Neither Mistress Nor Mystic Sister
short reviews
Strange Furlongs Eric Ratcliffe (Astrapost, 7 The Towers, Stevenage, Herts, SG1 1HE, A5/saddle stitched, 12pp/£1.50). Spiritual guide takes Eric on a cosmic trip and this is the poem. "And still they throw the futharcs in Damnonia…" That's not all they do either. Hold onto your hilt and don't try these chat-up lines on the Goddess unless you want her to nod off pronto.
Wellington - A Broad Front Eric Ratcliffe (Astrapost, 7 The Towers, Stevenage, Herts, SG1 1HE, A5/perfect bound, 172pp/£6.95). Blank verse doggerel about the big man in the boots, indexed and with copious notes.
The Bridge Ric Hool (The Collective Press, Penlanlas Farm, Llantillo Pertholey, Y-Fenn i, Gwent, Cymru, A5ish/perfect bound, 64pp/£5.95). "The Bridge begins with the simplicity of a morning, which quickly becomes multilayered…" (Blurb) "Unobserved the renegade awaits / the chance to redefine shape: / to reinvent the line." (Hedges)
Dry Rot Control Ketman Courtesy Orchis (self published, ISBN 1-903031-00-19, [email protected], A5/saddle stitched, 24pp/£1.50). New editions of previous glories from the ontological chick we all want to 'protect'. "She hugged me as though she would never see me again and there I discovered God." (Incubus 8 Induced) Printed on specially absorbent paper by Poetry Monthly. Means you can read it and play sport and swim, even with your period.
Offence 8 Defence Courtesy Orchis (self published, ISBN 1-903031-00-18, [email protected], A5/saddle stitched, 24pp/£1.50). "Blue is the colour of all mothers / since fathers / were guided into responsibility / by the ego limb" (Mary Queen of Hearts) She knows things little girls just shouldn't and sings these lyrics, which are half in the ideal, half in horror. She is waist deep in a dream, wading through the weight of it. Makes me want to hug her all the more.
The Only Thing Untouched Susan Hamlyn (Flarestack Publishing, 15 Market Place, Redditch, Worcs, B98 8AR, A5/saddle stitched, 44pp/£3). "Her eyes shine through the cometting headlamps / to the blanket of the sky and the spread / of stars she means to shower on his bed." (Stardust) Subtle and at times suggestive poems of young middle-age. Encouraging news in these poems, for those of us still young.
Capabilities of the Alchemical Mind Eric Ratcliffe (Four Quarters Press, ISBN 0-9535113-0-8, A5/perfect bound, 48pp/£4). In this book Eric Ratcliffe attempts to fulfil the life's work alchemical ambition of the hapless Victorian poet in Lindsay Clarke's The Chymical Wedding. It is apparent from the intro that although he might be accustomed to being around alchemical and Rosicrucian symbols, Ratcliffe had not reached the upstairs of enlightenment before undertaking this work. What we get is a whole lot of stuff re-hashed from alchemy/Jungianism in a terza rima form. Not sure that this really describes 'the work'; as poetry it labours too heavily.
Cosmologia Eric Ratcliffe (Four Quarters Press, ISBN 0-9535113-3-2, A5/perfect bound, 44pp/£6). "In a cohesion of poetry, notes and peripheral data, the author paints a picture of the early suppression of cosmological discoveries." (blurb) Ratcliffe argues for a non-materialist approach to science in this essay-poem. "Immortality via science cannot be ignored for long." A triumph of intention over ability? The bits in gothic typescript are really hard to read.
Euroshima Mon Amour Andrew Darlington (Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, HD5 8PB, A5/saddle stitched, 48pp/£3.99). "…she reaches out her hand to pluck my heart / beating and pumping blood where it's / grooved by her 6" nails, / I dissolve in her breathe." (Angels of Anarchy / Learning to Live with Fragmentation) Lots of blood, fire, goth babes, apocalypse and the odd spaceship or gloop of primal slime.
Hey, He's a Fish Andrei Lubensky / Black Knights at the End of Time JPV Stewart (Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, HD5 8PB, A5/saddle stitched, 20pp/£2.49). This is one of those two-in-one things where you have to turn the book upside-down every now and then. Every page I look at seems to turn up the wrong way though. The fish thing is quite fun, but the Black Knights failed to 'take' me. "It is an old landscape with / the tired toothless weary countenance of / a worn-out facial world." (The Link)
Skip Trace Rocks Peter Layton (Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, HD5 8PB, A5/saddle stitched, 20pp/£2.70). These sci-fi poems do not seek to mystify the social relations of the future in a lot of exotic scenery: here working men are exploited in space long after the Association of Autonomous Astronauts was comet-whipped by strike breakers in 2071. The light of these poems is not eclipsed by the planetary bulk of the writer's project; this is firstly about the present, secondly about the future. Here work is the enemy. Guess we can all relate to that.
