Reviews of the Ephemeral

Posts Tagged ‘Katy Evans-Bush’

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Four Rack Press Pamphlets 2012

In Pamphlets on June 18, 2012 at 9:38 am

House of Blue by Denise Saul; Spring Journal by Dan Wyke; Oh Bart by Martina Evans; The Heretic’s Feast by Michèle Roberts. £5 each from Rack Press. A set of 4 signed copies can be ordered for £15 while stocks last.

-Reviewed by Angela Topping-

Every year Nicholas Murray publishes four austerely produced, elegant and slender pamphlets of new work from poets, which have included Christopher Reid, Ian Parks and Katy Evans-Bush. This year’s crop comprises Denise Saul, Dan Wyke, Martina Evans and Michèle Roberts.

Denise Saul’s is called House of Blue. The seven poems within serve as a good introduction to her work. They are poems of transformation and storytelling, with a strong feminist twist which explores the strength of women, their beauty and their magical power.  In the opening poem, ‘One’, Saul is inspired by the discovery of ‘Lucy’, fossilised remains of a female early human who walked upright. The leg bone which demonstrates this fact is the starting point of Saul’s poem, but she extends this descent into a memory of her grandmother. In the fourth stanza, ‘Lucy’ and her grandmother are as one:

‘Grandmother wore black obsidian,
even though the desert cracked beneath her feet.
The belt was carved from the upper delta
and an emerald stream ran down her back.’

By extension, Lucy and the grandmother figure become linked as the cipher, number one, mother of all. Saul’s poetry is concerned with shape-shifting and transformation, such as ‘Lotus-Woman’ and ‘Werehyena’, which is an Angela Carteresque narrative poem in which a blacksmith can change into a hyena, like his pet. Saul frames the story with the idea of telling it at a wedding, a nod to ‘The Ancient Mariner’.  The sea is present in the final poem, ‘Leaving Abyssinia’, a beautiful poem in which the speaker is surrounded by myths and legends recalling earlier voyages such as Odysseus’, and rich with sensuous descriptions of the surroundings.

A pivotal poem is ‘House of Blue’, placed dead centre of the 12 page selection. It is a many-layered poem which celebrates the power of music but is also about poetry, the making of it and the cultural influences which combine to inform it. Saul has not yet published a full collection, but I will certainly be looking out for one in the near future.

Dan Wyke’s  Spring Journal  is very different. This is a strength of Rack Press: that very diverse styles are placed together, informed by a taste for what is excellent rather than a desire to promote a particular style of poetry. Wyke’s pamphlet is a sequence of short but delicious poems taken from his notebook from last spring, presumably. Obviously these are edited and honed. I love short poems, little quotables that can be learned and digested quickly, displayed on posters, scattered through days like shells on a beach. There is wordplay and fun here:

‘The Buddha of suburbia
croaks
beneath the buddleia.’

Bird song, weather, light, nature, are threads which run through these delights, alongside what poetry is and why he writes. I love this perfect quatrain:

‘Blackbird, not very good at flying –
straight, low and long –
you have stayed in the park
and perfected your song.’

This is reminiscent of John Clare, but Wyke can give bird poems a modern twist, with his starling ‘overdosed on last night’s/left over hoi-sin’ and the blackbird’ ‘printing a row of continuation dots’. A poem for those with writer’s block which beautifully recalls A.E. Housman:

‘Days pass, unwritten poems vanish.
How many more times
will I see lilac blossom?’

The second sequence, ‘Days of March’ brings in more of the poet’s everyday life, including love poems which are touching and funny, such as the one where he texts his loved one about vegetables:

‘Courgettes, aubergines and the humble swede
stand in for all the inarticulate power of my heart.’

This is a wonderful book to carry around on a journey. Each little perfect poem would give much to ponder on, as you look out of a train window. Anyone can enjoy these poems so buy one for the person who thinks poetry leaves them out. But for poets, the honesty of Wyke’s thoughts about writing are some of the most exquisite parts of this rich, beautifully formed yet undaunting book:

‘I am not trying to sit closer to something else.
I am trying to sit closer to myself.’

