London Grip Poetry Review – Ian McMillan
Stuart Henson wonders about the title but in other respects finds that the sharp-pointed humour in Ian McMillanâs new chapbook penetrates most of its targets.
Thatâs Not a Fishing Boat, Itâs a Giraffe: Responses to Austerity
Ian McMillan Smith|Doorstop, 2019, ISBN 978-1-912196-75-3 36pp ÂŁ5.00
Austerity, weâre told, is over. The new Prime Minister is an enthusiast for the Northern Powerhouse. Maybe heâs already visited Barnsley bestowing largesse. In which case Ian McMillan, with characteristic irony, might well have called this mini-collection Thatâs Not a Way Out: Itâs a Stable Door. The effects of ten years of cuts are unlikely, alas, to disappear with any kind of Boris quick-fix, so Thatâs Not a Fishing Boat⊠is a timely reminder of what the policy has brought us to. As youâd expect from McMillan, itâs by no means all doom and gloom. The author, the blurb reminds us âspends his time writing, doing gigs in village halls and presenting The Verb on BBC Radio 3. He has a lot of fun!â
If he were a footballerâand you donât mind a good clichĂ©âyouâd say McMillanâs at the top of his game, though that metaphor breaks down a bit since heâs really among the thousands on the terraces, wearing his red shirt with pride and shouting with them, and thereâs more than three points at stake.
Sometimes the images come at you straight on, as in the conclusion of the perfectly constructed âThe Hard Shipâ which follows its conceit inexorably. As people gather to witness the launch of the eponymous âshipâ there are âthe dignitaries, the brass band, the speechesâ drowned as in a terrible dream so they canât be heard:
âŠFish mouths Opening and closing, opening and closing. Stand closer to the Hard Ship! They shout And we shuffle forward, weeping. We have seen People crushed by the Hard Ship before, and pushed Into the hard water where they flail a little, then settle.
Others work in less obvious ways: the sadness creeps up, magnified by the resonance of the collectionâs subtitle. In âHangâ for instance, the dress on a charity shop coat-hanger and the blue high heels nearby are telling their âtottering historyâ. âTelling their story / Nobody listening.â Or in the doubtful repetition at the close of âPlainâ where the speaker, lost in the emptiness of a late-night hotel bar, decides to go for broke with another packet of crisps. âPlain / I like plain. I like plain. I like plainâ. Plain, of course, is what you get with austerity. You can hear McMillanâs voice relishing those pauses, his tongue licking the last salty crumbs out of that word.
The label âperformance poetâ is really too reductive to do justice to Ian McMillanâs work, though there are certainly performative elements there. The Bard of Barnsleyâs Uncle Charlie with his cap âflat / As a pit pond.â would chat along happily at a wedding with Peter Kayâs Uncle Nobby, and McMillan himself could be the friend in Kayâs chip-shop story where travelling down south they discover they donât do peas and they donât do curry sauce. Yet the poems Iâm thinking of here offer so much more than a gag or a laugh. Uncle Charlie, in âUncle Charlieâs Moonâ is not going to be taken in by the news of Buzz Aldrinâs landing:
He points at the distant Bike lamp of the moon. âTheyâre nivver there Ian lad. Nivver.
O the perfection, the bathos, of that bike-lamp moon. You can picture exactly the kind of lamp too, not the satellite-flashing LED things you get today but the chunky old Ever-Ready ones whose batteries sported those flapping brass connectors you could test with your tongue.
âThe Fragility of Historyâ is another that takes us back in timeâto 1980, when the pit bus still rolls by with its occupants gesturing âGiz / Some of that bastard pie and peas!â The young McMillan waves back, and at that moment none of them knows that this is the end of an era, âThat this is the last time I will visit / The pie and pea manâs clanging bell / with my bowls that shine innocently.â The poet as Oliver Twist. The boy who wants more from a world thatâs beginning to give less and less. But thereâs danger here too. The last stanza just seems a tad too much of a crowd-pleaser after whatâs gone before:
I canât recall if something happened To me or him, or the van, or the bowls, Or the pies, or the peas, or the streetlights Or the stars, or the pit bus, or the universe.
