Three for the price of one: Michael Bartholomew-Biggs browses a compilation of poetry by Pamela Johnson, Jennifer Grigg & Jane Kirwan
Stories & Lies
Pamela Johnson, Jennifer Grigg & Jane Kirwan
Blue Door Press
ISBN 978-1-9164754-9-6
78pp ÂŁ10
Stories and Lies is effectively three chapbooks conveniently contained in one binding. Pamela Johnson, Jennifer Grigg and Jane Kirwan each contribute twenty-odd pages of poetry. As the overall title implies these contributions are loosely united by the theme of narratives â either those constructed to make sense of past events or else those which seek to conceal and confuse attempts to find out what really happened.
Pamela Johnsonâs poems under the title âCut on the Biasâ interweave childhood memories of parents and family with more up to date accounts of adult encounters with mothers or fathers in their declining years. An experience of a semi-detached family life is well captured in âLupinsâ
In her stiff-belted frock
sheâd no time for questions
...
busied me and the day away
...
while he remained neutral
ridging and mulching his potatoes
to keep out the light.
Note that deceptively innocent but telling last line. The child-narrator tells how she âwatched them, ceaseless / in their separate tasksâ before seeking a more stimulating and colourful refuge âamong the lupinsâ. But, in due course, a teenage girl with a car-owning boy friend finds other ways of escape.
We wrap the car around ourselves,
his battered Mini, pull away
from the cling of pebble dash.
(âFirst Loveâ)
But leaving pebble dash behind for ever is not so easy. âBrick Workâ presents a more claustrophobic situation, face to face with an uncommunicative older person â probably a mother.
Today, I dare to say:
We need to talk. I lean forward.
She does what she always does: shuts
her eyes, solid as walled-up windows.
A similar sense of confinement and secrecy is conveyed in the grim relentlessness of the pantoum âLondon to Manchesterâ â âthe train ploughs on past frozen fields… we might be boxed forever in this frost and fog.â Throughout the journey there is no response to the question âwhy has she kept a frost on all her past?â The narrator can only offer the consoling thought âI hope she did it to protect us.â And answers to such questions may not even be obtained by eventual sifting through objects when clearing a house after its ownerâs death. The weird and wonderful list poem âThe Grand Tourâ ultimately yields only âunder the bed her suitcase â empty.â
A more fanciful way in which one stubborn person can kill a conversation with stonewalling, clichĂ©d responses occurs in âThe Consolation of Russian Proverbsâ. And in âParrotâ Johnson skilfully turns the tables and takes us inside the fears and fixations of the elderly. We are told that âAs a lad, Dad had a dread / of his grandmaâs birdâ and now , as an old man, the prattling of his carer and his own caged condition in a residential home bring back his horror of the parrotâs meaningless chatter and the mockery of freedom it enjoyed when occasionally allowed a brief flight around the room.
Growing up, of course, need not only be a matter of relationship with parents. âTunnelâ is about the peer-pressure of siblings and playmates often exercised through daring one another to take risks
Do it â because he says you canât.
Do it â if you donât youâll die.
If you do, heâll die.
Similar bravado occurs among adults. The most overtly humorous poem in this selection deals with domestic myths and legends that accumulate and gain acceptance irrespective of evidence. Even though âNobody in my family / has sailed the Atlanticâ the narrator has to listen to
my two sisters brag how they
can read stars and navigation charts and
before long Anni (the eldest) is on about
that freak wave south of The Azores
Soon everyone is joining in. It seems her mother âtaught herself / to gut swordfish with a potato peelerâ. But the observation that âthey never include me / in these talesâ eventually brings us back to the engagingly sombre and thoughtful tone which Johnson sustains so well in this selection.
The section âLady Luckâ by Jennifer Grigg begins, like Johnsonâs, with poems of childhood; but this childâs story book, given by grandparents, hints at wider horizons than the domestic British:
Cyrillic letters leap,
their legs run them off the page,
only the pictures stay.
(âFirst Bookâ)
âSummer Streetâ ventures from the mundane to the supernatural with the mention of a ghost âin the upstairs hall of number thirty-one.â There is a more alarming sense of uncanny activity in âPeace of Mindâ
My mind is making up its bed in a house with paper walls.
things fall from the ceiling and we dodge them,
cloaked with dust and trying not to cry.
Is this poltergeist activity? Perhaps, although there is also a hint that the poem describes the loss of security after a burglary.