Martina Evans is an Irish novelist and poet. As soon as one begins to read her pamphlet, her Irishness shines out, not just in the subject matter but in the style. There is a bit of a raconteur about her, a smattering of music and wit. She doesn’t take herself seriously, which is obvious from the first poem, ‘Prizes’. She presents herself as endearingly cack-handed in her inability to handle the award ceremonies with style and grace. These are memory poems, soaked in detail, giving a fresh childlike view of schooldays and the powerlessness of children to get things right in the face of adult implacability. Many of the poems reference Bart Simpson:

‘Even Bart Simpson felt the shame,
Yellow and unreal as he was and
Everything distracted him but especially
the snowstorm that god sent – he slumped
slogging over a book while everyone
in Springfield linked arms in a circle
singing A Winter Wonderland.’
(‘Kept Back’)

She goes on to tell the reader how she came to be kept in a lower class because she loved reading stories. Because of this she was not allowed to make her first holy communion with the rest of the class, their ‘ring’ of white dresses contrasting with the bright clothes of the fairy tales she loved: Cinderella’s three dresses, blue and / pink and gold and roses’. The Bart Simpson reference is unlocked at the end, the white dresses, leaving her out of the circle, ‘white and crisp as a Winter Wonderland’.

The poems are carefully arranged to open up one from the other chronologically. I always enjoy the journey of collections which are assembled this way.  The injustice of a draconian school is a linking thread, as is growing up and having to help in the shop. The strongest link is the passion for reading, which is beautifully expressed in the closing poem, which recaptures the joys of a much loved book:

‘Today, the first edition – 1947 – with fine cross
-hatched illustrations arrives from eBay,
in a cellophane-covered never-before-
seen dust wrapper.’

It’s Enid Blyton, of course, the Jacqueline Wilson of the fifties and sixties, whom we all devoured despite the disapproval of straight-laced teachers who thought they were not sufficiently ‘improving’.  The adult self is presented here as finally having the freedom to do as she wishes. Evans expresses the joy of discovering reading in a strong image:

      ’… the miracle
of the black marks straightening themselves
out into sense across the page,
saying this way, this way
you’ll escape.’

For all the suffering and unfair punishments the child suffered, this is a sequence full of subversive joy. It has so much in common with my own childhood that I would love to crack open a bottle with Evans and settle down for a right good natter. These poems are vivid, at times funny and at other times burning with injustice.

Michèle Roberts is also a novelist and much more widely known for her prowess in that area, so it is good to see that she can also write poetry that is at once spare and lush. A novelist’s love of storytelling drives the sequence, but these are personal pieces, about her mother, exploring in particular the shift from seeing one’s mother as all powerful, a saviour and a rock, to seeing her as someone childlike who needs care, then someone whose death one must come to terms with. The mother is Roberts’ ‘saint’, with ‘varnished gold toes’. She compares her mother to communion bread at mass in a perfectly description of a tabernacle:

‘You were the tabernacle
aproned in white brocade
God’s diet food. You hid
in the shuttered shrine.’

This image is developed later in the poem, when, fifty years later, her relationship with her mother changes and she sees her as more human, less divine:

‘Transfiguration: you reveal
your dazzling face
lean forward
into my listening
frightened you will fall.
I catch you on my tongue
and in my hands.’

Catholics believe that the host of unleavened bread becomes the body of Christ. Just as Christ is believed to enter the body of the communicant, Roberts is receiving the essence of her mother, a beautiful way to describe their sudden communication at what appears to be the deathbed of her father.

The last poem in the sequence picks up on this image but it has become sacrilegious:

‘Unholy communion: we separate you
Into black sacks
for paper, plastic, metal, wood
drive you to the dump
tip you over the edge of
boat-sized skips.’

Anyone who has had the experience of clearing out a loved one’s house after their death will tell you that is exactly how it feels, as though their unwanted possessions ARE somehow them. But there is a resolution which brings a new start:

‘And now your empty house
laid open, bare
fills up with light
gleams pearly as a half-shell
on wet sand under the running tide.’

This closing stanza completes the circle started in the first stanza: a memory of beachcombing as a child, finding treasure. The empty house is now full of possibility.  The poems in between are equally luscious: all poems about her mother’s absence in her life but written in a joyous celebratory way which brings into focus the way the child’s inner life remains tied to closeness with the mother, even when death has severed the physical contact.

These four pamphlets go beautifully together as a set, as well as each one standing confidently on its own ground. They are limited editions so you should hurry to acquire them. Rack Press has been shortlisted for the Michael Marks publishers award on the basis of last year’s pamphlets, and Denise Saul’s House of Blue from Rack Press is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Spring 2012. These accolades go to show that Rack Press pamphlets are starting to make their mark in the poetry world.

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Stoke Newington Literary Festival 2012

In All of the Above, Festival, Performance Poetry on June 5, 2012 at 1:39 pm

-Reviewed by Claire Trévien-

Now in its third year, Stoke Newington’s Literary Festival already has the reputation of an established festival while retaining a laid-back charm. Stoke Newington’s Town Hall and Library Gallery were the scenes of sold-out performances by John Cooper Clarke, Simon Day, Josie Long and Wilko Johnson. Pauline Black, introduced by a poetry reading by Ashna Sarkar, was a highlight amongst these headliners. The ex-lead singer of The Selecter read from her autobiography and gave a moving account of life as an adopted child in sixties England.

