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

2 From Vancouver

Michel Tremblay : Stories for Late Night Drinkers, translated from the French by Michael Bullock.

Contemporary Surrealist Prose Vol.1 : Hans Carl Artmann; Michael Bullock; Rikki Ducornet. (Artmann trans. Derk Wynand) edited by Dona Sturmanis & Edwin Varney.

     For the Tremblay book Michael Bullock won the Canada Council translation prize and it’s easy to see why: the English reads very fluently indeed. Never a hint of its “foreign” (French Canadian) origins. The stories are quite slight, being like a cross between Poe and Roald Dahl topped off with a dash of surrealism. Much of the plotting is clichéic....I found I could always predict what was going to happen. If you’ve read a lot of fantastic fiction of any period (and I have) you’ll find many instances of dejà vu. The only real difference is the quality of the prose. Usually fantasy is abominably written; this is good, if tongue-in-cheek.

     The Surrealist volume offers more of the same style from Rikki Ducornet, which I greatly enjoyed. The narratives are much shorter, generally, than the Tremblay and achieve the maximum results with the maximum economy. Excellent stuff. Michael Bullock’s prose poems will need no introduction, and in fact, the eighteen presented here come from the same forthcoming volume as those in this issue of Shearsman. The quality is high. As for Artmann, the Austrian writer, he is represented by rather outdated work (1968: Grünverschlossene Botschaft), which is a shame, because there is much better work - if less overtly surrealist - since then. The “selected” volume ein lilienweisser brief aus lincolnshire (suhrkamp) would have been worth raiding. The book is not totally successful, in that it ignores longer prose in favour of the short paragraphs of Artmann, the prose poems of Bullock, and the mini-stories of Ducornet. I’d like to have seen some extended fictions such as Bullock’s Cranstone stories (one of which, incidentally, will appear in the fifth issue of this magazine), or Artmann’s longer work. The illustrations in the book are first class, particularly those of John Digby and Roland Torpor.

Both books are published by Intermedia Press Ltd, Box 3294 Vancouver BC, Canada V6B 3X9.
They are both available from Independent Press Distribution in England

GAEL TURNBULL : THE SMALL CHANGE. (Migrant Press. £0.60)

     I mentioned in passing in the last issue that this book was not generally available. I’m pleased to report that this is, in fact, not so, and the book can be ordered from Alan Halsey or Nick Kimberley (see final page for details) or direct from the publisher at 61 Belmont Road, Malvern, Worcestershire, England.

     The Small Change includes 27 poems covering Turnbull’s whole writing career, from 1953 to 1979. There are poems from the two superb Cape Goliard volumes, A Trampoline and Scantlings, and also from the 70s’ pamphlets, Finger Cymbals and A Random Sapling. The delights are many and I hope I do not seem churlish in expressing my particular pleasure at finding here the persona poems An Irish Monk, on Lindisfarne, about 650 A.D. and George Fox, From his Journals, and also the Homage to Jean Follain, one of the finest English poems of the 50s. These poems are the early, better-known Turnbull. The later poems, mostly in an easy, relaxed style, unselfconscious, immediately appealing (eg. A Meagre Song), not afraid to rhyme, are also worth their place in this little book. It’s unlikely that the early books will be reprinted (though we can always hope....), and in the circumstances, this splendid booklet will fill a gap on many shelves. Do buy it. At the ridiculously low price, it’s difficult to justify not doing so.