Thomas Ovans explores the often bizarre worlds conjured up by P W Bridgmanâs intriguing poetry
A Lamb
P W Bridgman
Ekstasis Editions
ISBN 978 1 77171 273 6
120pp $23.95
PW Bridgman is a Canadian poet whose work I had not previously encountered. This is not entirely surprising since A Lamb is his debut collection. The London Grip poetry editor informs me, however, that Bridgmanâs work has appeared in the Winter 2015 and Spring 2018 postings of London Grip New Poetry and the reader may care to turn to these examples which will give illustrate his distinctive style of narrative poem better than will be possible the via short extracts quoted in this review.
Although Bridgman does indeed have a distinctive style, he is explicit and generous throughout the collection in acknowledging some debt to works by an intriguing array of other poets â for instance Christopher Smart, Sinead Morrissey, Seamus Heaney, Lawrence Ferlinghetti , Al Purdy, Simon Armitage and William Blake. Elsewhere he broadens his sources of inspiration to include lyricists such as George Gershwin, Joni Mitchell and George Formby. The diversity of these influences suggests that Bridgman is a poet who thinks very laterally indeed.
A Lamb immediately makes an impression as a beautifully produced book (although I am not sure why it is named for the shortest and most untypical poem it contains). Its 120 pages contain only about 40 poems (in addition to a Foreword and other supporting material) and hence the average poem length is around two-and-a-half pages. In these relatively long poems Bridgman tells stories, sets scenes and develops ideas, often using quite plain language but most imaginatively put together in many varieties of free verse. His inventiveness is well summed up in his declaration that a poet
... resembles a Manager of
City Works with a free rein and a framed Poetic Licence
perched on the corner of his desk in City Hall. A poet
can make things happen through writerly alchemy.
With a few keystrokes â and without the need
of a work order, budget or authorizing minute from
City Council â a poet can refigure this cityâs street plan
These lines come from âAt the corner of Triumph and Pandoraâ â the in-joke being that these two Vancouver streets are in fact parallel.
The collection begins with a character-based sequence âJim Begins to Consider Himselfâ. We eavesdrop on, its protagonist in a variety of situations. Here we are at the passport office
âOccupation?â
Man of Vision.
âYou canât put thatâ
Entrepreneur.
âNor that.â
Financier. Magnate. Tycoon.
âIâm not even going to comment.â
Venture capitalist?
âFor fuckâs sake.â
Venture socialist? Sorry ...
Here we see Bridgmanâs knack for authentic sounding dialogue in which small jokes may be buried. In another character-based sequence âThe Julian Capstick Poemsâ about an ex-husband resuming a single life he allows his narrator to reflect that âBeth, You Is Not My Woman Nowâ. Capstick also shares the authorâs gift for close and quirky observation: noticing that a shop assistant wears a home-made badge bearing the name ChloĂ« he is moved to ask himself âWho knew a Dymo labeller could do an umlaut?â
Throughout the collection Bridgman takes similarly wry and imaginative notice of the trivialities of everyday life. A bishop trims his nails and âcrescent moons accumulate, one by one like pardoned sins, on the rubber floor mat at his feet.â Mundane details are particularly poignant when they are observed in the presence of death. After a wife collapses in the bathroom her husband observes
The shower curtain, torn from its rail,
must be replaced.
The quotidian will not yield
even to this, the greatest of calamities.
The effect upon those who are present when such calamities happen is skilfully encapsulated in âMr MacGregorâs Overcoatâ as âStraightaway, the warmth leaves the room / along with the her of her, more sensed than seen.â
One of Bridgmanâs most effective poetic devices is clever use of repetition or echoing . The first part of âWe Strive to Dismiss their Prejudices, Mostly with Good Humourâ begins
âEat only acumen,â Irenaâs father says over breakfast,
meaning the albumen ...