Pauline Black

A particular focus of this year’s festival, which fittingly ran during the Jubilee week-end, was on the importance of locality and identity. For instance, Simon Cole led festgoers on a Radical Stokey tour, arguing that it was a ‘village that changed the world’. John Rees and Lindsey German narrated a People’s History of London, while Pete Brown and Robin Turner appealed to our livers in their quest to define the perfect London pub. Taking a different approach, George Alagiah, Hattie Ellis and Dr Giles Oldroyd chaired a debate on local food versus global food, a gateway to discuss our 21st century extremes: obesity and famine.

Locality was also a useful banner under which to assemble writers, such as the Stoke Newington Poets which included poets Katy Evans-Bush and Peter Daniels. It was the opportunity too to flaunt the creation of the Hackney anthology Acquired for Development by…., a collection of fiction, non-fiction and poetry that attempts to capture the diversity of East London. The Morning Star’s Well Versed, the newspaper’s weekly poetry column, hosted two nights of deliciously foul-mouthed poetry at the Mascara Bar. Across the two nights it featured readings from the likes of Niall O’Sullivan, Tim Wells, Clare Pollard, Wayne Holloway-Smith, Sophie Cameron, and Amy Acre. It was a particular joy to hear O’Sullivan read from his Mundane Comedy project ‘Canto LXXI’, on a racist incident on the Victoria line diffused by other passengers:

‘And like that final scene in Sparticus
when all those faithful men stand up to cry

that it is their name too, other commuters
state other places where they play the drums
like Scotland, South Korea and Croatia,

and after each location named there comes
a louder round of chuckles til the man
that made the racist comment sits and squirm’

Wayne Holloway-Smith

The Mascara Bar garnered a reputation for being the space where headliners co-existed with everybody else in a happy drunken glaze. Notably, John Cooper Clarke turned up after performing at the Town Hall for an impromptu set, accompanied by Suzanne Moore. Another highlight of these performance medleys was Dan Holloway’s infamous troupe of New Libertines who performed in the paved basement of the White Rabbit on the Sunday. The said paving threatened the health of Paul Askew during the performance of his ‘The Extremely Abridged History, Present and Future of Paul Askew in Five Dream Scenes’, which involves a dramatic slump to the ground. Poetry ranged from the uproariously entertaining Hay Brunsdon and James Webster, to Dan Holloway’s haunting ‘Hungerford Bridge’ and Anna Percy’s foray into the darker side of the Beijing Olympics.

Irreverent and fuelled by gin (courtesy of Hendrick’s) the Stoke Newington Literary Festival is a love letter to its multi-cultural locality and is unafraid to put its writers and radical history in the foreground. At the same time, it has brought to Stoke Newington writers of international repute and favours an inclusive approach. It is this blend that makes one hope it will continue to be an integral part of the literary landscape for years to come.

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Claire Trévien’s Low Tide Lottery Launch @ The Phoenix Artists Club

In Pamphlets, Performance Poetry on September 30, 2011 at 2:21 pm

-Reviewed by James Webster

It turns out Claire Trévien, Sabotage’s Poetry Editor, is a bit of a poet herself. I attended the launch of her first collection of poetry: Low Tide Lottery (published by Salt Publishing) at the charming Phoenix Artists Club.

I say she’s a bit of a poet, in fact she’s really very accomplished with writing published in Under the Radar, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Warwick Review, Nth Position and Fuselit and winning the Leaf Book’s 2010 Nano-Fiction competition.

The Phoenix Artists Club is a lovely little basement bar, with a kind of prohibition-meets-bohemian-Paris kind of feel. It seems the kind of bar in which you should be able to exchange poetry, prose or paintings for pints (but, to my knowledge, they only accept money).

Claire Trévien

Her themes

Seem to be the clash of sea and cities. Of old and new. In ‘The Swan’ (a wonderfully dirty and forlorn poem) a lonely German Shepherd, at once ‘a lonely dog’ and a ‘god transformed’, ignored by pedestrians on the streets that are ‘sweating trash’ trained only to look forwards and never take in the world around them. ‘Rusty Sea’ gives us an environment failing you, of something taken as a constant that turns on you, leaving the people to ‘wait for the tide to start again’. And ‘Low Tide Lottery’ seems to blend the ocean and the urban. It describes in spiky language the ‘rusty city’ exposed when a tidal pool shrinks and you can see the detritus sunk within. In her poems cities become wild and tempestuous and tides turn on you, becoming rusty and urban, while the mundane mixes with the mythical.

