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

Twenty Poems
Jehane Markham
Rough Winds £6

My Mother Myself
Olive Dehn & Jehane Markham
Cassette Recording: Rough Winds £

The essential qualities in Jehane Markham’s work and that of her mother Olive Dehn, are demonstrated by an image in Markham’s poem ‘The Blue Apron’ in which she describes a relic from the Terezin concentration camp as “a map of tenderness”, “...a patchwork apron hewn with a needle and thread”, “...the stitches like railway tracks over a blue field”.

     Listening to the tape which has 24 poems by Dehn on one side and 16 poems by Markham on the other (9 of which are also in the pamphlet), you have the impression of intertwined life material being worked on by two very distinct poets who nevertheless seem to have a closely-linked aesthetic. Both have a strong visual orientation (Markham studied painting at the Central School of Art and both have had involvement with theatre) and, you imagine, both would advocate William’s dictum, “no ideas but in things”.

     The natural world figures importantly in both poets’ work, both as subject matter and vehicle, but over-riding this interest, it seems, is a social concern; a shared humanism that, in both poets’ worlds, imbues everything with meaning.

     In her former life, Olive Dehn (who was born in 1914) was a successful children’s writer, playwright and actress, and these are reflected in her well-paced tales, her humour and the way she reads. There is a jauntiness to her verse which nods in the direction of AA Milne and, perhaps, Belloc. But her images are her own and are vivid, rich and abundant: from ‘Fog’ ( - I can only guess at her lineation and I apologise for quoting it as if it were prose, but it’s too good to paraphrase...) “Fog, like finest guaze, makes blotting paper of the land and, with a smudgy finger, draws the outline of some post or brick, as children with a walking stick will scribble in the sand.” And from ‘Ithondale’: “We fished. Two cats, a corgi dog, a buzzard’s nest. All these flash through the mind like oyster birds down a dark stream. And now how dim and pale that field of celendines. Impoverished by time to stuff of moonshine, like the rest, ’til all that’s left of two days is gone into a single line of dusty words...”. Certainly, there are old-fashioned inversions and turns of phrase in the poems - they don’t masquerade as contemporary writing - but Dehn’s high-pitched, delicious, crisp, brandy snap of a voice is the perfect instrument for their delivery.

     By contrast, Markham’s voice is low, a little more hesitant and has a soft, careworn quality. Although Markham does experiment with end-rhyme successfully (for example, there’s a rather neat pantoum in the pamphlet, called ‘School’ - a subject that gives itself to such a repetitive form) most of the poems in both the pamphlet and the recording are ‘free verse’.

     What I like about Markham’s writing is the way the poems explore imagination; they seem to tiptoe back and forth across the borders of their subjects and their vehicles, never quite declaring themselves of this world or that - a freeing experience for the reader. For example, in ‘The Wedding’, “Rain fell like shantung silk,/ Wrapping the streets, the traffic,/ The parcel vans and taxis in blue-ish bundles.” Also, certain images persist through different texts, and begin to behave almost as ideograms. When, in ‘Sick Hen’, Markham describes battery chickens her mother has nursed back to life, as having fallen over “on the grass on stiff, traumatised feet”, we can’t help but recall the image of her mother in another poem, ‘Daddy is Dying’: “She lies in the bright new grass, her sobs shake up all her timbers.”

     Lots of the poems are domestic - about her family, home and growing up. The Hansel and Gretel story which appears twice and sets off reverberations through many other poems featuring food and nourishment, is a very good choice of motif to explore not only the mother and daughter relationship (and, as you’d imagine, cries out for Kleinian interpretations), but also, love. The thread is subtle and not overly-worked

     From ‘Daddy is Dying’:

Day after day
Ma takes up his tray
The meals get smaller and smaller;
A doll’s plate of fish,
A spoon of lemon pudding,
Until there’s nothing left but water...

     From ‘Going Home’:

Mother has shrunk a bit more,
Sadness has eaten her face.
She cuts the cold meat loaf wafer thin,
The table is laid without his place,
We must eat before her tears begin.

     From ‘This House’:

This Hansel and Gretel house
Stuck with gingerbread and sugar twists

The windows dark, rinsed with fire,
The roof bitten in.

     I also like the fact that Markham takes on the holocaust as subject matter, something most writers without direct personal experience might consider foolhardy. But what she brings to it is an appropriate tentativeness and a generosity of spirit that is surprising and brave. Look at this portrayal of a member of the Gestapo: “A man stands at the wardrobe door,/ holding his dinner jacket./ Tears collect in his eyes,/ fat diamonds that hurt./ He tries to press them back/ but they run amok/ over his finger tips/ down his shaven skin.” (From ‘Last Night I dreamt of Yellow’.)