Paul Lee
Reviews
Kissing Caligula by Sam Harcombe,
ISBN 1-903031-79-6, A5, 28pp, £4.00.
About Healing by Michael Cunningham,
ISBN 1904420-08-7, A5, 32pp, Driftwood Publications, 5 Timms Lane, Formby, Merseyside, L37 9DW, no price given.
Washing Up by Michael Johns,
ISBN 10903031-81-8, A5, 32pp, £4.00
Three small booklets, two self-published, all of which are remarkable only for their prosy ordinariness. Sam Harcombe seems to write just as he thinks it - ‘President Mitterand / said Margaret Thatcher / has the lips of Marilyn Monroe / and the eyes of Caligula. / What a terrifying thought: / to be made love to / while being assessed / for slaughter’- Kissing Caligula, which is something of a waste of a good idea and a great title. Michael Cunningham’s collection at least has the merit of a degree of intensity - ‘The emptiness makes love to me. / Mummy and Daddy / prickle with disgust. / Why do they see me and scream?’ - A Kiss for the Emptiness. And Michael Johns produces one poem that manages the trick of being spontaneous, throwaway and memorable all at the same time - ‘Give unto me a bent a rusty / supermarket trolley / possessing defective steering / Give unto me a plate of eels / a bag of cashew nuts and I will / demonstrate to you the Godliness / of Plato, Homer, Tommy Cooper’ - Tommy Cooper.
Page(s) 21-22
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