Her language

Trévien makes images and language do things they don’t normally do. In ‘Beg an Dorchem’ she comments that ‘the sky is crooked’ and hears ‘laughter catching fire’, showing us a landscape writing over itself. Her turns of phrase are lush and often playful, lines like ‘drunk on tables that spread their freckles’ resound with the anarchic revelry of bygone bohemians. Her language is contradictory and wild, but also often neatly beautiful, equal parts spiky and silk smooth.

Her performance

Is perfectly pitched. Her strong voice and grasp of tone makes poems like ‘The Shipwrecked House’ seem ghostly, all cracked and bereft. In ‘Belleville’, she revels in her language on the streets of Paris ‘minotaurs pulse from wall to wall’ and the ‘Rue de Belleville’s shirt is open’. When read, it sounds lively and joyous, her delivery setting off the poem perfectly. ‘Love From’ sounded like a well-thumbed poem, much like the postcards it described. Each place seemingly faded over time, let down by the correspondent who fails to identify the landmarks he’s sending. Her performance is precise, but brimming with meaning and emotion, bringing out her poems’ meanings.

Also present to celebrate the launch and entertain the audience were poets Luke Kennard and Katy Evans Bush.

Luke Kennard

‘To read him is to be startled into remembering exactly how exciting and energetic language can be’ Andy Brown

Luke won the audience over quickly, his good natured jokes on writing and anecdotes about bookshops were amiable and showed a witty charisma that sparkled through his poems.

His humour

Is very apparent. The staccato matter-of-fact and intrusive absurdity of ‘Tragic Accident’ is both a caustic condemnation of journalism at its most base and uses repeated staccato jingoism for hilarious effect. ‘4 Neighbours’ idiosyncratic characters are united in their comic absurdity, from the meticulously described meticulous neighbour to the man who seems ‘embarrassed to be alive’; and the final character who writes about his neighbours in a column, commenting upon the narrator’s habit of staring is a worthy punchline.

His way with words

Is somewhat unique. You see it in the blend of the humdrum and haunting of the narrator exclaiming ‘that’s the last time I have sex with a ghost’ before the ghost takes the narrator to ‘A Pergola of Exceptional Beauty’ (also the title) ‘and a tower block collapsed in his chest’. To ‘Spade’ where he takes a symbolist view of a spade describing it as a ‘lever that punctures the world’ or as ‘opposite of a knife, it cannot be used accidentally’, its use and meaning becoming more abstract until the object is divorced from itself. His verbal dexterity is impressive; his phrases seem to bend language over itself in new and flexible ways.

His charisma

He seems dryly and quietly confident in performance. His knowing banter combines with an assured delivery that makes his poems easily accessible. Take ‘The 6 Times My Heart Broke’, a fragilely beautiful and increasingly surreal tale of heartbreak (sometimes literally). Or his ‘Mouthful of Stars’ in which he states ‘I’m converting to optimism’ describes a surreal kind of captivity that also keeps his audience captive.

Katy Evans-Bush

Her Tone

She’s softly spoken, her delivery careful, caressing and quiet. The language in ‘Thibault’s Ribbon’, a super-cute poem on Gérard de Nerval’s pet lobster (‘un philosophe de la mer’) for example seems languid, but as words build and twist round each other it seems more coiled. ‘Rilke Puts Hammershøi out of his Element’ lightly sparkled, a supposed debate between two artists, she made the silence speak instead. The tone of her delivery coaxed the varied tones out of some very different poems.

Her Words that Enliven

Her poems seem to give life to the still, to build life and colour around little things. ‘Interior of the Great Hall at Lindegarden’, meanwhile, used phrases like building blocks, constructing a place for the audience to explore. ‘The Fabiola’ About an artist’s collection of portraits of St Fabiola, all copies as the original is lost, that form ‘a city in a room’ becoming a population or a congregation.

Her Words that Distance

The other side of her poetry, to me, was to create distance between objects and sometimes words themselves. ‘On a Note by Louise Bourgeois’ takes a phrase and tumbles it over, repeatedly rephrasing it, playing with ‘my memories are moth eaten’. With light nimble wordplay and ethereality to her words (‘my memories are the sails with which the moths fly), she rolls the phrase over and over until it’s out of sync with itself: thus reflecting the state of the subject. While ‘Portrait of Ida’ presents a portrait of a portrait being made, the subject and painter both alone, joined only through the brush on canvas.

It was a lovely evening, filled with some fantastic poets and poetry. I recommend you check them all out.

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Horizon Review #5

In Magazine, online magazine on March 13, 2011 at 5:04 pm

-Reviewed by Juliet Wilson-

Horizon Review is an online journal produced by Salt Publishing, which takes its name and its inspiration from Horizon, the magazine Cyril Connolly ran from the outbreak of the War in 1939 until it closed in 1949. Horizon Review is currently edited by Katy Evans-Bush who says she wants Horizon review to be

‘an experience, a message, a feast like a meal where all food groups are represented and the amino acids and vitamins all complement one another’.

