London Grip Poetry Review – Suna Afshan
Poetry review – BELLADONNA: Mat Riches finds many layers in a small chapbook by Suna Afshan
Belladonna Suna Afshan Legitimate Snack | Broken Sleep Books No ISBN No price quoted
Suna Afshan is a poet that I find it very tricky to get beyond the first line or two ofâŚNo, wait, come back, this is a good thing.
She makes it very hard to get really into each section of the poem in Belladonna because of the quality of the opening lines. I found myself stuck in a loop of reading aloud the first four lines of âI. Soothsayersâ.
Tuesday, where the lilac jam dashes Over buttery dusk, when the sun trips Behind twiggy elms, and nests of bone Grow cold like the gullies overrun with foxholes
Or once you get beyond that and get to the next section of the poem, âII. Twilight Sleepâ, you have to contend with
I have milked life out of the living I have drawn labyrinths of salt Around fat, burnished slugs Savoured that dreadful moment When sodium hedges led to dead ends.
Just a couple more from the remaining two sections in this pamphlet will make my point. âIII. The Bog Mirrorâ starts with
A feral pigeon aimed its arrowed bill At a swollen corpse suspended And still between the jade curd
Finally, as if you needed more proof of the veracity of this particular pudding, âIV. Dead Out of Timeâ offers us
God, with a mouth full of milk teeth Skimmed the words of a dog-eared text And Iâfree, free, free, and quite deadâ Wept at his feetâŚ
If youâve not been convinced by this stage and on the grounds mentioned above then itâs probably best to stop reading here, but if youâre still with meâGOOD!! Let us proceedâŚ
Belladonna is a book of many things, tightly packed into its few pages. Quite literally densely packed, given the size of the actual book and the small print, but thereâs a lot to get through and a lot to take on. Itâs not possible to pin it down to being about one thing, but if push and shove have to reach an agreement then it appears to be a poem of opposites, imbalances and a lot of food. It covers a lot of ground.
Letâs deal with the food first. Our menu includes âlilac jamâ, âMilky Ways, Lucozade / A sachet of pips and seeds…â, âthe wine / the cheese…â, âKashmiri teaâ, a âsoup of nettlesâ and âprawn cocktail crispsâ. I was left feeling hungry by the end of the 194 lines of this poemâI canât for the life of me work out why. (NB: I was left hungry, but not disappointed by these, er, legitimate snacksâŚ)
Itâs worth keeping these crisps in mind, as they help us to explore one of the other themes of the poem, that of our impact on nature. In âIII. The Bog Mirrorâ, we are told
One packet of prawn cocktail crisps Swam in the sprawling reeds Uglier in its half-life than any dead thing.
The placing of âUglierâ at the start of the line hammers home the impact, the âhalf-lifeâ of human creation in a place it doesnât belong but wonât leave without an intervention. A further example of mankind and nature at odds appears in lines 108-109 where âEven the snails after nights smearing / Their silver over paving stonesâŚâ. The sibilance of these lines is glorious.
And if thereâs still doubt, these lines from later in the poem firmly place our protagonist in natureâbut separate from it.
And I lay here with the rotten daffodils On the banks of the bog mirror To watch my petulant shadow remain Standing, lift her arms gently skyward Spin in place like some godless dervish.
However, there are greater contrasts to be found within these elegantly produced pages. While the events largely unfold in the second half of the day, either in the âbuttery duskâ or in the afternoon, we often find ourselves between reveries and reality and crossing over between the two where it can be hard to tell the difference. For example, in âI. Soothsayersâ the poet is âStuck in the free-fall / Between nightmare and wakingâ and in âII. Twilight Sleepâ she tells us
âŚIâve laid in this cot struck By my own sickly dream, and Iâve seen That dream ink another core on the skullâ The day temporised by morningâs first blink.
The other most significant set of opposing ideas within these pages is concerned with the divine and rituals versus the mundane. There is much talk of God and talking to your God. People are âGodkindâ or âGod-blindâ or âgodlessâ or have âgodforsaken eyesâ. They practise âritualistic ablutionsâ or the sorts of spells as outlined at the start of âII. Twilight Sleepâ. And even on occasions, both the ritual and God get mentioned.
We sat bleary with our rosaries, asking God on those luckless dawns for humble mercies.
However, this divine presence and conversation is counterbalanced with more earthbound events. The âSchoolgirls ran from the paper shopââŚâwatching / Men watching them feed the passing pigeonsâ. The streets are âpotholedâ, a âlimp washing lineâ makes an appearance, as people âsprout ulcersâ. However, this relative mundanity is always couched alongside something more threatening. The men watching the young girls, the potholed streets are the âpotholed streets of my fateâ, the ulcers ânever healâ from the continued biting of the inside of a cheek.
Thereâs always a threat lurking in these lines, and weâve not even mentioned the way death stalks these lines, but to quote much more will lead to the whole poem being typed out and that stops you from buying a copy.
Itâs said that Belladonna was taken by the women of renaissance Italy to enlarge their pupils and make their eyes look more seductive. I canât vouch for the seductiveness of my eyes after reading this poem, but I can attest to the fact that my eyes are wide at the breadth and scope of whatâs written here. I canât guarantee I have a handle on exactly what is happening in this poem, but I am looking forward to continuing to engage with it and to keep finding new ways in, new things to unlock about it.
Mangoes on a walk â Wear The Fox Hat
July 26, 2020 @ 9:19 pm
[âŚ] I was very pleased to be the first to review Suna Afshan’s ‘Belladonna’ for London Grip. Bottles of Chilli Sauce arrived from out of [âŚ]