Review Article
Helen Robinson, David Brady, John Barlow and Martin Lucas
The Cold Moon Watching: Helen Robinson £4 by post from the author.
On the second day: David Brady £3 (US$5) ([email protected]) by post from the author.
Flamingo Shapes: John Barlow, Snapshot Press, £4.50 (US$7.50) ISBN 1-903543-04-5
Moonrock: Martin Lucas, Ram Publications ISBN 0-9511386-4-2
Addresses of the authors to be found in the BHS Membership List.
Four little masterpieces!
Helen Robinson’s little masterpiece, 4 by 4", hand-made, string-bound, contains 18 very effective tanka which, pondered as a sequence, eloquently & gently hint at the sorrow and bitterness of some long-term separation, whilst remaining detached enough to have universal application:-
what do we know of another’s mind its darkest shadows? you may well have reasons beyond what we think we see |
leaves are snatched away in rain and wind: the thought of how you live now cuts too deep for tears |
The poet is ‘snatched’ into the other side of misery which persists transformed by her craft. She finds consolation in friendships and a little wry humour:-
the way things are I could drown myself in an ocean of books, but here is my friend expecting tea and conversation |
in my heart I sail with your boat over dolphin seas: here it is autumn - grey clouds, the leaves turning |
The first impulse is to exult (with leaping, loving, singing conceptual dolphins) in the thought of the absent one (‘walking along Hope street’ from the first tanka) only to subside into an inevitable autumnal distress.
There seems as well to be some kind of absence at the heart of David Brady’s little hand-made, string-bound A6 masterpiece; described as ‘a haiku sequence [so that one is driven to look for the connections] with pictorial reflections’, 19 pages of haiku four or five to a page interspersed with beautiful ‘treated’ photos, the haiku constantly circle what I identify as an absence with particular observations of the kind that one might expect the distracted mind to focus on, harking back to the past in some way but unlabouredly.
soil on the old ladder’s rungs |
wedding photograph - the hair on the knees of the Scottish piper |
on the roof the drumming rain puts flavour in the steaming tea |
These are consistently quietly understated haiku with a singular sense of atmosphere surrounding a ‘last visit’ or something of that kind, when things take on a difference never before noticed.
in this neighbourhood shadows of houses falling on houses |
moonlight in the wet subway - a cello moaning |
engine cuts out - the pier, the gulls, the waiting faces |
John Barlow’s 21 page landscape 3½ by 8" holiday collection is, by contrast, a professional glossy little masterpiece. In certain lights the silvery print of the haiku fades completely off the page, an objective depiction in a startling way of the idea of haiku being beyond words, a nothingness, something which need not have been said at all but which has to be said; the shapes of the words, like their referents, come and go; there they are quite clear and, with an tilting of the book, there they are gone.
as we get closer to the flamingo shapes - flamingos! |
sunken village a few sticks poke out of the bay |
all these insects! a tap on my shoulder only an olive leaf |
Lightness of touch and a sense of quiet humour characterise John’s haiku:-
4 a.m. first the cockerel now the donkey |
topless beach I watch for the cormorant to resurface |
harbour taverna the squid fisherman picks his nose |
In my more intolerant moods, I wonder if the word ‘this’ (and the plural version) should be banned from haiku, especially when it occurs twice in the same haiku: halfway/up this mountain/this frigidaire. Laboured specificity loses its impact.
‘Ram Publications’ is Graham High’s beautiful home-made-production outfit producing little masterpieces. The coloured A6 dust jacket of Martin Lucas’ ‘Moonrock’, when opened out and looked at from spine level is 3D in effect. In his preamble, Martin points out that the collection is in four sections, not the overdone seasonal contrasts but each preceded by a short passage of prose: ‘The relationship of these prose passages to the subsequent poetry is intentionally oblique and the collection as a whole uneven... [says Martin] The theory is that it is better not to adopt a fixed perspective. Persistent irony and unrelenting sincerity are equally wearing, whereas a judicious intermixture of the two may refresh the palate.’ The intentional obliquity of the relationship of the prose passages to the poetry gets you immediately hunting the connections - a fruitful occupation, I found; I choose to interpret the word ‘uneven’ in the following way: when ‘a true haiku doesn’t so much come from you as come to you’ you should take the rough with the smooth; a collection of haiku that consists of ‘a scattering of images that fell to earth as I was staring at the sky’ought not to select its images for consistency - you can’t determine the quality of the precipitation; as readers we should be trusted to weave sensitively in and out of high points and low points for ourselves. Not that there are many low points in Martin’s collection; rather there are tightenings and loosenings.
On the one hand:- On the other:-
|
Christmas Eve the house fills with sweet spice and lemon zest the tumbled wall beginning and ending in the middle of the field |
The second section consists of one liners of wistful contrasts, I was particularly struck by one reminiscent of Wordsworth’s ‘one impulse from a vernal wood’, ‘sermons in stones’ conceit:-
in pine grove undergrowth the text of a psalm
I particularly enjoyed the prose introduction of the third section and what Martin calls its ‘senryu’ and ‘tipsy haiku’ :-
there she is again that woman in the next block with her feather duster |
the old TV warms up but I know by the silence it’s snooker |
Page(s) 61-63
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