Poetry review – FROM THE EAST: Peter Ualrig Kennedy is impressed by the clever cadences of John Greening’s poetry in this volume
From the East
John Greening
Renard Press Poetry
ISBN 978-1-80447-109-8
68pp £ 10.00
‘From the East’. Ah, but what East? To what mystic Orient is John Greening taking us? The subtitle of the collection is ‘sixty Huntingdonshire codices’ – so there you have it: the historic, though defunct, county of Huntingdonshire. Home of the Great Fen. From the East is an epic work in which each page of the book is a poem of five unrhymed tercets – Greening’s codex. His first poem has a strong start:
Following power lines, three of them, insulators
like gleaming mini-angels, a trio of undecorated
Christmas trees, brown, on poles as upright …
We are straightway in the country of muddy farm fields. “The hunt is ready / to pass under the wires …” It is early morning: “… at this hour nobody / hails my shadow …” There’s “a chain-link fence / around the gas-pumping station …” That may all sound a bit bleak, but the second poem introduces a mystical element:
and Herbert up at Leighton says he has seen weird
visions over Little Gidding. A sky of blood.
Little Gidding here seems no more than a geographical aside, with no apparent reference to Eliot – but other poets will make their appearance later. Meanwhile from page to page the poems take us through many disparate scenarios: “… they shot / (for promotional purposes) the Reverend with his arms out- / stretched in front of a Catherine wheel …” is a brilliant step to one side – and there are more, embodying Greening’s enthralling use of language:
… make your crossing. Let a train
go suthering by before you follow its sign
Suthering – the sound of the wind through the trees or wind under a bird’s wing – reference John Clare’s poem ‘The Autumn Wind’. But Greening observes Nature through an icier lens than Clare’s. He moves on –
through snub oaks and balks. One legendary
day after the war, you recall, Edmund Blunden
opened a cupboard and all the poems escaped to London
The significance of those lines eludes me; but knowing that John Greening has edited Blunden’s ‘Undertones of War’ I feel perhaps the clue lies in that collection. There is coolness in Greening’s verse, a dispassionate look at the world of the Fen Country, marked by eloquent turns of phrase: “Traffic can’t / get through – our winterbourne has usurped the road”. One can feel the chill of winter in these tercets:
Step by step, tentatively towards the bridge,
ice on the lane, sheets of ice, walk on the verge,
walk on the gravel, careful not to slide and lurch
into the dark river, half frozen but running high,
its message scrawled at our feet …
Greening is keenly aware of the march of time: “now who keeps a diary? A month, a year goes past / unremarked …” and “After so many winters, you find you have trodden / your name into the snow.” But: “We’ve seen the temperature rise / and zero put in doubt with our own eyes, / the Arctic thaw set in.” What of the future in this era of climate change? Does Greening see a future?
A printed book, and when it goes out of print, still
the digital file exists. Is that what it’s like, all
physical evidence of existence gone …
Soon he is lively once again, his verses skipping agilely “from Northern Rock to Ragnarok. The myth of Croesus, / not Baldur, comes to mind …” and on to “The Cantos / of Ezra Pound, a bright red brick of boundless / genius to hurl through Betjeman’s windows” – we know where Greening’s poetic sympathies lie; not with Betjeman’s derivative verse. He is in thrall to the great poets. He envisages the sea rising and engulfing the Fens: “Imagine that wave, / like a Peter Redgrove poem. Formidable.” The further one reads into the codices, the more the landscape penetrates the mind’s eye and the more the minor events build into major significance. Thoughts become increasingly urgent: “You have to be a little unbalanced to write” and:
The waters, muddy, persistent, irresistible, hold
your life beneath the surface and will soon have sold
you down the river if you don’t reach out for a reed,
a straw, an overhanging rush, a feather, tread
water and pull yourself up word by word.
But all is not lost. Later: “It’s not as if I’m in solitary. / I have the cat. I have Facebook friends.” Greening is a modern man. He began this impressive 60-page poem following the power lines; now the poem finishes with:
Just keep on walking. Follow the final wire.
When it ends, warm both hands before the fire.
‘From the East’ has been an exhilarating read. John Greening is master of his craft; his muscular free verse tercets give a powerful impression of the Huntingdonshire country, all the while interspersed with images and incident. Stirring stuff.
Oct 8 2024
London Grip Poetry Review – John Greening
Poetry review – FROM THE EAST: Peter Ualrig Kennedy is impressed by the clever cadences of John Greening’s poetry in this volume
‘From the East’. Ah, but what East? To what mystic Orient is John Greening taking us? The subtitle of the collection is ‘sixty Huntingdonshire codices’ – so there you have it: the historic, though defunct, county of Huntingdonshire. Home of the Great Fen. From the East is an epic work in which each page of the book is a poem of five unrhymed tercets – Greening’s codex. His first poem has a strong start:
We are straightway in the country of muddy farm fields. “The hunt is ready / to pass under the wires …” It is early morning: “… at this hour nobody / hails my shadow …” There’s “a chain-link fence / around the gas-pumping station …” That may all sound a bit bleak, but the second poem introduces a mystical element:
Little Gidding here seems no more than a geographical aside, with no apparent reference to Eliot – but other poets will make their appearance later. Meanwhile from page to page the poems take us through many disparate scenarios: “… they shot / (for promotional purposes) the Reverend with his arms out- / stretched in front of a Catherine wheel …” is a brilliant step to one side – and there are more, embodying Greening’s enthralling use of language:
Suthering – the sound of the wind through the trees or wind under a bird’s wing – reference John Clare’s poem ‘The Autumn Wind’. But Greening observes Nature through an icier lens than Clare’s. He moves on –
The significance of those lines eludes me; but knowing that John Greening has edited Blunden’s ‘Undertones of War’ I feel perhaps the clue lies in that collection. There is coolness in Greening’s verse, a dispassionate look at the world of the Fen Country, marked by eloquent turns of phrase: “Traffic can’t / get through – our winterbourne has usurped the road”. One can feel the chill of winter in these tercets:
Greening is keenly aware of the march of time: “now who keeps a diary? A month, a year goes past / unremarked …” and “After so many winters, you find you have trodden / your name into the snow.” But: “We’ve seen the temperature rise / and zero put in doubt with our own eyes, / the Arctic thaw set in.” What of the future in this era of climate change? Does Greening see a future?
Soon he is lively once again, his verses skipping agilely “from Northern Rock to Ragnarok. The myth of Croesus, / not Baldur, comes to mind …” and on to “The Cantos / of Ezra Pound, a bright red brick of boundless / genius to hurl through Betjeman’s windows” – we know where Greening’s poetic sympathies lie; not with Betjeman’s derivative verse. He is in thrall to the great poets. He envisages the sea rising and engulfing the Fens: “Imagine that wave, / like a Peter Redgrove poem. Formidable.” The further one reads into the codices, the more the landscape penetrates the mind’s eye and the more the minor events build into major significance. Thoughts become increasingly urgent: “You have to be a little unbalanced to write” and:
But all is not lost. Later: “It’s not as if I’m in solitary. / I have the cat. I have Facebook friends.” Greening is a modern man. He began this impressive 60-page poem following the power lines; now the poem finishes with:
‘From the East’ has been an exhilarating read. John Greening is master of his craft; his muscular free verse tercets give a powerful impression of the Huntingdonshire country, all the while interspersed with images and incident. Stirring stuff.