The âhelicopter shotâ endingâthe lights, the stars, the universeâworks fine for a live audience, but when you read it more than once you find yourself thinking, âCome on, Ian, you know very well what happened: you got older, the pie man retired, the takeaways moved inâŠâ
Still, itâs not fair to criticise a hard-hitting book for one easy moment. Most of the time McMillian is out there on the street picking litter âAmongst the usual McDonalds and Costa / SuspectsââŠâfinding more and more / Empty blister packs of tablets, / Chemical voids scattered / across the pavementâs flat-top.â Thatâs where he witnesses the âTent / Eventâ, in which a rough sleeperâs home is violated by âa bottle of piss / Chucked // By what newspapers still insist / On calling a ârevellerââŠâThe bottle turning and turning. / Johnâs tent by the cash machine. / Both held in midnight streetlight.â Itâs a world where cruelty and compassion are at a stand-offâa world of âDrizzle and Traffic and that Seagullâ, where the poet, or his persona, wakes up in the early hours and recalls the disparate yet linked images of an old lass with no coat in a bus queue, a young mother with a pram struggling to cross a busy road and a seagull lying dead in the gutter in âthat freezing summerâ. The speakerâs small acts of kindness elicit thanks from the women but no response from the seagull as he chucks it in a waste bin âwith what was left of me chipsâ. The conclusion is provisional: âSo mebbeââand itâs only a âmebbeâââchange is possibleâ. The seagull in the waste-bin âThat said nowtâ is as articulateâmore articulateâthan Hughesâs garrulous Crow when it comes to the austerities of life and death.
Humanity and humour are the antidotes to corporate carelessness and a lack of political response. âOur Transport CorrespondentâŠâ gives us a gentler glimpse of the state of the nation with some observant one-liners:
Bloke on train cleans his ear with a pen in the shape of a carrot. ⊠Bloke on train glugs lager from a tin, kissing it like heâs always loved it. ⊠Bloke on phone on train: Iâll tell you this. Keithâs always in Dover in his head. ⊠Bloke on phone on train: Iâll tell you this. Take everything Keith says with a pinch of rice. Bloke on train: That grey-haired bloke is writing down everything I say.
And thatâs when you can get a seat. In the final part of the poem McMillan finds something luminous to redeem the intimacy of the too-familiar standing crush: âIâd laugh / If there was room to open my mouth. / In this carriage we / try to keep our own space sacred / Like saints in stained glass windowsâŠâ
When thereâs not much else to look forward to thereâs always the football of course. The Tuesday night game, the floodlights on. âThe new moonâs slight / Curve mirrors the path of the ballâs unstoppable / Passage to the net…â âEvening games in winter; a touch of the sublime.â Youâve been there. You know the feeling, exactly.
Life, as I said, isnât always so serious a business for Ian McMillan. The collectionâs curious titleâs a case in point. Is it like one of those party games where you have to follow an idea with a complete non-sequitur? Or have I missed something thatâs obvious if you live north of the Trent? This little bookâs chock full of the wit and dry humour youâd expectâthe anger mixed with the nostalgia and the charm. His tale, typically, of âMe and Geoff Stables and the Can of Beansâ melds childhood fantasy and adult whimsy into a cracking thought-provoker. The poetâs memory of their plan âto chuck a can of beans so hard, so very hard, / Into a pile of sand that it burst the thin socks // Of time and flew into the futureâŠâ explodes with the possibility of the experiment having actually worked. The comedianâs tone, the Michael McIntyre pitching, is rendered perfectly by the italics, the caps and the incredulous repetition:
âŠExcept, reader, this morning I found A tin of beans on the shelf WHERE NO BEANS WERE BEFORE. WHERE NO BEANS WERE BEFORE.
It takes a lifetime of gigging to earn the chutzpah for that.
About Poets: IAN McMILLAN - the Barnsley poet - A ?ORT SPEL
December 17, 2019 @ 4:48 pm
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