Jessica Mayhew reviews
by Jess Green
#romance is a collection
that revolves around connections and interactions. However, as shown in the
Twitter-inspired hashtag title, these are connections strongly influenced by
the contemporary. These poems will speak strongly to the social media
generation, and are tinged with the voyeurism that has crept into life through
technology, as shown in ‘#romance.’ Green has a very modern voice; even when
referencing ‘a Hughes and Plath affair’ (‘Another One Broken’), comparing it to
her own emotionally damaging relationship, the reader would not place the poem
in any other timeframe but now.
Green’s poetry does away with
traditional idealisations. In ‘Another One Broken,’ the speaker of the poem
remembers sitting alone in a cheap hotel, recounting the broken promises of her
older lover:
I drank champagne from the bottle
in the blustering wind of an open
window,
the mugs were still stained with
tea
and you said you’d bring back
washing up liquid...
(‘Another One Broken’)
The mundanity of these images
contrasts against the poet’s desire to be ‘...fucked up/ so I’d have something
to write about,’ the desire for experience. Green artfully maintains this
atmosphere to the final stanza, where she betrays an almost sadomasochistic
wish to ‘ask for my feelings back.’
However, there are also tender moments
of connection within this collection, such as in ‘Potatoes.’ Again, this poem
begins with a sense of isolation:
I was lonely when she first
arrived
in a house so huge
it spent time in the eighties
being flats
(‘Potatoes’)
Despite initially setting herself
against her new flatmate and ‘the private school she worked in,’ the speaker of
the poem ‘bonded over my lack of potatoes/ and her having some fried with blue
cheese.’ The friendship even survives separation:
when I stumble back to my mum’s
house...
I pour myself another wine,
stick my headphones in
and have a one woman Tina Turner
party
she’d be proud of
(‘Potatoes’)
Even within the poems concerning
friendship, Green is clearly concerned with political and social commentary,
and poetry’s place within it. This is most clearly communicated in ‘Stop The
Poetry,’ the final poem in the collection, taking inspiration from the recent
demonstrations in London, in which she declares, ‘kettle us, keep us, beat us
and berate us/ but you won’t stop the poetry.” Here, the internal rhyme shapes
these final lines like a slogan, something the reader could imagine being
shouted aloud. These class struggles are coloured with personal experience,
shown when she is told:
...love,
scratch your degree from your CV.
It’ll make you more employable,
‘cause no-one wants a show off
afraid to get your hands dirty
then off to the theatre.
(‘Scratch Your Degree’)
However, any anger is also balanced
with moments of humour, as shown when she rewinds time back through her degree:
I never shook hands with Brian
May,
and in any case
that would have been ok
because I only know the words to
Don’t Stop Me Now
(‘Scratch Your Degree’)
Green effortlessly switches
between the serious and the light-hearted with no loss of pace or drama. #romance is a short pamphlet, consisting
of eight poems in free verse. It is clearly poetry that is intended to be
spoken aloud. However, the words also work beguilingly on the page; ‘we sway up
those spirals/ crack egg shell painted walls’ (‘Deep Down In The Avenues’). Here,
the satisfying sibilance reveals a poet experienced in the musicality of
language. Jess Green’s language speaks from the page with a vibrancy that
encourages you to see the poems performed.
Jessica Mayhew is a Masters student at UC studying English Literature:
Issues in Modern Culture. Her pamphlet Someone Else's Photograph was recently published.
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