Quiet Myth Susan Hamlyn (Mattock Press, 12 Mattock Lane, London, W5 5BQ, A5/saddle stitched, 16pp/£2.50). Susan leaps amongst the crags and goats, dodging Pan and giving Appollo the come-on: "A quiet myth. A god / whom time will supersede, / a time-worn woman share the dusk." (Apollo Visits His Sanctuary) Very Freudian, in an understated way.
Wolf on the Third Floor Graham High (New Hope International, 20 Werneth Avenue, Gee Cross, Hyde, Cheshire, SK14 5NL, A5/saddle stitched, 36pp/£4.50). Subtitled Ukraine Honeymoon and Other Poems from Russia. "Our courtship, our brief marriage / was a constant returning / to the same obscure place. / The corner where we'd first met, / always set on going different ways." (We Did Not Meet).
Earth Bound Jeremy Hilton (Phlebas Press, c/o 21 Overton Gardens, Mannamead, Plymouth, A5/saddle stitched, 48pp/£3.50). "the dream is within the story / the story is within the dream" (Invent a Grandparent) Rambling innovations; not his best and no sound of a keynote.
Recollections of a Danish Nightmare Steve C Stone (Pinball Publishing, 17A Charnley Avenue, Exeter, Devon, EX4 1RD, A5/saddle stitched, 20pp/priceless). "I saw you by hissing trains in a ghost sunset, / dragging your jacket behind you like a plough." (The Friend Who Never Was) the same author also offers a collection of similar dimensions called The Ghosts: "I saw the car crash; / I watched it impact from a sleepy house, / where nobody cared." (Death of a Princess) Well, that's young people for you; and they won't be told.
Electric Obituary Alan Peat (Redbeck Press, 24 Aireville Road, Frizinghall, Bradford, BD9 4HH, A5ish/saddle stitched, 28pp/£3.95). "We came to witness summer blooms / of algae stinking in canals, / and when you woke your wheat field hair / was flattened by the storm." (Venetian Rain)
Following the Seine Jim Greenhalf (Redbeck Press, 24 Aireville Road, Frizinghall, Bradford, BD9 4HH, A5ish/perfect bound, 44pp/£5.95). Poems from a weekend spent in Paris with David Tipton. "Everywhere men in navy blue / boilersuits, gaiters / and boots. Paris, / city of exiles and painters, / seems to be full / of itinerant decorators." (from Bagatelles from The Boulevard St Michel) Redbeck painting Paris red? A useful map of Eurostar, codified.
Jujubes and Aspirins Kym Martindale (Redbeck Press, 24 Aireville Road, Frizinghall, Bradford, BD9 4HH, A5ish/saddle stitched, 28pp/£3.95). "Tonight / the moon weighed anchor / and set out heartlessly for other lovers, / pulling the clouds around it" (Tonight)
Parting the Ghosts of Salt Pam Thompson (Redbeck Press, 24 Aireville Road, Frizinghall, Bradford, BD9 4HH, A5ish/saddle stitched, 24pp/£3.95). Curious dynamic of romance in these poems - timeless characterisations, Japanese myth, Geisha & Samurai - anima and animus, shrine and mobile phone. "and as I ride, feel his body surge / faster, faster, I am galloping back / through history, am the lady / of the water-lilies hitching up her skirts…" (Kasane / Honied Moon) Striking use of quotes from medieval & modern Japanese poetry.
Anthropos Eric Ratcliffe (University of Salzburg, ISBN 3-7052-0429-7, A5/perfect bound, 112pp/priceless). 1995 collection from the editor of the now defunct Ore magazine (see page 59). The collection comes with 'a survey and bibliography' compiled by Brian Louis Pearce. "…his credo is opposed to mainstream materialist poetry and rooted in belief in an after-life. Myth, legend and ancient British history play a large part…" (blurb) "Poet of immediate terrors, / I have had strange mistresses…" (Inside Thalassus Marinus) Frontispiece photo of the man himself dressed as a Druid, with neither mistress nor mystic sister. You need to have 'initiated' to know what that means.
Page(s) 66-68
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The