Outside looking on
is Chimene Suleyman’s debut collection and a fantastically well-crafted one at
that. Judging by the blurb and praise on
the back of this book I was certain I was going to be able to rip this
collection apart for its clumsy and eager nods to its influences; ‘The tall,
glass monoliths are lonely as the characters who exist around them’. I thought
I was dealing with a third rate Larkin cum Morrissey enthusiast; I was very wrong.
The poems in this book are witty, intimate, and direct; not
bashful or pathetically comedic. Suleyman has managed to create a voice which
is at home in the dangerous environment of the city and yet secretly envious of
the suburbs and beyond ‘I hate the countryside, it’s designed badly’. But I did
not find this voice self-loathing or melodramatic. Further, I feel Suleyman has found her
technique early on, and already I see the makings of an easily recognisable
voice in contemporary poetry. Of course
those before mentioned influences are noticeable; I feel the movement in general may be a regular touchstone for
Suleyman.
Onto the poems. The
collection follows the story/stories of narrators living in the epicentre of
Canary Wharf. Throughout there are poems
regarding lost love, work and family.
Suleyman’s strength is her ability to write penetratingly; when issues
of racism or sexism appear in the book, they arise not from a clear detailing
of a character’s personality but of subtle retelling of their actions. In 'The
Passenger' the backstory of a fellow commuter, a waitress and mother of two,
is given the most apt touch. The young
woman is harassed by drunken male customers and one ringleader in particular ‘”I am sorry for my friends,” he points at
suits and reaches for her breast’. The atmosphere is captured perfectly and
Suleyman relents from exploring the perspective or personality of any other
character further than their interactions with the hassled waitress. There are antagonisms over race dealt with
the same exceptional narrative; in ‘The
Altercation’, (a poem presumably ending the ‘Boss’ sequence of poems), the
narrator recalls what an argument was not about; ‘It was not entirely, because of his tone’. The poem ends with the
obvious difference of opinion between narrator and antagonist ‘On a platform above Millwall stadium were
minarets where you imagined them’.
Suleyman’s attention to detail is thorough throughout the
book. In ‘Take the Time, Heron’ the
surrounding cityscape is described in the most wonderful and familiar means ‘Beside us, the perfect outlines of a
glowstick town’. The backdrop of the
city in this book is never one of grandeur or reverence or even of disdain or
resent, just the constant illumination we all recognise as if trees in a
wood. Suleyman may be one of the early
voices to recognise man as part of nature, that means city included, and though
one causes destruction to the other; boundaries are interwoven and overrun.
In short, this is a very strong body of work for a first
collection. Suleyman captures big ideas in short vignettes without compromising
any detail or direction of plot. In the
introduction to the book Suleyman writes ‘Aren’t we all lost and missing?’ The
concept of this book therefore is to remind us of our collective existence in
an environment we find both hostile and comforting. Suleyman’s poems do just that.
AG Williams is an editor at Eyewear publishing (intern post), and a frequent reviewer here at the blog. He is a graduate of Durham, and a poet.
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