Guest Review: Parker On S/S/Y/K 4

Bobby Parker

reviews

Stop/Sharpening/Your/Knives (4)

It has taken me a while to write this review. The book swallowed me. I found myself in a beautiful, haunting and obsessively quirky world that I just didn’t want to leave.

Writing this review almost bursts a magic bubble. I must be careful. And I must begin by saying that this is the best contemporary anthology of poetry I have read. Honest. After a lull in my own poetic output, S/S/Y/K (4) has filled me with the urgency to surround my own dark, silly and surreal ideas with fresh words, vibrant words, words that, far from desperate, know they are bright enough to lure us into a powerful dream.

There are 28 poets in the book, with black and white illustrations between the poems. The artwork doesn’t just complement the poets; it stands side by side with the poems. It gives you that moment, after a final line that has just snatched your breath, to feel the genuine playfulness of this place just as much as the dark humour and the absurd abstractions.

The book opens with three poems by Mollye Miller. The first ‘Stepping Out of the Shade Particles’ ends ‘in this unbelievable garden I am only waking up.’ Perfect.

For me, the standout poems are by Nathan Hamilton, Matthew Gregory and Sam Riviere, they just struck a chord with me. They make me dream.

I keep coming back to Nathan Hamilton’s poems ‘Malcolm Training’ and ‘Malcolm Judged’: ‘Lone Malcolm kicks at shadows in the long evening / the wind busy scribbling him out’ and ‘he is a crime of sorts and very anti most things.’ sounds like someone I know, ahem...

In Matthew Gregory’s first poem in the book ‘Discovering the Early Humans’ we go into Hades and meet ‘an elderly ram, in pointy slippers, a formal tux – / withered, eyes turned in from each dim century.’ And in the second poem a couple found a young pterodactyl and ‘loved it with our eyes closed; simply, too much, / now it has outgrown us and we are left / clutching after its wake.’

I find myself picking up the book and flicking to Sam Riviere’s poem ‘Rain Delay’ and staring at it for a long time to get to the bottom of ‘the wing-beat rate a beetle needs to stay dry in the rain’ as words like ‘Amit’s aztec gaze’ and ‘a witchhunter’s ardent, direct line’ poke me in eyes. This poem shifts and ripples, it is exciting stuff. Sam Riviere never fails to make me scratch my head (in a good way) before I smile or sit staring for a while, wondering how he does it.

Other great poets in this book include Jon Stone, Joe Dunthorne, Ben Stainton, Emily Toder, Jack Underwood, Emily Berry and Tim Cockburn; with illustrations by Benjamin Brett, Beatie Fox, Megan Whatley, Lisa Handley and Helen Maier, to name a few.

To be honest, I feel guilty that I couldn’t write about every poet/poem/piece of artwork in this great anthology.

Every now and then a book comes along that sort of untangles the wires and allows the electricity of poetry to run smoothly through my veins and fill my head with colourful lights. If you don’t buy this book right now, I can only assume you don’t like discovering new poetry, cool poetry, poetry that becomes a close friend and tells you strange and wonderful things in the middle of the night. I can only assume you are not human.

Bobby Parker is a British poet.

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...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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