Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

C J Allen, How Copenhagen Ended, £3.50
Adrian Buckner, One Man Queue, £3.50
Lee Harwood, Evening Star, £3.50
Martin Stannard, Coral, £2.50
all from Leafe Press, 1 Leafe Close, Chilwell, Nottingham, NG9 6NR

In the poem ‘Needs Must’ C J Allen provides us with a one‑line
summary of his aims – ‘How to be a Difficult Poet without Boring
You’. And perhaps pamphlets are the equivalent of a short set from
a warm‑up comedian, where the writer tries out material, in the hope of keeping us entertained? Here, the opening ‘Civilization, its Discontents’ has a vaguely Ian Duhig‑ish air, while some later pieces display a U A Fanthorpe‑like preoccupation with what being English might mean. Not all the jokes come off, though I reckon the wordplay of:

               I’m writing this poem
   and to make sure I get in a rhyme
   for Marie Antoinette.

   I’ve made a note of it. Likewise
   the part where I compare adolescence
   to a dull essence.

   would raise a laugh in performance.

   The poet has a fondness for unexpected juxtapositions, splicing
Dante’s Inferno with Daffy Duck, Max Miller with the rise of the
Third Reich. It’s efficiently done, but I was more engaged by ‘Launch’ in which an exotic landscape suddenly morphs into a
literary one. And ‘Seesaw’ deftly balances political and personal
worlds, so we’re left wondering just what is being:‑

   hammered and hammered
   and hammered into the ground.

Adrian Buckner shares some of C J Allen’s concern with Englishness. The conclusion to ‘Cricket at Thrumpton’:

   Something, eroding perhaps, is being passed on
   as an unseen cow lumbers over to chew
   the wing mirror of the fast bowler’s Mondeo.

has a Larkin‑esque air and, like Larkin, he draws inspiration from the limitations of provincial life Buckner’s work though, is enriched by paternity, notably in ‘Early Critical Works’ where his small son

   is occupied daubing fiery vermilion
   on a steady supply of my old poems

   in which love fails, graffiti disfigures
   the playground, the powerless

   voice their dramatic monologues
   and feel no better for it.

   The writer’s dependence on unrhymed couplets can result in a
lack of variety. However, he’s strong on repetition:

                                                  I must remind
   myself of the contours of the back of my hand:

   hand bone, arm bone, shoulder bone, breastbone;
   behind the breastbone is my beating heart –

   I must look at the back of my hand
   to remind myself of my beating heart

Leafe Press describe Lee Harwood as ‘one of Britain’s most
distinguished poets’ he is certainly distinct from the previous two
writers. he’s more cosmopolitan, with a greater breadth of cultural
references. Often he starts with a world that’s recognisable enough.
‘Packing OK sauce at George Mason & Co Ltd’ begins with the
description of a photograph. But the focus soon shifts to the poet’s
reflections and rhetorical questions, then climaxes with:

              Nena Venetsanou I dream of you. I kiss your sauce
   flavoured fingertips.

   Who is the poet talking to here? To himself? To Lou, the poem’s
dedicatee? To Nena? To the reader, who has either gone to look
up an unfamiliar name on Google or given up?
   In ‘5 Rungs up Sassongher’ Harwood writes:

               I’m wandering       word wandering

   His poems are odysseys that take us through passages of prose,
and in which a sublime ascent may be followed by a swoop to the ridiculous. In some places the route is precisely mapped; the mid‑line breaks indicating exactly where to pause. Elsewhere Harwood‘s journeyings leave me behind; the strain of attempting to keep up is too great. Perhaps readers crave poetic fast food, which releases quick calories into the bloodstream? Harwood’s work is not that readily digestible – though I picked up on some new flavours when I came back for a second sitting.
  
   For a fuller consideration of this poet, I’d recommend
www.exultationsanddifficulties.blogspot.com, a site run by Martin Stannard. Go to the entry for Wednesday 19 January.

Like Harwood, Martin Stannard plays with our expectations of
what a poem can encompass. Coral rejoices in the alternative title of
‘or 2448 words including ‘happenstance’ and ‘plangent’’. Of course
there’s nothing new in this type of literary teasing. how about Twelfth Night: or What You Will? The pamphlet consists of a series of addresses to Chloe, an absent beloved. underneath the twenty‑first century veneer, the poet is paying homage to the tradition of courtly love.
  
   I was reminded of a recent TV programme about Abba, which
pointed out their lyrics are laden with sadness, yet the rhythm and
melodies are full of exuberant energy. Stannard performs a similar
trick. His sequence is a glorious medley in which chivalric images
co‑exist with trips to Starbucks and the Nottingham Go Club.
There are also references to an onion‑growing business, plenty
of schoolboy French, some suspicious allusions to the mysterious
Daphne and lots of larking about with quotations and parentheses.
  
   If the Monty Python team had gone in for poetry, I suspect they’d
have produced something like this. I’m not knocking the comic
poems of Wendy Cope and Sophie Hannah. But does humour
have to go hand in hand with poetic conservatism? Stannard is more
of a modernist:

   (Was it James Joyce who said
   I may have taken this as far as it can go
   and even this far may be too far?)

And as with the Pythons, who always appeared to be on the brink
of going too far, I suspect these pieces are actually tightly scripted,
orchestrated. This meant it wasn’t just Stannard having fun; I did
too.