New York City, is the author of one collection, The Book of Jobs (Four Way Books, 2006), which has been shortlisted for a Poetry Book of the Year award in the US. She writes essays and reviews for British and American periodicals, and teaches creative writing at Morley College.
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Please send books for review in Poetry London to: Scott Verner You can contact Poetry London on editors@poetrylondon.co.uk Tel / Fax: 00 44 (0)20 8521 0776
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