So, is that what Horizon Review really feels like? From the contents list, the reader can see that here are poetry, short stories, essays, reviews, an interview and a couple of cartoons. So in that sense, the journal certainly fulfils Evans-Bush’s vision.

Most of the short stories are quietly insightful dissections of every-day life and relationships. Steven Maxwell’s ‘The Festival’ outlines the way a father and son relationship changes when the two go to Glastonbury together.  Maire T Robinson’s ‘Even the Sea Dreams of Escape’ is a story of how Sophie – stuck in a boring job in a small town – finds transformation.

The poetry ranges from quiet understatement to experimentation, with impressive use of rhyme by almost all the poets included. I loved Maryann Corbett’s poems ‘Portent’ and ‘Holiday Concert’. The former is a struggle to understand a dream about a ballet and ends, as the ballerina is lifted and carried away with the line ‘How do I know this isn’t victory?’; the latter is a description of a concert, full of precise detail and the seventh grade boy who in the future

‘will wince at the thought
of singing, yet will ache to sing, in silence,
silence even to the generation to come’

Both these poems convey the intrinsic oddness in the ordinary social event that is going to a performance.

Matt Merrit’s ‘Zugunruhe’ is a quiet poem that steals up on the reader; it’s a haunting evocation of the unsettling feeling evinced by migrating birds. (‘Zugunruhe’ is a German compound word made up of the elements ‘Zug’ – move and ‘Unruhe’ – restlessness that is used to describe the restlessness of migratory species).

Another poem that spoke to me was ‘In the Garden’, Sophie Nicholl’s poignant imagining of poems that had been buried by a poet fleeing the authorities later becoming part of the orange trees that were planted in the same ground. A beautiful symbol of transformation and hope. I also enjoyed David Troupe’s minimalistic and atmospheric ‘Bob and Jackie Watch Heat Lightning From Their Porch’.

Robert Archabeau’s intelligent and readable essay on Nick Cave was also particularly gratifying. This starts by drawing parallels between Archabeau’s own childhood in provincial Canada and Cave’s youth in small town Australia. There is an exploration of the Romantic poets concludings that they felt ill at ease in the modern world and that this feeling (combined with society in turn not supporting poets, no generous patrons for the Romantics as there had been for earlier poets!) gave them a great amount of artistic freedom. A detailed critique of Cave’s song There She Goes My Beautiful World analyses how his writing aligns with the Romantic movement. Not only was this essay interesting and fascinating, it also got me to pick up the Nick Cave CD which I have neglected for far too long.

Horizon Review certainly offers a wide range of different types of writing and the pieces complement each other well.

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Literary Blogs

In Blogzines on March 5, 2011 at 10:52 pm

At a recent Identity Parade event at Paris’ Shakespeare & Co, the four invited readers, A.B. Jackson, Annie Freud, Sally Read,  Ahren Warner, as well as editor Roddy Lumsden were all asked about their opinion on blogging. I was surprised to hear that none of them were particularly active on the internet, preferring the spoken word. Annie Freud said she had great admiration for those who do it with ‘application’ but couldn’t stand word ‘vomiting’.

In that spirit, I would like to share a few blogs who do ‘do it’ with application. Having said that, in compiling this list, I found myself rather torn as several of these blogs are also, to varying degrees, magazines (or blogzines if you will). Blogzines are those fluid entities that give us the same material as a literary magazine would (without the unity of purpose of singular issues)  peppered with more personal subject matter. Their effect is very different from, say, thumbing a copy of Poetry Review, or even a specific internet magazine like Diagram, but I am not implying that in a negative sense. The atmosphere is different, less stilted, more inviting, you can dip into them on Tuesday, check back a week later and find new exciting things to take your fancy. These blog-zines manage that seductive blend of uniting quality with accessibility and candidness. They are forces to be reckoned with.

(in alphabetical order)

Baroque in Hackney

Katy Evans-Bush’s blog is an incontournable feature of the blogosphere. Here you will find, jostling comfortably together, politics and poetry, presented in a wry, informed and entertaining manner. Katy is not afraid to dive into incendiary subjects head on and emerge victorious, she might almost convince me to use an Oxford Comma.

Cut Out & Keep

The blog of the excellent magazine Fuselit edited by Kirsten Irving and Jon Stone. Much more than a promotional tool for the magazine, the blog wittily reviews and promotes other presses and authors, provides insights into the Fuselit machine, and, much like the rest of the website, makes you hope they achieve everything they set out to do.