A little later in the poem, the narrator, having duly pushed the egg yolks to one side of his plate, reflects that
A birth control prescription has pushed Irenaâs to one side, too,
acumen and all ...
and adds ‘God, or someone please help us’ if Irena’s (presumably Roman Catholic) parents ever find out. In another distorted echo, Irenaâs father mistakenly uses âVulvaâ as the name of his much-prized car â the same type of vehicle to which Jim, the central character in the bookâs opening poem, pays homage: âIn the name of the Volvo, the mortgage / and the cave-aged Pont -lâĂvĂȘque.â
The recurring-word trick is used again in âNo Writers Were Harmed in the Making of this Whiskeyâ (readers will have seen by now that Bridgman doesnât stint in the matter of titles) which begins with two old men settling down for a quiet drink. One of them
... twists the bottle cap slowly
and with exaggerated care
like a sapper extracting a fuse cylinder
from an unexploded artillery shell.
Six pages later the poemâs apparently whimsical story has turned to something much darker and it is a shocking and tragic ending that is waiting to be discovered âlike an unexploded artillery shell.â
A more concentrated and striking use of echoing involves the word âgrievanceâ in âOut of the Bar and into the Black Belfast Nightâ. It begins simply enough âItâs Christmas Eve / and weâve lined up our grievances again…â The reader expects some amplification of this remark; but instead the same empty thoughts come round and around again, pushing obsession almost to breaking point.
Arrayed as empty glasses they are, our grievances
in this tatty bar in the Ormeau Road
...
Every Christmas Eve we meet here;
and we line them up, our grievances, here, just like this.
Just like the empty glasses weâve strung along the edge of this table.
This is what we do. We line up our grievances and we compare them.
A good many of the poems â for example âCarrying on after the Carrying Onâ, âLych Gate and Yewsâ, âGrace and Disgraceâ â present sad family stories often centred on one particular family member who is especially dysfunctional in his/her own way. While these work well as individual pieces it could be argued that there are rather too many them. Around the middle of the collection I was beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed by a relentless accumulation of harrowing stories. It made a welcome change when the mood shifted and some of the dysfunctional individuals were given a chance to speak for themselves. In âEmpoweredâ a homeless sixty-eight year old amuses himself by walking out into the street in front of cars and making the drivers hit the brakes
For one long second
Iâm the most important person
in their world.
In the worst way
they want me alive and well.
Yeah me. Imagine that.
An underdog also gets the last laugh in the throwaway give-away line at the end of the threatening looking and ominous-sounding prose poem âAd Te Clamamus, Exsules Filii Hevaeâ.
A much bigger departure from domestic drama occurs in âSafari Not Supported But Your Prayer Is Important To Usâ in which a couple of hackers are trying to locate God on the internet.
Yâknow, think about it. It canât be just http. God must use an https.
Youâre probably right.
And definitely not dot com.
When it turns out that âSAFARI CANNOT ESTABLISH A SECURE CONNECTION TO THE SERVER WWW.GOD.ORGââ there is still some theological consolation to be drawn
Well at least itâs not saying He doesnât exist.
Thatâs true. In fact itâs sort of acknowledging that He does exist
or at least that His server exists
Evidently the sky is not the limit of Bridgmanâs poetic imagination.
London Grip Poetry Review – P W Bridgman
February 25, 2019 by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, poetry reviews, year 2019 • Tags: books, poetry, Thomas Ovans • 0 Comments
Thomas Ovans explores the often bizarre worlds conjured up by P W Bridgmanâs intriguing poetry
PW Bridgman is a Canadian poet whose work I had not previously encountered. This is not entirely surprising since A Lamb is his debut collection. The London Grip poetry editor informs me, however, that Bridgmanâs work has appeared in the Winter 2015 and Spring 2018 postings of London Grip New Poetry and the reader may care to turn to these examples which will give illustrate his distinctive style of narrative poem better than will be possible the via short extracts quoted in this review.
Although Bridgman does indeed have a distinctive style, he is explicit and generous throughout the collection in acknowledging some debt to works by an intriguing array of other poets â for instance Christopher Smart, Sinead Morrissey, Seamus Heaney, Lawrence Ferlinghetti , Al Purdy, Simon Armitage and William Blake. Elsewhere he broadens his sources of inspiration to include lyricists such as George Gershwin, Joni Mitchell and George Formby. The diversity of these influences suggests that Bridgman is a poet who thinks very laterally indeed.