There could, too, be something haunting about a childâs fascination with the long dresses of âbeaded chiffon, taffeta, shantungâ that hang in her grandmaâs closet. But closer observation brings matters back down to earth:
Iâd sniff the perfume trails, the smoke clouds,
the sharpness of sweat from dances
with men who werenât my grandfather.
(âBreakfast with Grandmaâ)
In the title poem we learn the identity of at least one of these men. âShe once danced with Archie Leach â Oh he was clumsy, stood all over my feet!â
âFire on Thirdâ marks an abrupt switch from the security of private reminiscence to situations of public danger. It describes an evacuation following a (probably false) alarm in an art gallery and vividly catches the parental anxiety ânine year olds / weigh nothing compared / to death in a crowded stairwell.â Other perils â this time caused by extreme weather â are featured in âTornado Kills Sixâ and âUncle Bob Turns 100â although in the latter case the peril lies only in the unwisdom of eating oysters during hot July in St Louis.
In the later stages of this section there are poems to do with exile and the reactions of strangers in an unfamiliar city. In London âthe milkmanâs horse amazed my little daughter â / he knew where to stop and put his feet up on the kerb.â In New York there are âyellow taxis, fifteen-cent subway rides, double features.â And, wherever one happens to be, an exile can claim that âloneliness, like a tattoo, marks me out.â If you were a refugee
Your rented doors
never closed all the way,
no need, the rooms were empty.
The worst extremes of exile are faced in âThe Curtainâ.
When they sentenced me to Siberia
I had only my greatcoat and my glasses.
The glasses turn out in fact to be of limited use since âwe had no booksâ; but as a substitute the narrator boasts that âI recited poetry for usâ. Eventually, after âthey changed my cell/ and took away my glassesâ the narrator asks his servant about âthat lovely beaded curtain /… glittering on the wallâ. (Even in Siberia, military rank counts for something and officers are entitled to be waited upon.)
âThatâs cockroaches, Sirâ he told me
and I could just see his blurry smile.
Intentional or not, the poignant contrast with grandmaâs lovely âbeaded chiffonâ dress in the earlier poem is one example of the way that Griggâs well-crafted poems work together and complement one another.
For me, Jane Kirwanâs poems in âOne Made Earlierâ are the most enigmatic in the compilation. They set up intriguing well-conjured scenes and situations but do not always gratify the reader with an easy pay-off or explanation.
A recurring theme is loss â or possibly usurpation â of identity. In the opening poem âSo Nearâ an un-named âsheâ is watching people on a beach and knows that what she is seeing
is familiar to whoever is gently taking possession
and if she can name the person sidling into her brain
it might stop a sense of being found wanting, excluded,
here by the edge of the ocean , in this century.
Now, she wonders, âif she scrambles over the wooden barrierâ
.... to join them
â which she should, and badly wants to â
will it still be her?
Perhaps this is all about looking at an old photograph and feeling a risk of being drawn in and swallowed by the past. Certainly a photograph seems to present a danger in âThou Shalt Not Stand Outâ in which the narrator recalls her motherâs severe and sensible brown and cream coat and asks
But what if Iâm tempted to wear it,
have a photo taken, me in her tweed coat
and find Iâm blotted out.
Kirwan also reflects in âPassing Down Textâ on how identity can be preserved by inheritance. And in âInfantâ she writes of a grand-daughter â wonderfully characterised as âa little Napoleon with demands and gold buttonsâ â and recalls that
some of her cells are in her motherâs brain
and her motherâs cells in mine
yet mine is an untidy drawer
with life a pile of dust in one corner
The harsh self-judgment in that second couplet is perhaps related to an earlier poem whose narrator questions her own competence â where competence is imagined as
the cloth
the magician flaps across the table
while underneath
lost watches are found dying plants
revive
broken plates and
babies reassemble
in their exact and ideal place
("Uncertain")
This cheerful excursion into fanciful and magical thinking about renewal and restoration seems rather at odds with a thread of hostility to church and religion that runs through many of the poems. âSunday Mass with Thoughts of Exileâ draws on memories of spiteful and judgmental gossip in a congregation which a child, very understandably, âswears sheâll do litanies to escapeâ. âThe Night before Christmasâ makes fun of a cobbled-together crib scene in which âthree wise men were cardboard cut from a cornflakes packet / that someone had painted green, and one kept falling overâ. This is perhaps mildly affectionate; but there is nothing of affection in “Loaves and Fishes” with its picture of a woman expertly gutting fish which is coupled with fierce regret that she
didnât see the hypocrisy of priests,
that their dried out act was cut off from blood and guts
and sheâd need more than a razor-sharp edge.
