Nick Cooke follows Rachael Clyne on a poetic guided tour of her family relationships
Girl Golem
Rachael Clyne
4Word Press
ISBN 978-2-9539966-6-1
37 pp ÂŁ5.99
This slender but sinewy pamphlet deals primarily with the poetâs childhood and adolescence in a Jewish tailoring family in Lancashire. Author of the 2014 prizewinning collection, Singing at the Bone Tree, Clyne deftly and candidly traces her relationship with her parents and grandmother, an initially fractious bond that is later marked by far greater tenderness, respect and compassion.
The title poem refers to Hebrew folklore and the myth of anthropomorphic clay figures magically brought to life, often standing as superhuman symbols fighting antisemitic oppression. Although a Golem can be of either gender, its best-known exemplars are traditionally male, hence the titleâs oxymoronic tension. The poemâs narrator shows the requisite feisty resilience even before her birth, but initially it is resistance to being born, as she âclung / bat-like to the wombâ. She was âmade as a keep-watch, / in case new nasties tried to take us awayâ, an eerily childlike reference to the older nasties of Nazism, in whose wake the birth occurs. Her response to the pressures placed on her is to develop a keen perceptiveness and no-holds-barred directness about the pressurisers:
With my x-ray eyes, I saw I was trapped
in a home for the deaf and blind, watched them
blunder into each otherâs craziness.
And then comes the irony of the specific task set the âlate bonusâ: âbe their assimilation ticket, find a nice boy and mazel tov â grandchildren!â However, this artful bathos, deflating the feminist aspirations even as they appeared to materialise, and placing the poem/collectionâs title in imaginary air quotes, is counterpointed through the poemâs finale, where Clyne celebrates reaching eighteen in her rebellious spirit:
I walked away, went in search of my own kind,
tore their god from my mouth.
Nonetheless, the sequencing of poems militates against any sense that the breakaway will be easy. The very next poem plunges us into images from Clyneâs childhood, as if to suggest how strongly it remains present within her even as she ostensibly moves on from it. In âThree Piece Suiteâ we see family members represented as household objects, locked or even frozen in their austerity-age postures â the antithesis of Clyneâs burgeoning energy. Between them the narrator is âtheir horseshoe magnetâ who âbristle[s] with pinsâ. How well chosen is that verb in expressing her anger and frustration, with âpinsâ hinting not only at her modest contribution to the then cottage-industry business, but at the inward pain of such emotions, a form of involuntary self-harm. It becomes increasingly plain that Clyne does not correspond to her familyâs hopes for her: she is âgrubby-kneed,â a ânosepickerâ who âtore the frocks Grandma made youâ and âanswered back, couldnât have thatâ (âGoodenoughâ). Meanwhile, her excellent eye for domestic detail emerges in describing the familyâs Southport house, and the drab stagnation of post-war Britain. Significantly, the grimness is partly redeemed by the glimpsed possibilities of escape to another world, if only in oneâs mind:
Lounge had crushed-velvet occasions
on cocktail sticks, dusty sofas
for headstands, radio programmes
in real foreign and books for escaping.
Backroom, snug with mottled shins,
ponged of coal fire. Toys slept in a cupboard.
I stood on a chair, Listened with Mother,
ear pressed to a wireless on the bureau.
(âThat Was The Downstairsâ)
The perspective broadens as the collection goes on. Clyneâs political consciousness evolves through the years, to embrace an apparent dismissal of any claim to a place of prominence in the roster of Nazi atrocity, but with a typically close-to-the-knuckle twist she points out that other oppressors have been more successful in reducing the familyâs numbers. âMine is Not a Holocaust Taleâ starts on a note that reminded me of Primo Leviâs poem on the randomness of survival or death at Auschwitz (âConsiderate se questo eâ un uomo ⌠che muore per un siâ or per un noâ), before the word âonlyâ recalls Geoffrey Hillâs chilling dissection of Nazi numerical efficiency in âSeptember Songâ (âJust so much Zyklon and leatherâ):
rather one of those whose kin turned right
instead of left. Only a great aunt, who worked
for Coco Chanel, ended in Auschwitzâs ovens,
and great uncles liquidated by Stalin, which,
aged seven, I thought meant turned into soup.
