 |
| The poet as critic |
Andrew McMillan reviews
Dear Boy
by Emily Berry
There’s
an interview with the wonderful American poet Matthew Dickman for the Scottish
Poetry Library in which he says (and I’m paraphrasing badly here, apologies
Matthew) that irony “isn’t horrible” but that it can “only get you so far”. I
found this a really interesting idea. Much modern poetry seems too hip, too
ironic, too tricksy for its own good- accomplished poems rest on their own
surface intrigue rather on their ability to say anything real. Love is fine but only if we don’t really mean
it, only if we’re making fun of it, only if we love ironically. When I was
first starting out in poetry, my first pamphlet got reviewed by someone who we
won’t name who said, amongst other things, that the tone of the poems seemed
too angsty; he was right, but what I took this to mean at the time was that
writing love poems to a departed lover wasn’t enough, there needed to be an
angle, something tricksy, writing a love poem was too cliché. I was wrong.
Emily Berry proves that with this magnificent, arresting collection which is
(along with the likes of Oli Hazzard and Hannah Lowe) one of the best debut
collections of recent years.
There is
a refreshing honesty and directness to these poems; yes, they are quirky but
quirky doesn’t have to mean style over substance. Berry gives us both. Style
and substance. Sweetness with depth. The final poem of the book, the final
poem’s final line, is perhaps best served to sum up the collection:
I am writing my first political poem
which is also (always) about my love for
you
The
beloved is the anchor around which everything else in the collection
oscillates. Emily Berry’s other talent
is that she is genuinely witty and often very very funny; not funny in a ‘that
was a quite amusing line’ sort of way, but genuinely, laugh out loud funny. The
first poem of the collection, ‘Our Love Could Spoil Dinner’ is a great example
of this wit and humour adding to the depth of a poem’s narrative rather than
stealing focus. It’s an easy trick to write a punchline poem, one which
subverts the reader’s assumptions on the last line; it’s a harder trick to pull
off sustained humour throughout a piece, and Berry manages it here.
In a
talk at Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, Julia Copus talked about the spine of a
poem, about a clear line of meaning that runs through a poem and helps to give
it shape. It’s a true statement but what Berry has crafted within this
collection are poems with spines but also with the acrobatic skill of being
flexible. Flexible spines, which move and bend and contort and surprise us, but
which never lose control. ‘Letter to Husband’ is a great example of this, and ‘Love
Bird’ too, which is one of the highlights of the collection. The spine of the
poem (the bird imagery) shifts from the lover to the body and then, ultimately
to the concept of love
Lover,
Love was no
bird
‘Two
Budgies’ is another highlight of the collection. It has echoes of John Riley
about it; fluid, partially connected images anchored together by a direct and
stunning last line. In Berry’s poem, a domestic scene flows into a sexual
encounter which flows into a memory of the eponymous budgies and then into the
stunning last line:
don’t say I invented
romance where there wasn’t any
As well
as investing us in her own personal narrative, Berry has the ability, perhaps
only matched by Riviere amongst her first-collection contemporaries, to offer
insight, although thankfully never preach, about contemporary culture. ‘Nothing Sets My Heart Aflame’ captures the
contemporary zeitgeist for vintage and transient connections perfectly without
ever feeling like it’s trying too hard. It’s the sort of poem which feels like
it will be anthologised in decades to come and used as a document to teach
about the decade we’re living through. The poem needs to be read in its
entirety to be fully appreciated but the opening line:
I have discovered the
meaning of life and it is curatorial
seems to
perfectly capture the contemporary youth culture and the final line
every
time I think a new thought I can smell an old one burning
is masterful in turning the poem on its head,
shifting it from a mere reportage to a critique. What more could one ask from a
poem? ‘Bad New Government’ too manages to blend the personal and the political
skilfully.
Faber’s
poetry list seems in a really exciting place at the moment, maintaining the
great names of the last few generations but building something fresh and
exciting for the future. Riviere, Berry and the new Faber New Poets scheme
currently underway show a press building a very exciting future for
itself. Berry has the ability to go on
to be one of the most respected and accomplished poets of her generation; the
poems are accessible but not light, funny but not easily dismissed, loving and
sensual without being cliché, political
without being preachy. Poetry, I think,
can be measured by the lines that stay in your head long after reading. “Lover,
love was no bird” is one such line for me that is still rattling about between
my ears, that I still say to myself out loud when nobody else is around.
‘The Way
You Do At The End of Plays’, another accomplished poem, has an interesting poem
near its end:
and then the play ended
and,
we turned to each other,
you know in the way you do at the end of
plays
the “you
know” is significant here; Berry is handing power over to the reader; not only
does the colloquialism give a familiarity to the narrator, it is telling the
reader they already know this image, that Berry doesn’t have to spell it out
for them. This is a great act of humility for a poem; having the intelligence
and also the generosity to not go for the big image, for the big crescendo but
to rather casually hand it over to the reader and make the poem all the more
powerful for it. Constant consideration
of the reader, of an audience, is the mark of a great poet. In Berry, that is
exactly what we have.
Andrew McMillan was born in South Yorkshire in 1988. His most recent pamphlets
are 'the moon is a supporting player' (2011, Red Squirrel Press) and 'protest of
the physical' (2013, Red Squirrel Press). Selections of his work can also be
found in The Salt Book of Younger Poets and Best British Poetry 2013. Andrew has
held numerous residencies nationwide, written plays for Sheffield Theatres and
had his commission for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad featured on Radio 4's Today
Programme. He is currently working on a first full collection and lectures in
Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University.
Comments