(The tool she might need, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, is the word of God [which] is sharper than any two-edged sword…[and] able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.)
There is also a brisk dismissal of most of the Ten Commandments beginning with âYou loathe all brands of godâ but giving a grudging acquiescence to commandment four with âyour parents are fineâ. Number five also gets the nod because
Itâs bothersome to kill, and why? All the effort
â mess, blood, being left with a body.
With the Bible ruled out, Kirwan is interested in alternative attempts to create a better life narrative. The title poem is about trying to construct a substitute mother out of materials such as âold sweaters, used jam jars newly washedâ. This version has some good points â it âstirs the porridge brisklyâ â but in the end it goes âon a dud pile with the othersâ. Elsewhere, Kirwan finds herself on the receiving end of someone else who is keen on âGetting the Story Absolutely Rightâ
Itâs the way her fingers pinch into my arm
â painful like the tale sheâs telling,
the tragic characters, doomed plot.
Up and down the stairs, chat chat chat.
This is who she is: the hopeless choices,
lost loves, a diamond chucked in Lough Conn.
This is, I think, my favourite among Kirwan’s effective and powerful poems which remain uncompromising even when tackling uncertainties.
Stories & Lies
March 7, 2019 by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, poetry reviews, year 2019 • Tags: books, Michael Bartholomew-Biggs, poetry • 0 Comments
Three for the price of one: Michael Bartholomew-Biggs browses a compilation of poetry by Pamela Johnson, Jennifer Grigg & Jane Kirwan
Stories and Lies is effectively three chapbooks conveniently contained in one binding. Pamela Johnson, Jennifer Grigg and Jane Kirwan each contribute twenty-odd pages of poetry. As the overall title implies these contributions are loosely united by the theme of narratives â either those constructed to make sense of past events or else those which seek to conceal and confuse attempts to find out what really happened.
Pamela Johnsonâs poems under the title âCut on the Biasâ interweave childhood memories of parents and family with more up to date accounts of adult encounters with mothers or fathers in their declining years. An experience of a semi-detached family life is well captured in âLupinsâ
Note that deceptively innocent but telling last line. The child-narrator tells how she âwatched them, ceaseless / in their separate tasksâ before seeking a more stimulating and colourful refuge âamong the lupinsâ. But, in due course, a teenage girl with a car-owning boy friend finds other ways of escape.
But leaving pebble dash behind for ever is not so easy. âBrick Workâ presents a more claustrophobic situation, face to face with an uncommunicative older person â probably a mother.
A similar sense of confinement and secrecy is conveyed in the grim relentlessness of the pantoum âLondon to Manchesterâ â âthe train ploughs on past frozen fields… we might be boxed forever in this frost and fog.â Throughout the journey there is no response to the question âwhy has she kept a frost on all her past?â The narrator can only offer the consoling thought âI hope she did it to protect us.â And answers to such questions may not even be obtained by eventual sifting through objects when clearing a house after its ownerâs death. The weird and wonderful list poem âThe Grand Tourâ ultimately yields only âunder the bed her suitcase â empty.â
A more fanciful way in which one stubborn person can kill a conversation with stonewalling, clichĂ©d responses occurs in âThe Consolation of Russian Proverbsâ. And in âParrotâ Johnson skilfully turns the tables and takes us inside the fears and fixations of the elderly. We are told that âAs a lad, Dad had a dread / of his grandmaâs birdâ and now , as an old man, the prattling of his carer and his own caged condition in a residential home bring back his horror of the parrotâs meaningless chatter and the mockery of freedom it enjoyed when occasionally allowed a brief flight around the room.
Growing up, of course, need not only be a matter of relationship with parents. âTunnelâ is about the peer-pressure of siblings and playmates often exercised through daring one another to take risks
Similar bravado occurs among adults. The most overtly humorous poem in this selection deals with domestic myths and legends that accumulate and gain acceptance irrespective of evidence. Even though âNobody in my family / has sailed the Atlanticâ the narrator has to listen to
Soon everyone is joining in. It seems her mother âtaught herself / to gut swordfish with a potato peelerâ. But the observation that âthey never include me / in these talesâ eventually brings us back to the engagingly sombre and thoughtful tone which Johnson sustains so well in this selection.
The section âLady Luckâ by Jennifer Grigg begins, like Johnsonâs, with poems of childhood; but this childâs story book, given by grandparents, hints at wider horizons than the domestic British:
âSummer Streetâ ventures from the mundane to the supernatural with the mention of a ghost âin the upstairs hall of number thirty-one.â There is a more alarming sense of uncanny activity in âPeace of Mindâ
Is this poltergeist activity? Perhaps, although there is also a hint that the poem describes the loss of security after a burglary.