Eyewear

Todd Swift’s personal blog, also happens to be a rather impressive magazine (so impressive that the British Library are archiving it for posterity). It combines insightful reviews of poetry, features poets and also discusses politics and pop culture. Also, on a shallow note, I love the different images used for the header.

Flotsam

There is something eminently refreshing about Caroline Crew’s blog, whether it’s feeling the same excitement when discovering the new poet she decides to share or eagerly nodding as she summarizes a current trend in the poetic world. She is also a fine reviewer, y’a know.

Hand + Star

Although I enjoy the ‘New Writing’ section of this webzine, I have to confess to preferring its blog even more for reviewing live literary events which is something not done enough, IMHO.

Peony Moon

Michelle McGrane’s blog of contemporary poetry puts most blogs to shame for the regularity of its qualitative output. Here you will find reviews, find out about events and discover new poets in the process.

Raw Light

Jane Holland’s blog is not just a recording of her trials and tribulations as a writer (though there is some of that), she also posts plenty of sound advice for writers. Both are written with this sort of gusty bravado that make you want to roar, if you want to taste some of that medicine, you could do worse than start here.

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This list is far from exhaustive (and doesn’t pretend to be) these are just a few of my favourite blog(zine)s. You are very welcome to add your own favourites in the comment.

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Christmas Special – Charles Causley

In Uncategorized on December 25, 2010 at 4:57 pm

In the midst of End of Year Round-up posts, here is a special Christmas poem I was introduced to by Katy Evans-Bush and that I mentioned here. It has been haunting me for weeks now and every time I dip into it, something new emerges, so it’s too good not to share. Merry Christmas!

Convoy.
Draw the blanket of ocean
Over the frozen face.
He lies, his eyes quarried by glittering fish,
Staring through the green freezing sea-glass
At the Northern Lights.

He is now a child in the land of Christmas:
Watching, amazed, the white tumbling bears
And the diving seal.
The iron wind clangs round the ice-caps,
The five-pointed Dog-star
Burns over the silent sea,

And the three ships
Come sailing in.

Charles Causley

Causley passed away on 4 November 2003 and a lovely eulogy on him, including a mention of this poem, can be found here.

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End of Year Round-Up: The Reviewers

In End of year round-up on December 18, 2010 at 11:45 am

2010 was the year Sabotage went from being just a thought to a fully-fledged website. To celebrate not just the wonderful reviewers who are the backbone of this site, but also the literature that has made our year what it is, I have asked several reviewers to answer these three short questions:

-Has 2010 brought to your attention any outstanding literary magazines (be they online or in print), if so, which?

-What event sticks out in your mind as the literary event of 2010 (it can be a personal accomplishment)?

-What was your favourite literary discovery of the year (it can be a single poem, a novel, a pamphlet, a press, …)?

Below you will find the answers of several of this year’s reviewers, and in a few days I will publish the answers of several authors, both of poetry and fiction, who were kind enough to take part.

To make things fair, here are my brief answers, then I’ll hand it over to the reviewers:

-Obviously the creation of Sabotage has brought my attention to several excellent magazines. My favourite discovery is probably Diagram. I reviewed its Summer 2010 issue for The Review Review. It was a bit of a surprise favourite as I tend to prefer poetry to short stories. This is what I said about it in the review: ‘The fiction featured displays an obsessive relationship to dissection and decorticates genres, voices, people. Sometimes this mad-scientist effervescence overwhelms the content to the point of un-readability, but more often than not, it elates. Diagram is a welcome shock-therapy to more traditional online journals – a breath of unruly air displacing paperwork.’

-There are several events that I could cite, 2010 brought the death of two personal heavyweight: Edwin Morgan and J.D. Salinger. Though with the latter, I could not help but feel a certain morbid curiosity for the work he kept hidden, as if he were the guardian of a treasure and finally defeated by a cocky young hero who knew the answers to the riddle. On a personal level, it was getting two poems accepted by Poetry Salzburg Review, a magazine I have long admired for the consistent quality of its output, and its vibrantly multi-cultural authors.

-Now that’s definitely a tough one. I discovered James Merrill’s ‘Charles on Fire’ and Charles Causley’s ‘Convoy’ thanks to Katy Evans-Bush’s workshop Making Poetry at the Poetry School, both have stuck with me for days beyond reading. Amongst pamphlets, my favourites were Mark Halliday’s No panic here, Jon Stone’s Scarecrows and Joe Dunthorne’s Faber New Poets pamphlet. As far as collections go two stand out: Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard and Karen Annesen’s How to Fall.

The Reviewers (in no particular order):

Richard T. Watson is a writer and director who has reviewed several works for Sabotage, most recently two of Sidekick Books’ publications, Pocket Spellbook and Coin Opera. You can find his review here, and his blog here.

