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Interland: Six Steps Under Water by Steve Dearden, Kath McKay, Ralf Andtbacka, Carita Nystrom, Adam Strickson, Marko Hautala
(Smith / Doorstop Books £14.95)
Available from www.poetrybusiness.com


This lovely looking book comprises poetry and prose from six writers:  three Finnish and three British. It is the result of an exchange between Yorkshire Arts and the Ostrobothnian Arts Commission, and must have resulted in some mighty fine jollies for all concerned – so I’m dead jealous!! There is no doubting that other countries tend to do this kind of thing with much more regularity than we do here, and it’s three cheers to Smith / Doorstop that they’ve had the nous and courage to put this book out.

But what of the quality of the contents?  The introduction tells us that the theme of water arose fairly early and reference is made to the swimming contest between Beowulf and Breca at the beginning of Beowulf  which finishes with Beowulf landing on the coast of Finland.  Steve Dearden brings his knowledge of small dinghy sailing to the feast and Kath McKay contributes a poem which names all the swimming pools in Leeds;  the other writers take of the theme with wit and will.  In addition, there are epigraphs for most sections from the Finnish national epic The Kalevala.

Steve Dearden’s short prose epiphanies are perfectly placed at the beginning of the book.  There’s a carefully organised and mellifluous quality to Dearden’s prose that carries you along.  There is also a great variety of location in these texts:  his city centre office, the reservoirs on which he sails, the moors surrounding and draining under his house, the rugby pitch of his school days and the Manchester Ship Canal.  Throughout his pieces there is a marriage of detail and resonance that is both beguiling and revealing.

Kath McKay’s poetry is next on the menu.  Each of the sections is introduced by a comment by the writer who had been paired with that writer:  Kath McKay had been paired with Carita Nystrom, who comments that McKay is ‘A small miracle of speed’.  This somewhat ambiguous comment does occasionally sum up the poems which can be slightly hurried, not in an unfinished way but with images that tend to tumble one after the other.  The language is bare and unadorned, and the honeyed quality of Dearden’s prose is absent from McKay’s poetry.  There’s little sense of lingering over an image or resonance which is a pity because McKay has a clear quick eye for place and people and the interesting detail that informs both. 

The first Finnish contributor to the volume is Ralf Andtbacka.  Andtbacka uses, as they say these days, heteroglossia.  The scatology of drunks, quotations from Heraclitus, a bleakly comic description of the slaughter of a horse, lists and litany, are all grist to the writer’s mill. Andtbacka has a gritty surrealist approach to things which can sometimes seem slightly directionless but it is often darkly effective.

Carita Nystrom also has a taste for litany, but that is used for scene setting.  Once that is out of the way, Nystrom proves herself an entirely capable poet in English with a warm feel for the language, and, like Dearden, a sense of organisation and trajectory that moves the reader quietly and effectively around her imagination: ‘In the night the rain/ crystallized into stars./ When morning came/ they whirled outside the window. A long journey lies ahead./ Note how effectively Nystrom uses the change in tense there.  She is also adept at the short prose text as well.

As Marko Hautala notes in his introduction to Adam Strickson’s writing, ‘Adam’s piece is perhaps closest to a classical story in this anthology’.  There is a plot here which I don’t want to reveal.  In addition, there are depths of genuine emotion, and Strickson shows himself as a writer who can convey great complexity and emotional range with considerable skill.

The final writer in this book is Marko Hautala.  And Hautala is, perhaps, the most interesting. Apparently, he is writing a PhD on Blake, and although there is no direct influence on either his subject matter or his style, there is a concern for the writer’s place in civilization which is refracted through this writing.  The flickering surrealism of Andtbacka is also present here but with more direction and trajectory, and a sense of sweep that is deeply entrancing.  Strickson compliments Hautala’s English as ‘carefully beautiful’ and there is a control here that many native speaker writers should envy. 

There’s a section of emails which rather pad out this book.  And I’m assuming that it’s the Finnish writers who do all the translations; and there’s no indication of what hand the English writers had in their Finnish counterparts’ English.  In addition, we, the linguistically inept British are not told which of these translations are into Swedish and which into Finnish – I’m assuming the Strickson / Hautala collaboration is the latter. However, overall this is a rewarding, beautifully delivered book, and I’ll finish with a section from Marko Hautala’s ‘Six Steps Underwater’: ‘If you find a three-inch crack in the ice and follow it up north, walk through the whirls of snow like curtains to other worlds, you’ll find an old woman with wings.  Shivering with words.  Muted by the wind.  Pregnant with loss.  I’ve never been this close to believing.’