Poetry review – CORMORANT: John Forth finds that Elizabeth Parker’s poems move adroitly between different forms and tones to handle both reality and myth
Cormorant
Elizabeth Parker
Seren Books, 2024
ISBN 978-1-78172- 736-2
76pp £9.99
Gemma Compton’s painting ‘10,000 Steps’ is the cover chosen by Elizabeth Parker for her second collection, Cormorant, and also gives its title to one of the poems. Explosions of colour form a protective shield against, perhaps, the gloved hand clutching a disposable coffee cup. A human skull with cavernous sockets nestles in among roses that look artificial and a shoe (a ‘trainer’) that certainly is. There’s one eye in the back of the hand and one in the cormorant itself that presides over all, head raised in a stillness that might be menacing. The poem “10,000 Steps” traces a constrained sisterly dialogue with the painter during lock-down, using imagery that, by p.23, has become familiar in its intensity:
From clamour of paintings, objects. From her wrecked body
that can’t be silenced, cries of fractured spine, to Avon,
broadening,
until she is the light
slicking mudbanks...
The book is dedicated to the poet’s sister, the late Helen K Parker, ‘always with us’, and intrusions from an outside world often break into poems that are tough, brittle artifacts concealing glimpses of deep-lying narrative. The narrator moves easily between real worlds of intricately woven description and fantastical awareness of mysteries. One of the best, “Super Blood Moon”, immediately follows “10,000 Steps”:
Will I be with you
at the next blood moon?
I know it is wavelengths. I know it is air scattering
blue, allowing only reddish hues
but the dark between us
invites omens.
In anticipation of a coming lock-down, the poem ends in mock-heroic:
Elect the proxy. Hide the real king.
The moon is wounded. Cover the food.
Get the pregnant women inside.
Gather the moon wives.
Parker shows considerable confidence in making such switches of tone, and throughout the collection we are reminded of the spirit of a bird that has been inhabiting proceedings from the start:
I want cormorant every day
nothing in my life so streamlined
as the sleek hook.
Black crucifix
surfacing from its dive,
spirit of the drowned.
(“Cormorant”)
Some of the narratives are less oblique, especially those more personal, and yet the bird will resurface and add shape to another memory poem:
We used to walk past one on our way to college.
Everything else was green
and then this great black bird – oily black –
always on the same rock, always its wings outspread…
(“Dart”)
Often, family is foregrounded in mythological settings, a seven-part “You Began” almost becoming a chant to drive an account of her sons’ ancestry:
You began with forgotten warriors
their battles leached to bedrock.
You began with Cu Cuchulain.
Under the Standing Stone, you began.
There is a melding of past and present, reality and myth, the real and the dream so that sometimes the reader might unsuspectingly walk out of one realm into another:
Only when ten children have moved out,
only when there is space –
a room for each,
beds to spare;
only when the giant
from books and pictures
with a ship in its clutch
is deflated to truth:
a soft bulb trailing
eight undulating,
sensuous arms;
only then does she tell
how her children
once muscled and squeezed
into her nights.
(“Octopus” For Nanny Riley)
The sleight-of-hand is manipulated to great effect in “Chick”, a moving poem about the poet’s father’s dementia combining everyday family dialogue with a dark drama among birds. This also appears in the first of the “Sonnets of Separation”:
I asked ‘How you doing, Dad?’
‘Oh, you know, chasing thin air.’
Already a borderland. Mum joking:
We’ve got Lewy bodies dancing round the room,
getting blamed for everything.’
Elizabeth Parker deploys old and new forms, repetition and refrain, and often moves back and forth within and between them. She is no abject follower of rules. There is significant darkness being suppressed in these poems, but it is never shied away from. By the end of the book I was hooked by powerful, more relaxed writing that paradoxically might be a sign of increasing control.
Aug 27 2024
London Grip Poetry Review – Elizabeth Parker
Poetry review – CORMORANT: John Forth finds that Elizabeth Parker’s poems move adroitly between different forms and tones to handle both reality and myth
Gemma Compton’s painting ‘10,000 Steps’ is the cover chosen by Elizabeth Parker for her second collection, Cormorant, and also gives its title to one of the poems. Explosions of colour form a protective shield against, perhaps, the gloved hand clutching a disposable coffee cup. A human skull with cavernous sockets nestles in among roses that look artificial and a shoe (a ‘trainer’) that certainly is. There’s one eye in the back of the hand and one in the cormorant itself that presides over all, head raised in a stillness that might be menacing. The poem “10,000 Steps” traces a constrained sisterly dialogue with the painter during lock-down, using imagery that, by p.23, has become familiar in its intensity:
The book is dedicated to the poet’s sister, the late Helen K Parker, ‘always with us’, and intrusions from an outside world often break into poems that are tough, brittle artifacts concealing glimpses of deep-lying narrative. The narrator moves easily between real worlds of intricately woven description and fantastical awareness of mysteries. One of the best, “Super Blood Moon”, immediately follows “10,000 Steps”:
In anticipation of a coming lock-down, the poem ends in mock-heroic:
Parker shows considerable confidence in making such switches of tone, and throughout the collection we are reminded of the spirit of a bird that has been inhabiting proceedings from the start:
I want cormorant every day nothing in my life so streamlined as the sleek hook. Black crucifix surfacing from its dive, spirit of the drowned. (“Cormorant”)Some of the narratives are less oblique, especially those more personal, and yet the bird will resurface and add shape to another memory poem:
We used to walk past one on our way to college. Everything else was green and then this great black bird – oily black – always on the same rock, always its wings outspread… (“Dart”)Often, family is foregrounded in mythological settings, a seven-part “You Began” almost becoming a chant to drive an account of her sons’ ancestry:
There is a melding of past and present, reality and myth, the real and the dream so that sometimes the reader might unsuspectingly walk out of one realm into another:
Only when ten children have moved out, only when there is space – a room for each, beds to spare; only when the giant from books and pictures with a ship in its clutch is deflated to truth: a soft bulb trailing eight undulating, sensuous arms; only then does she tell how her children once muscled and squeezed into her nights. (“Octopus” For Nanny Riley)The sleight-of-hand is manipulated to great effect in “Chick”, a moving poem about the poet’s father’s dementia combining everyday family dialogue with a dark drama among birds. This also appears in the first of the “Sonnets of Separation”:
Elizabeth Parker deploys old and new forms, repetition and refrain, and often moves back and forth within and between them. She is no abject follower of rules. There is significant darkness being suppressed in these poems, but it is never shied away from. By the end of the book I was hooked by powerful, more relaxed writing that paradoxically might be a sign of increasing control.