-Its focal hero might make it seem a tad outdated, but I’ve enjoyed the Ben Jonson Journal (which I discovered in 2010, but has been running for much longer). It’s one of the many things I came across as a student that I wanted to get into in more depth, but never had time because of the looming deadline thing. But what I did read of the BJJ helped with my Dissertation, and all of it was fascinating.

-It’s not that long since National Poetry Week, which included a BBC adaptation of Chris Reid’s poem The Song of Lunch on BBC Two – which I think is probably my literary event of the year (and not just for the connection to my own University). The poem was translated more or less directly to the screen without addition or abridgement, a rare case of bringing poetry to mainstream popular culture. Having Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson involved helps as well.

-My favourite literary discovery of 2010 is Julia Bird’s poem ‘For my Brother, Relentlessly’, which is published in Coin Opera, a micro-anthology from Sidekick Books. It’s a poem in nostalgic praise of  arcade game classic Space Invaders, laid out like the screen of a Space Invaders game. The text itself is simply the repeated question ‘Can I have a go on the Space Invaders now?’ – but what I especially like is the way that the title’s comma conjures an image of a small girl asking this of her brother without pausing for breath for several minutes. Then, when she does finally take a breath, she says ‘please’.

Juliet Wilson is a poet who has written a series of reviews on environmental literary magazines for Sabotage, her most recent review can be found here whilst her website is here.

-2010 was the year I really became aware of Anon Poetry magazine. I knew it existed and had read an old copy but this year they accepted two of my poems and I found myself at the wonderful launch party at the Scottish Poetry Library and bought more back copies. The current editor Colin Fraser really knows how to choose good poetry (not just because he chooses mine!) and there are also a selection of intelligent and thought provoking articles about poetry in the magazine. Add to this that its a lovely neat format and fits quite easily into a handbag or pocket for reading on the bus, definitely a great read. The anon website is here and they’re on Twitter too:

-The event that for me was the literary event of 2010 was (sorry to blow my own trumpet!) the launch of my poetry chapbook Unthinkable Skies by Calder Wood Press.

-My favourite literary discovery was Lorsque j’etais un oeuvre d’art by Eric Emanuel Schmitt, an amazing, weird and wonderful novel about a man who is saved from committing suicide by an art entrepreneur who offers him the chance to become a living piece of art. A thought provoking exploration of what it means to be human written with the narrative drive of a thriller. I don’t know whether it’s been translated into English. I always find that reading an exceptionally good book in a foreign language intensifies the experience for me, as I meed to concentrate more and there’s a real sense of achievement in the reading!

Ian Chung is a poet who blogs here and tweets here. His most recent review for Sabotage is of the arts-collective website Lazy Gramophone.

-Polarity Magazine comes to mind. I came to it quite by chance, as the chief editor happens to teach on my university course as well and there was a launch event held at the university. It’s a print magazine, very professionally done, with each issue being ‘organised around two falsely polarised concepts’. The magazine’s website has some excerpts from the first issue.
-I’m going to go with a personal accomplishment here, and that was getting a couple of my poems accepted by The Cadaverine. It was my third time submitting, so I guess it’s true, third time’s the charm! Seriously though, it was an honour for my work to be chosen, and I’m looking forward to seeing it appear on the newly revamped website.

-I’m going to say it was Tom McCarthy’s Remainder. In a seminar last year, I’d read the Zadie Smith essay, ‘Two Paths for the Novel’, in which she reviews Remainder and Joseph O’Neill’sNetherland, and was intrigued by how she saw them as representing opposing futures for the Anglophone novel. I’d meant to read Remainder since then, but only got around to doing so over the summer holidays. It’s definitely an interesting read, in the way that its protagonist escalates the cycles of repetition that are the only means by which his life can anchor itself meaningfully. Smith notes at the start of her essay that Remainder took seven years to find a publisher, which isn’t surprising, given how its structure deliberately defies the sort of marketable narrative that would sit nicely in a chain bookstore’s window display.

Caroline Crew is a poet and a prolific blogger of all things poetic here.  She reviewed Blue-eyed boy bait for Sabotage here.

-For me the publications that have really sung that this year have all had a really strong sense of identity and of purpose. Literary magazines and projects that eshcew the normal manifestos on the submissions page. The ones that have really struck me this year have been Fuselit– a gorgeous magazine that runs of a spur word. Popshot, the illustrated poetry magazine that brings together the visual and the verbal to stunning effect, and my current favourite, > kill author, an online magazine that helped me rid myself of the silly preconception that print is inherently better.

