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Trouble in the Heartland by Joel Lane.
Arc Publications, Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road, Todmorden, Lancs 0L14 6DA £7.95.


Trouble in the Heartland by Joel Lane explores characters and situations in a largely urban setting.  Although not necessarily urban, the scenes in The Black Window suggest a person cramped indoors after he was  '...on the playing field. A shadow / that slammed him from behind, / a boot sliding down his instep / to freeze the muscle, bring numbness / and hollow pain. Breath in his ear: / How's that for a dead leg?...' 50 years later '...his dead leg / spoke to him as it blackened./  Its breath smelt of old leaves, / a lost garden, roses and briars...'  Many poems deal with people similarly sabotaged or probably sabotaging others and there is a litany of implied lost gardens.  The sharpness of loss is individually and most effectively shown in realistic scenes that can be as beautiful as they are bleak. The imagery is sharply original:  '...someone has spiked the city's drink: / the dead town is fading...' changing tempo to 'the ghosts are silent.  Tonight / the city is melting into rain, / into music, into a different life.' (from Neo)   There is implied anger at social situations, at people with few chances and no dignity is lost in '...As I walk back, the police / are arresting the boy, his possessions crammed into a grey bin liner - // and I stop in the hotel's shadow / with a line of The Bands in my head: / the crime of having nowhere to go.' (from The Grand Hotel). '...Trust is a joke' in the grimly resolute situation of Letters Page, while in the wry love poem White Label fine lyrical language expresses sadness and acute feeling: 'the sunlight feels so cold. Just like / last night, when the moon opened / every door in the house, and left me shivering in its gentle absence.' This is accomplished, compassionate, deeply thoughtful poetry, finely crafted.