A Lamb immediately makes an impression as a beautifully produced book (although I am not sure why it is named for the shortest and most untypical poem it contains). Its 120 pages contain only about 40 poems (in addition to a Foreword and other supporting material) and hence the average poem length is around two-and-a-half pages. In these relatively long poems Bridgman tells stories, sets scenes and develops ideas, often using quite plain language but most imaginatively put together in many varieties of free verse. His inventiveness is well summed up in his declaration that a poet
These lines come from âAt the corner of Triumph and Pandoraâ â the in-joke being that these two Vancouver streets are in fact parallel.
The collection begins with a character-based sequence âJim Begins to Consider Himselfâ. We eavesdrop on, its protagonist in a variety of situations. Here we are at the passport office
Here we see Bridgmanâs knack for authentic sounding dialogue in which small jokes may be buried. In another character-based sequence âThe Julian Capstick Poemsâ about an ex-husband resuming a single life he allows his narrator to reflect that âBeth, You Is Not My Woman Nowâ. Capstick also shares the authorâs gift for close and quirky observation: noticing that a shop assistant wears a home-made badge bearing the name ChloĂ« he is moved to ask himself âWho knew a Dymo labeller could do an umlaut?â
Throughout the collection Bridgman takes similarly wry and imaginative notice of the trivialities of everyday life. A bishop trims his nails and âcrescent moons accumulate, one by one like pardoned sins, on the rubber floor mat at his feet.â Mundane details are particularly poignant when they are observed in the presence of death. After a wife collapses in the bathroom her husband observes
The effect upon those who are present when such calamities happen is skilfully encapsulated in âMr MacGregorâs Overcoatâ as âStraightaway, the warmth leaves the room / along with the her of her, more sensed than seen.â
One of Bridgmanâs most effective poetic devices is clever use of repetition or echoing . The first part of âWe Strive to Dismiss their Prejudices, Mostly with Good Humourâ begins
A little later in the poem, the narrator, having duly pushed the egg yolks to one side of his plate, reflects that
and adds ‘God, or someone please help us’ if Irena’s (presumably Roman Catholic) parents ever find out. In another distorted echo, Irenaâs father mistakenly uses âVulvaâ as the name of his much-prized car â the same type of vehicle to which Jim, the central character in the bookâs opening poem, pays homage: âIn the name of the Volvo, the mortgage / and the cave-aged Pont -lâĂvĂȘque.â
The recurring-word trick is used again in âNo Writers Were Harmed in the Making of this Whiskeyâ (readers will have seen by now that Bridgman doesnât stint in the matter of titles) which begins with two old men settling down for a quiet drink. One of them
Six pages later the poemâs apparently whimsical story has turned to something much darker and it is a shocking and tragic ending that is waiting to be discovered âlike an unexploded artillery shell.â
A more concentrated and striking use of echoing involves the word âgrievanceâ in âOut of the Bar and into the Black Belfast Nightâ. It begins simply enough âItâs Christmas Eve / and weâve lined up our grievances again…â The reader expects some amplification of this remark; but instead the same empty thoughts come round and around again, pushing obsession almost to breaking point.
A good many of the poems â for example âCarrying on after the Carrying Onâ, âLych Gate and Yewsâ, âGrace and Disgraceâ â present sad family stories often centred on one particular family member who is especially dysfunctional in his/her own way. While these work well as individual pieces it could be argued that there are rather too many them. Around the middle of the collection I was beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed by a relentless accumulation of harrowing stories. It made a welcome change when the mood shifted and some of the dysfunctional individuals were given a chance to speak for themselves. In âEmpoweredâ a homeless sixty-eight year old amuses himself by walking out into the street in front of cars and making the drivers hit the brakes
An underdog also gets the last laugh in the throwaway give-away line at the end of the threatening looking and ominous-sounding prose poem âAd Te Clamamus, Exsules Filii Hevaeâ.
A much bigger departure from domestic drama occurs in âSafari Not Supported But Your Prayer Is Important To Usâ in which a couple of hackers are trying to locate God on the internet.
When it turns out that âSAFARI CANNOT ESTABLISH A SECURE CONNECTION TO THE SERVER WWW.GOD.ORGââ there is still some theological consolation to be drawn
Evidently the sky is not the limit of Bridgmanâs poetic imagination.