Poetry review – POISON: Jennifer Johnson admires the originality of Louise Warren’s latest chapbook
Poison
Louise Warren
Tuba Press
ISBN 9780907155799
48pp £10.50
This is the fourth collection of poems by Louise Warren, and it is a very unusual one for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it is about a subject not commonly found in poetry collections. Poison appears a great deal in prose, particularly in whodunnits, and in plays including Hamlet, Macbeth, and metaphorically in Othello. It is also used in this way in Blake’s The Poison Tree and, more literally, by Keats in his Ode on Melancholy. Secondly, the style of Warren’s poems tends towards the surrealistic, resulting in imaginative writing that gives the reader fresh perspectives as well as that delight that comes from reading something expressed in a genuinely original way (although the poems remain accessible).. Thirdly, the reader is likely to have a complex response to these poems consisting of a combination for many of humour and horror.
The book consists of 19 poems and 18 ‘notes for poisoners’ some of which are longer than the poems they refer to. The writing covers subject matter ranging from the effects of several different poisons (including some substances the reader might see as commonplace), through accounts of some poisoners (real and created) and extending to one which uses poison in a more metaphorical sense, entitled “Poison Pen”. The book is imaginatively ‘Dedicated to All our shadows’ implying, tongue in cheek, the complicity of its readers.
Sadly, I will only have space to consider a few of the poems. It may be useful to read the relevant note first and the poem after. This will, among other things, enable to reader to compare the writer’s prose and poetry styles. The notes give information whereas the poems make use of imaginative transformation. Let us look at some lines from the second poem “When My Aunt Turned Into A Table”, the note for which explains the stiffening effects of strychnine.
My aunt refused to open.
She was no good to us folded up like that,
we covered her in a cloth and put her in the corner.
This certainly makes use of the ‘unbound frame’ talked of by Jonas Zdanys, the editor of Contemporary Surrealist and Magical Realist Poetry. The effects of strychnine on the aunt in this poem have been transformed into a furniture image you can’t unsee. It is a mentally freeing way of talking about the horrors of the poison which enables the reader to laugh before possibly experiencing an unpleasant aftertaste. This is just one example of the way Warren gives the reader fresh and memorable perspectives.
“Agatha” is a poem based on that creator of poisoners, Agatha Christie, in which Warren imagines Christie’s shadows. There is a sinister underbelly to the poem set initially in the ‘corridors of Torquay Hospital’ where, according to the notes ‘she gained her knowledge of poisons by working as an apothecary’s assistant’. At home, the poem tells us, she lives ‘among the powders and tinctures,/the odours of chemicals, of death and near death.’ Soon afterwards we are told ‘outside the laburnum is in flower!’, the laburnum notorious for being both pretty and poisonous. The poem ends with Agatha ‘Snapping open a cupboard. Shutting a heart./You dazzle in your queendom.’
Poison has often been associated with women or those in caring roles and is therefore linked to an unsettling breach in intimate trust. There is a poem “The Young Women’s Poisoning Club” which imaginatively dramatizes a real female poisoner, namely the C17 Italian Giulia Tofana who invented the poisonous perfume for men, Aqua Tofana, intended for husbands that women to be wanted rid of. One customer in the poem explains to Tofana her need for the perfume, ‘He isn’t kind you see./The woman shows me the bruises.’ This helps the reader understand why poisoners like Tofana were in demand; but the mis-match between the customer, who is described early on as ‘Nervous, gloved’, and the confident instructions given to her after her husband dies makes Tofana seem very sinister. ‘Make sure you shut the door between the worlds,/afterwards you must weep, I will teach you the steps.’
The collection, of course, concerns writing about poison and perhaps explains the motivation for creating the poems. “Poison Pen” begins ‘I want to write it out of myself.’ Later we are told
The colour of my ink is dark, like tar, the kind that sticks,
or invisible, a magic trick, where I read myself in the bath,
count the poisons I have consumed over the years.
Experience is a kind of poison,…
Writing seems to be a therapeutic process for the persona in the poem and readers will enjoy this invention of an alternative Poison Pen. Throughout the collection Warren uses her transformative imagination to advantage changing commonplace perspectives to something fresh and memorable. I recommend Poison because the poems not mentioned deserved to be read and because anyone interested in original poetry will find the collection rewarding.