The poem ends by drawing attention to other groups who have suffered terrible oppression, including not only Palestinians but endangered animals. Some may question these comparisons in terms of relative magnitude, but the key point being made concerns the young Clyneâs evolution as she turns outward towards a world where though the Holocaust remains unique in most eyes, it is not the only example of consummate inhumanity.
As the focus widens we are taken back still further, to the familyâs origins in Ukraine, and a journey made by the poet, aware of her privileged state on a train with âlinen sheetsâ and full freedom of movement, in search of her roots. âLeaving Odessaâ brings us the discovery that âunder my feet / was once a debtorâs prison where Sonia [her grandmother] was bornâ. Her anger at Soniaâs forced migration is tempered by the wryly amused sense of quotidian banality that she never loses, and that she arguably uses as a shield against the harshness of history:
Now, an old Soviet terminus, its plaques to men with sledgehammers,
queue for the loo and a woman who hands me correct rations of papers.
Meanwhile, other family relationships have moved on and deepened. In âThe Only Suit He Made Meâ, we learn how by the time the Sixties arrive, the longed-for assimilation has occurred and the family business has expanded into a successful enterprise, boasting a âposh showroomâ, a âfloor awash with pinsâ, where her father âmade garments for mums / who holidayed in Majorcaâ. The suit in question, though, has the periodâs quirky pizazz and sparkle â âbell-bottoms with stitched pleats, / lilac wool cloth and hand-sewn buttonsâ â allowing the narrator to âstrut my stuff on Lord Street, / walk into coffee bars without blushingâ, reflecting that
I was with it, no longer without it,
thanks to my Daddio.
On a more sombre yet still ebullient note, âBig Sisterâ handles a loved oneâs imminent death from cancer with the kind of laconic grimace weâve grown used to, opening on a note of raucous defiance such as has been shown throughout the collection â
That night, we sang our way home
from a party, in the back of a cab â
but not shirking the stark reality of whatâs coming â
Gone, your marble persona
your Youth Dew perfume
your fault lines
the cancer.
Clyne ends with a muted but memorable clarion call for unity that questions what it means to evolve as a human. For individuals as well as societies and civilisations, does older always mean wiser?
Just moments of harmony
keep you
leaving me
older.
Once more we are cast back to an earlier poem, in this case âChernobyl Museumâ, where the nuclear cloud following the 1986 disaster is traced all the way to the Welsh hills:
There it spawned cancer
in a friend, that took decades to flower.
And an answer to the question about age and wisdom is suggested by Clyneâs observation that the path of that cloud is mapped by âa Japanese machineâ, âGifted by another nuclear survivorâ. As in the book overall, Clyne is too honest to allow her hopes for a better future to obscure her doubts about humanityâs ability to move forward: that use of âflowerâ is perhaps the most trenchant of the many sardonic thrusts in this often uplifting but admirably unsentimental collection.
London Grip Poetry Review – Rachael Clyne
February 28, 2019 by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, poetry reviews, year 2019 • Tags: books, Nick Cooke, poetry • 0 Comments
Nick Cooke follows Rachael Clyne on a poetic guided tour of her family relationships
This slender but sinewy pamphlet deals primarily with the poetâs childhood and adolescence in a Jewish tailoring family in Lancashire. Author of the 2014 prizewinning collection, Singing at the Bone Tree, Clyne deftly and candidly traces her relationship with her parents and grandmother, an initially fractious bond that is later marked by far greater tenderness, respect and compassion.
