Poetry review – FACE IT: Jennifer Johnson considers the psychological undercurrents in a substantial first collection by M Stasiak
Face it
M Stasiak
Shearsman Books
ISBN 978-1-83738-018-3
89pp £10.00
Stasiak was born and raised in Newfoundland but now lives in London and has previously had a chapbook Enchant/Extinguish published by Shearsman Books. Face it is Stasiak’s first full poetry collection, one that compassionately explores the question of free will and determinism and its relationship to personal and collective destruction and recovery. The poet assumes an environmental and psychological context for this subject rather than the religious one assumed by medieval theologians. The book is divided into five named sections, namely ‘Slip into Hackney’, ‘Persephone’s Field’, ‘Closing Focus’, ‘Reckoning’ and ‘Free Will’ though, as I shall show, there are connections between them.
Stasiak shows considerable writing skill in different styles. ‘Slip into Hackney’ begins
Slip into Hackney, over your head.
Pass under, between, beside, beyond and through.
You’ve made a choice to trust your weight to
Hackney’s streets and surfaces
so let the place take you.
An unidentified narrator begins by addressing the persona with the imperative “Slip into Hackney” but interestingly “slip” implies an action only semi-determined. The narrator then appears to speak for the persona who has “made a choice” to “trust” Hackney. The word “choice”.implies an active will; but “trust” in “Hackney’s streets and surfaces” suggests something more passive. Surfaces reappear in ‘Made and made over’ which describes changes in Hackney over time. We are told how an 8-year-old boy scratches his name on a staircase but interestingly not what that name is.
After telling the persona “the physical world … is with you to the end”, the narrator warns “But be aware”. Something “you can’t escape” follows.
The air is full of energy.
The planet’s full of energy.
You can’t escape – there’s heat inside
the centre of your bones,
In ‘donna & lucy & all the rest’ the reader is told about a group of young people “at the Cricketers” who presumably also feel like this. Needing to escape their childhood homes and find refuge.
They ran from childhood and claimed their lives, then
ran for London and claimed that too. They moved around
the squats and cash-in-hand and signing on, and never
talked of ‘Peterborough’ or ‘Milton Keynes’ or ‘home’.
Feeling forced to live an impoverished, unsettled life these young people are running away from themselves as well as from childhood. Whatever their “home” was they “never talked” of it. The narrator exhorts Hackney to “disguise them” so that they can come “beyond the reach of judgement”.
The fugitive theme is picked up in the ‘Persephone’ section of the book. In ‘Mothered’ we are told of Persephone “becoming thin, translucent, fugitive”. Persephone is abducted and trapped in the Underworld by where she is made eat magic pomegranate seeds. Stasiak tells us that the seeds “are of the living and the dead”. Persephone is transformed from being a maiden to becoming Queen of the Underworld for half the year. In Jungian terms she has attained maturity by having integrated her shadow on her return to the agricultural world in spring.
The section ‘Closing focus’ concerns the Ukraine war in which conscripted soldiers live on the frontline of life and death. It begins with an epigraph by James Hilton from A Terrible Love of War. Four plausible translations follow of accounts by conscripted soldiers as in “The shoot is plus 500, minus 1.2.” and “it could have been a thousand sodding towns”. The last translation tells the reader “This place make formless, worthless”. The war has changed agricultural fields into a kind of hell. In ‘Translation 3’ we are told “I saw a mouse observe the splintered chest of my cousin, holding congealing meat, and then run over his face”. The soldier has bravely recalled this traumatic memory of war, a countrywide shadow.
This is very different from ‘Face it’ in the ‘Reckoning’ section which concerns a breakdown “in the aftermath of a terrible event”. Personal disconnection is portrayed as a situation
goes by un-
noticed unforgiven in the fragmentary grasp, in the
fragmentary weft, in the fragmentary fizzing action
of our suspended struggling scared prey self.
The repetition of “fragmentary” emphasises disconnection. Towards the end of the poem refuge is sought in “the palace of the mind” but it turns out to be “a paradise / with a burning smell entering under the door.” This links back to Persephone in her aspect as a shadow archetype. Unlike Persephone the persona’s shadow has not yet been integrated into the psyche.
This theme is continued in the disturbing final section ‘Free Will’ in which a young person carries out a shooting. The poem starts with something that sounds like the equivalent of a film being rewound with a narrator giving orders to “Walk backwards from the bullet entering the skull.” This hope is, of course, only possible in film. In the third poem we are told in the voice of the shooter “The brain is talking to itself but not to me … testing out an alibi”. Unfortunately, the brain “can’t locate / a clear dark streak of purpose / in anything that happened here today”. According to Jungian theory, a person unaware of their shadow can violently project it onto another person without knowing why. This places in the centre of the reader’s mind the question of free will and moral agency. The future is certainly predetermined, and disturbingly the persona will follow a path “like me”.
Like me
he’ll be confined, assessed,
will be on lists, will undergo
the years of process.