-Sadly, for me that would have to be the passing of Edwin Morgan, at the grand age of 90. He was the first Scots Makar, and when it comes down to it, just a absolutely stellar poet. The death of such an imagination leaves an abyss.
-Well, moving across the Atlantic has been strange for me in many ways, but the epic differences in the poetry being written was definitely the most astounding. My favourite discovery so far would have to be Ada Limon. I saw her read recently and bought her excellent collection, sharks in the rivers, and cannot let it be out of my reach.

Jared Randall is a poet who blogs here, his first book of poetry, Aprocryphal Road Code, is now available from Salt Publishing. He reviewed >kill author for Sabotage here.

-The Offending Adam is probably the most intriguing online lit mag to catch my eye this year. TOA has taken the online lit mag format and run with it. Editors Andrew Wessels and Co. present weekly features that you can read in a relatively few spare moments because they focus on (usually) a single poet’s work. This focused brevity includes a brief statement from the author or a third party about what they think of the work and how it has come into existence. What is more, TOA takes care to ensure this glimpse behind the scenes/recommendation lends a sense of literary justification and thoughtfulness without descending into either facile interpretism or the chance to merely sound off on one’s poetic opinions.

Rather than browsing for a mag’s hidden gems among a multitude of works that may serve as mere fodder, every entry of TOA leaves me excited for next week’s installment. TOA’s eye for quality and the breathing space they leave to really consider the work at hand fly in the face of the common “dime-a-dozen” argument against online literature journals. You can sign up for weekly updates via email or Facebook and always know that your next poetry fix is in the wings and that you won’t have to wade through scads of authors to get to something you’ll truly want to consider.

-I don’t know that I’m qualified to give a grand literary pronouncement of what event was most important on a grand scale, but I did experience a very personal circle of memorable events at the end of 2010. The circle involves the publication of my own first book of poetry (Apocryphal Road Code) but really centers on the National Book Award in fiction as won by my former Western Michigan University undergrad professor, Jaimy Gordon.

The background of this story goes back a decade. Jaimy’s was my final fiction workshop before I dropped out of school for nearly four years after ignoring her advice to stick with it (no exaggeration). Of course, she was right, and, in 2004, I went back to school, finished up my degree, and from there received my MFA at the University of Notre Dame. How ironic that, barely a week after my first book came out, I was privileged to hear Jaimy read from her award-winning Lord of Misrule at the Kalamazoo Public Library.

This event, with its local southwest-Michigan flavor, was a culmination for me. I reflected, while waiting in line to have Jaimy sign my copy of her book, on the good fortune I had to study with great writers in the Kalamazoo area while in undergrad. I realized, after Jaimy spoke on the importance for her of finding a character’s voice, how I, too, learned the importance of voice from her all those years ago. Voice is important in my recent book, and I knew in that moment that I owe Jaimy more than I had either suspected or remembered.

Though it comes from a true prodigal, I believe I can safely say that all of us who have studied with Jaimy know how good she is, how careful and precise and insightful are her critiques. I could not be happier on her behalf for the recognition she has received, and I can only hope to enjoy a touch of the same in the future. Also, if you have not picked up a copy of Lord of Misrule, do so. A great book to curl up with over the holidays!

-I did not have to think long in order to settle on Chad Sweeney’s Parable of Hide and Seek from Alice James Books. Chad is a writer who is also local to a Kalamazoo area rich in talent, and I fell in love with his new poetry during a reading he gave recently. In particular, his poems “Little Wet Monster” and “Holy Holy” struck such a personal chord with me that I had to acquire his book right away.

The first is an incantation, a welcoming, a calling forth of an unborn child: “Come antler through the gates my thingling/ Your grapes contain the houses// Unmask the stones my darkling grief/ Come whole my homeward early// You alone devour the night,” and so on. The child comes from the dark womb but brings the secret of light, a rich paradox among many in Parable. Mother and father voices merge somehow in a poem that Chad reads with a lot of courage and all the real passion of a father who appreciates the mystery and precious gift that is life. I jive with that, being a father of four with another on the way.

In “Holy Holy,” Chad also manages to get me where I feel it deep down. It begins, “For me speech is/ a way of touching,/ a rummaging under/ for what’s not meant// to be moved,” and continues, “a sentence begun// before my father was/ beaten for his stutter.” I adore the double to triple meanings of these enjambed lines as they turn on one another. The poet then asks for “courage/ to fail publicly// in ordinary tasks,/ give/ me corner beams laboring/ without grace.”

The humility and gentle sensibility of Chad Sweeney’s poems are, judging by his reading and conversation, wholly genuine. Their surreal yet familiar landscapes pull me in, and I think they will you, too. Give him a try at http://www.alicejamesbooks.org or your favorite seller. In fact, treat yourself to an entire Kalamazoo, Michigan, literary romp! There are plenty of authors to choose from, whether recently published or from years gone by.

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