Mar 5 2025
London Grip Poetry Review – Louise Warren
Poetry review – POISON: Jennifer Johnson admires the originality of Louise Warren’s latest chapbook
This is the fourth collection of poems by Louise Warren, and it is a very unusual one for a variety of reasons. Firstly, it is about a subject not commonly found in poetry collections. Poison appears a great deal in prose, particularly in whodunnits, and in plays including Hamlet, Macbeth, and metaphorically in Othello. It is also used in this way in Blake’s The Poison Tree and, more literally, by Keats in his Ode on Melancholy. Secondly, the style of Warren’s poems tends towards the surrealistic, resulting in imaginative writing that gives the reader fresh perspectives as well as that delight that comes from reading something expressed in a genuinely original way (although the poems remain accessible).. Thirdly, the reader is likely to have a complex response to these poems consisting of a combination for many of humour and horror.
The book consists of 19 poems and 18 ‘notes for poisoners’ some of which are longer than the poems they refer to. The writing covers subject matter ranging from the effects of several different poisons (including some substances the reader might see as commonplace), through accounts of some poisoners (real and created) and extending to one which uses poison in a more metaphorical sense, entitled “Poison Pen”. The book is imaginatively ‘Dedicated to All our shadows’ implying, tongue in cheek, the complicity of its readers.
Sadly, I will only have space to consider a few of the poems. It may be useful to read the relevant note first and the poem after. This will, among other things, enable to reader to compare the writer’s prose and poetry styles. The notes give information whereas the poems make use of imaginative transformation. Let us look at some lines from the second poem “When My Aunt Turned Into A Table”, the note for which explains the stiffening effects of strychnine.
This certainly makes use of the ‘unbound frame’ talked of by Jonas Zdanys, the editor of Contemporary Surrealist and Magical Realist Poetry. The effects of strychnine on the aunt in this poem have been transformed into a furniture image you can’t unsee. It is a mentally freeing way of talking about the horrors of the poison which enables the reader to laugh before possibly experiencing an unpleasant aftertaste. This is just one example of the way Warren gives the reader fresh and memorable perspectives.
“Agatha” is a poem based on that creator of poisoners, Agatha Christie, in which Warren imagines Christie’s shadows. There is a sinister underbelly to the poem set initially in the ‘corridors of Torquay Hospital’ where, according to the notes ‘she gained her knowledge of poisons by working as an apothecary’s assistant’. At home, the poem tells us, she lives ‘among the powders and tinctures,/the odours of chemicals, of death and near death.’ Soon afterwards we are told ‘outside the laburnum is in flower!’, the laburnum notorious for being both pretty and poisonous. The poem ends with Agatha ‘Snapping open a cupboard. Shutting a heart./You dazzle in your queendom.’
Poison has often been associated with women or those in caring roles and is therefore linked to an unsettling breach in intimate trust. There is a poem “The Young Women’s Poisoning Club” which imaginatively dramatizes a real female poisoner, namely the C17 Italian Giulia Tofana who invented the poisonous perfume for men, Aqua Tofana, intended for husbands that women to be wanted rid of. One customer in the poem explains to Tofana her need for the perfume, ‘He isn’t kind you see./The woman shows me the bruises.’ This helps the reader understand why poisoners like Tofana were in demand; but the mis-match between the customer, who is described early on as ‘Nervous, gloved’, and the confident instructions given to her after her husband dies makes Tofana seem very sinister. ‘Make sure you shut the door between the worlds,/afterwards you must weep, I will teach you the steps.’
The collection, of course, concerns writing about poison and perhaps explains the motivation for creating the poems. “Poison Pen” begins ‘I want to write it out of myself.’ Later we are told
Writing seems to be a therapeutic process for the persona in the poem and readers will enjoy this invention of an alternative Poison Pen. Throughout the collection Warren uses her transformative imagination to advantage changing commonplace perspectives to something fresh and memorable. I recommend Poison because the poems not mentioned deserved to be read and because anyone interested in original poetry will find the collection rewarding.