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

Difficult to know what to make of this. Alan Marshfield had, as he points out, a minor reputation as a poet in the 60s and 70s, with books from Anvil Press, poems on the BBC and in publications like The Listener and New Statesman, and an acquaintanceship with George MacBeth and Martin Bell. But towards the end of the 70s he began to withdraw from the poetry scene and turn to “family life and suburban dinner parties”. He tried his hand at writing novels, none of which were published, and used up a lot of energy “heading a string of school departments”. It was only in 1997, when he retired and had “a pension for patron”, that he went back to writing poetry.

     It’s a familiar story, allowing for variations in the details, and I often wonder what happened to poets I once knew and why I never see their names around anymore. I’ve taken the information about Marshfield’s life from the long introduction to this small collection of his recent poems, an introduction which not only brings us up-to-date with the facts but also allows Marshfield to expound his theories about writing poetry. Not to mention his opinions on other matters: “In my youth I thought that the world would become richer, more educated, more leisured, and that people would delight in using their minds. I was wrong. Before this happens, English will be a dead language and everyone will speak Chinese”. And so on, bringing in politics, philosophy, economics, religion, and family life. It’s all quite interesting, though I occasionally had the feeling it was a bit like those computer-produced letters people send with their Christmas cards and which provide details of their operations, holidays, divorces, career moves, and thoughts on the state of the world.

     After twenty-five pages of prose, Marshfield offers the reader around thirty pages of original poems and translations. Some of the poems are little more than squibs, written in a doggerel-like manner:

A young lady sat down a jif
and when I asked about life
she said they were taught
never to stereotype.

     Others aim for something more serious, though the language is often strained and the rhythm shaky. Marshfield is more successful when handling domestic subjects, or at least when he doesn’t push for effect.

     I take it that the aim of this presumably self-produced pamphlet is to get Marshfield’s work back into circulation. And it’s always good to see a poet re-surfacing after a long silence.