There could, too, be something haunting about a childâs fascination with the long dresses of âbeaded chiffon, taffeta, shantungâ that hang in her grandmaâs closet. But closer observation brings matters back down to earth:
In the title poem we learn the identity of at least one of these men. âShe once danced with Archie Leach â Oh he was clumsy, stood all over my feet!â
âFire on Thirdâ marks an abrupt switch from the security of private reminiscence to situations of public danger. It describes an evacuation following a (probably false) alarm in an art gallery and vividly catches the parental anxiety ânine year olds / weigh nothing compared / to death in a crowded stairwell.â Other perils â this time caused by extreme weather â are featured in âTornado Kills Sixâ and âUncle Bob Turns 100â although in the latter case the peril lies only in the unwisdom of eating oysters during hot July in St Louis.
In the later stages of this section there are poems to do with exile and the reactions of strangers in an unfamiliar city. In London âthe milkmanâs horse amazed my little daughter â / he knew where to stop and put his feet up on the kerb.â In New York there are âyellow taxis, fifteen-cent subway rides, double features.â And, wherever one happens to be, an exile can claim that âloneliness, like a tattoo, marks me out.â If you were a refugee
The worst extremes of exile are faced in âThe Curtainâ.
The glasses turn out in fact to be of limited use since âwe had no booksâ; but as a substitute the narrator boasts that âI recited poetry for usâ. Eventually, after âthey changed my cell/ and took away my glassesâ the narrator asks his servant about âthat lovely beaded curtain /… glittering on the wallâ. (Even in Siberia, military rank counts for something and officers are entitled to be waited upon.)
Intentional or not, the poignant contrast with grandmaâs lovely âbeaded chiffonâ dress in the earlier poem is one example of the way that Griggâs well-crafted poems work together and complement one another.
For me, Jane Kirwanâs poems in âOne Made Earlierâ are the most enigmatic in the compilation. They set up intriguing well-conjured scenes and situations but do not always gratify the reader with an easy pay-off or explanation.
A recurring theme is loss â or possibly usurpation â of identity. In the opening poem âSo Nearâ an un-named âsheâ is watching people on a beach and knows that what she is seeing
Now, she wonders, âif she scrambles over the wooden barrierâ
Perhaps this is all about looking at an old photograph and feeling a risk of being drawn in and swallowed by the past. Certainly a photograph seems to present a danger in âThou Shalt Not Stand Outâ in which the narrator recalls her motherâs severe and sensible brown and cream coat and asks
Kirwan also reflects in âPassing Down Textâ on how identity can be preserved by inheritance. And in âInfantâ she writes of a grand-daughter â wonderfully characterised as âa little Napoleon with demands and gold buttonsâ â and recalls that
The harsh self-judgment in that second couplet is perhaps related to an earlier poem whose narrator questions her own competence â where competence is imagined as
This cheerful excursion into fanciful and magical thinking about renewal and restoration seems rather at odds with a thread of hostility to church and religion that runs through many of the poems. âSunday Mass with Thoughts of Exileâ draws on memories of spiteful and judgmental gossip in a congregation which a child, very understandably, âswears sheâll do litanies to escapeâ. âThe Night before Christmasâ makes fun of a cobbled-together crib scene in which âthree wise men were cardboard cut from a cornflakes packet / that someone had painted green, and one kept falling overâ. This is perhaps mildly affectionate; but there is nothing of affection in “Loaves and Fishes” with its picture of a woman expertly gutting fish which is coupled with fierce regret that she
(The tool she might need, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, is the word of God [which] is sharper than any two-edged sword…[and] able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.)
There is also a brisk dismissal of most of the Ten Commandments beginning with âYou loathe all brands of godâ but giving a grudging acquiescence to commandment four with âyour parents are fineâ. Number five also gets the nod because
With the Bible ruled out, Kirwan is interested in alternative attempts to create a better life narrative. The title poem is about trying to construct a substitute mother out of materials such as âold sweaters, used jam jars newly washedâ. This version has some good points â it âstirs the porridge brisklyâ â but in the end it goes âon a dud pile with the othersâ. Elsewhere, Kirwan finds herself on the receiving end of someone else who is keen on âGetting the Story Absolutely Rightâ
This is, I think, my favourite among Kirwan’s effective and powerful poems which remain uncompromising even when tackling uncertainties.