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"Farewell My Lovely" by Polly Clark
Bloodaxe £7.95

"Farewell My Lovely" does contain a number of great poems (the title poem being an obvious standout); but by far the strongest voice within this collection is that found in the final section of this book.

‘I Thought It Was in Scotland’ is a sparse series of seven poems, written in the voice of a seventeen year old soldier serving in the Falklands. The intensity of voice, the intonation of innocence and the crush of reality are palpable in every one; ‘Dear Mum’ was not only exceptional in terms of (re)constructing form, but its honest and brutal representation of the internal conflict of its narrator left me close to tears. Clark cleverly interweaves the epistolary narrative between what this soldier tells his mother and the reality of what he is actually experiencing. She achieves this by scoring through the unsavoury narrative – whilst this technique isn’t new – it physical is employed with exceptional effect.

Mummy his brain
Came out on my hands

Serg says we’ll be home by my birthday!
Funny that I can fight a war but can’t drink!

Hard to write cos it’s very noisy!
Mummy I don’t think you’ll know me

I tried to hold his head together
I said it would be all right

There are other aspects to praise within this collection; in the title poem, her capacity for unexpected imagery and devastating simile is often exquisite;

…
the sea with a face I’d like to smack,
the loosening sky, fit to drop –

                    as I’m dusting the mirror
I glimpse her, smart as a rat
in the company of rocks –

If there is any aspect of this collection I am disappointed with, it is Clarke’s tendency to be a little too sentimental (which is in stark
contrast to the latter section of the book); in ‘Return to Eden’ and ‘Advice to a Daughter’ particularly, the tone is too conversational, too generic to achieve any intensity of a genuine voice. However, there are enough strong poems in this collection to counterbalance
those that don’t quite stand up to scrutiny.

In conclusion, when I reached the end of the collection, I felt a little cheated;‘I Thought It Was in Scotland’ seemed tacked on, which
both saddened and surprised me – I am not a renowned fan of war poetry (of any era) – and yet I couldn’t help but feel there was a bigger story to be told through this voice, more than any other within the book, if Polly Clarke ever writes that story - I’d buy the collection tomorrow.