The title poem refers to Hebrew folklore and the myth of anthropomorphic clay figures magically brought to life, often standing as superhuman symbols fighting antisemitic oppression. Although a Golem can be of either gender, its best-known exemplars are traditionally male, hence the titleâs oxymoronic tension. The poemâs narrator shows the requisite feisty resilience even before her birth, but initially it is resistance to being born, as she âclung / bat-like to the wombâ. She was âmade as a keep-watch, / in case new nasties tried to take us awayâ, an eerily childlike reference to the older nasties of Nazism, in whose wake the birth occurs. Her response to the pressures placed on her is to develop a keen perceptiveness and no-holds-barred directness about the pressurisers:
And then comes the irony of the specific task set the âlate bonusâ: âbe their assimilation ticket, find a nice boy and mazel tov â grandchildren!â However, this artful bathos, deflating the feminist aspirations even as they appeared to materialise, and placing the poem/collectionâs title in imaginary air quotes, is counterpointed through the poemâs finale, where Clyne celebrates reaching eighteen in her rebellious spirit:
Nonetheless, the sequencing of poems militates against any sense that the breakaway will be easy. The very next poem plunges us into images from Clyneâs childhood, as if to suggest how strongly it remains present within her even as she ostensibly moves on from it. In âThree Piece Suiteâ we see family members represented as household objects, locked or even frozen in their austerity-age postures â the antithesis of Clyneâs burgeoning energy. Between them the narrator is âtheir horseshoe magnetâ who âbristle[s] with pinsâ. How well chosen is that verb in expressing her anger and frustration, with âpinsâ hinting not only at her modest contribution to the then cottage-industry business, but at the inward pain of such emotions, a form of involuntary self-harm. It becomes increasingly plain that Clyne does not correspond to her familyâs hopes for her: she is âgrubby-kneed,â a ânosepickerâ who âtore the frocks Grandma made youâ and âanswered back, couldnât have thatâ (âGoodenoughâ). Meanwhile, her excellent eye for domestic detail emerges in describing the familyâs Southport house, and the drab stagnation of post-war Britain. Significantly, the grimness is partly redeemed by the glimpsed possibilities of escape to another world, if only in oneâs mind:
The perspective broadens as the collection goes on. Clyneâs political consciousness evolves through the years, to embrace an apparent dismissal of any claim to a place of prominence in the roster of Nazi atrocity, but with a typically close-to-the-knuckle twist she points out that other oppressors have been more successful in reducing the familyâs numbers. âMine is Not a Holocaust Taleâ starts on a note that reminded me of Primo Leviâs poem on the randomness of survival or death at Auschwitz (âConsiderate se questo eâ un uomo ⌠che muore per un siâ or per un noâ), before the word âonlyâ recalls Geoffrey Hillâs chilling dissection of Nazi numerical efficiency in âSeptember Songâ (âJust so much Zyklon and leatherâ):
The poem ends by drawing attention to other groups who have suffered terrible oppression, including not only Palestinians but endangered animals. Some may question these comparisons in terms of relative magnitude, but the key point being made concerns the young Clyneâs evolution as she turns outward towards a world where though the Holocaust remains unique in most eyes, it is not the only example of consummate inhumanity.
As the focus widens we are taken back still further, to the familyâs origins in Ukraine, and a journey made by the poet, aware of her privileged state on a train with âlinen sheetsâ and full freedom of movement, in search of her roots. âLeaving Odessaâ brings us the discovery that âunder my feet / was once a debtorâs prison where Sonia [her grandmother] was bornâ. Her anger at Soniaâs forced migration is tempered by the wryly amused sense of quotidian banality that she never loses, and that she arguably uses as a shield against the harshness of history:
Meanwhile, other family relationships have moved on and deepened. In âThe Only Suit He Made Meâ, we learn how by the time the Sixties arrive, the longed-for assimilation has occurred and the family business has expanded into a successful enterprise, boasting a âposh showroomâ, a âfloor awash with pinsâ, where her father âmade garments for mums / who holidayed in Majorcaâ. The suit in question, though, has the periodâs quirky pizazz and sparkle â âbell-bottoms with stitched pleats, / lilac wool cloth and hand-sewn buttonsâ â allowing the narrator to âstrut my stuff on Lord Street, / walk into coffee bars without blushingâ, reflecting that
On a more sombre yet still ebullient note, âBig Sisterâ handles a loved oneâs imminent death from cancer with the kind of laconic grimace weâve grown used to, opening on a note of raucous defiance such as has been shown throughout the collection â
but not shirking the stark reality of whatâs coming â
Clyne ends with a muted but memorable clarion call for unity that questions what it means to evolve as a human. For individuals as well as societies and civilisations, does older always mean wiser?
Once more we are cast back to an earlier poem, in this case âChernobyl Museumâ, where the nuclear cloud following the 1986 disaster is traced all the way to the Welsh hills:
And an answer to the question about age and wisdom is suggested by Clyneâs observation that the path of that cloud is mapped by âa Japanese machineâ, âGifted by another nuclear survivorâ. As in the book overall, Clyne is too honest to allow her hopes for a better future to obscure her doubts about humanityâs ability to move forward: that use of âflowerâ is perhaps the most trenchant of the many sardonic thrusts in this often uplifting but admirably unsentimental collection.