The “years of process” will hopefully enable the shooter to be aware of their shadow which can be integrated into the psyche. This links back to the narrator’s exhortation to “be aware” in the early ‘Slip into Hackney’ section and indeed the collection’s title Face it.
I highly recommend this book particularly as it intelligently explores the complex question of free will and determinism in contemporary settings as well as issues of creation and destruction. It is in places a disturbing collection – but this helps to make it a memorable one.
Apr 1 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – M Stasiak
Poetry review – FACE IT: Jennifer Johnson considers the psychological undercurrents in a substantial first collection by M Stasiak
Face it
M Stasiak
Shearsman Books
ISBN 978-1-83738-018-3
89pp £10.00
Stasiak was born and raised in Newfoundland but now lives in London and has previously had a chapbook Enchant/Extinguish published by Shearsman Books. Face it is Stasiak’s first full poetry collection, one that compassionately explores the question of free will and determinism and its relationship to personal and collective destruction and recovery. The poet assumes an environmental and psychological context for this subject rather than the religious one assumed by medieval theologians. The book is divided into five named sections, namely ‘Slip into Hackney’, ‘Persephone’s Field’, ‘Closing Focus’, ‘Reckoning’ and ‘Free Will’ though, as I shall show, there are connections between them.
Stasiak shows considerable writing skill in different styles. ‘Slip into Hackney’ begins
Slip into Hackney, over your head.
Pass under, between, beside, beyond and through.
You’ve made a choice to trust your weight to
Hackney’s streets and surfaces
so let the place take you.
An unidentified narrator begins by addressing the persona with the imperative “Slip into Hackney” but interestingly “slip” implies an action only semi-determined. The narrator then appears to speak for the persona who has “made a choice” to “trust” Hackney. The word “choice”.implies an active will; but “trust” in “Hackney’s streets and surfaces” suggests something more passive. Surfaces reappear in ‘Made and made over’ which describes changes in Hackney over time. We are told how an 8-year-old boy scratches his name on a staircase but interestingly not what that name is.
After telling the persona “the physical world … is with you to the end”, the narrator warns “But be aware”. Something “you can’t escape” follows.
The air is full of energy.
The planet’s full of energy.
You can’t escape – there’s heat inside
the centre of your bones,
In ‘donna & lucy & all the rest’ the reader is told about a group of young people “at the Cricketers” who presumably also feel like this. Needing to escape their childhood homes and find refuge.
They ran from childhood and claimed their lives, then
ran for London and claimed that too. They moved around
the squats and cash-in-hand and signing on, and never
talked of ‘Peterborough’ or ‘Milton Keynes’ or ‘home’.
Feeling forced to live an impoverished, unsettled life these young people are running away from themselves as well as from childhood. Whatever their “home” was they “never talked” of it. The narrator exhorts Hackney to “disguise them” so that they can come “beyond the reach of judgement”.
The fugitive theme is picked up in the ‘Persephone’ section of the book. In ‘Mothered’ we are told of Persephone “becoming thin, translucent, fugitive”. Persephone is abducted and trapped in the Underworld by where she is made eat magic pomegranate seeds. Stasiak tells us that the seeds “are of the living and the dead”. Persephone is transformed from being a maiden to becoming Queen of the Underworld for half the year. In Jungian terms she has attained maturity by having integrated her shadow on her return to the agricultural world in spring.
The section ‘Closing focus’ concerns the Ukraine war in which conscripted soldiers live on the frontline of life and death. It begins with an epigraph by James Hilton from A Terrible Love of War. Four plausible translations follow of accounts by conscripted soldiers as in “The shoot is plus 500, minus 1.2.” and “it could have been a thousand sodding towns”. The last translation tells the reader “This place make formless, worthless”. The war has changed agricultural fields into a kind of hell. In ‘Translation 3’ we are told “I saw a mouse observe the splintered chest of my cousin, holding congealing meat, and then run over his face”. The soldier has bravely recalled this traumatic memory of war, a countrywide shadow.
This is very different from ‘Face it’ in the ‘Reckoning’ section which concerns a breakdown “in the aftermath of a terrible event”. Personal disconnection is portrayed as a situation
goes by un-
noticed unforgiven in the fragmentary grasp, in the
fragmentary weft, in the fragmentary fizzing action
of our suspended struggling scared prey self.
The repetition of “fragmentary” emphasises disconnection. Towards the end of the poem refuge is sought in “the palace of the mind” but it turns out to be “a paradise / with a burning smell entering under the door.” This links back to Persephone in her aspect as a shadow archetype. Unlike Persephone the persona’s shadow has not yet been integrated into the psyche.
This theme is continued in the disturbing final section ‘Free Will’ in which a young person carries out a shooting. The poem starts with something that sounds like the equivalent of a film being rewound with a narrator giving orders to “Walk backwards from the bullet entering the skull.” This hope is, of course, only possible in film. In the third poem we are told in the voice of the shooter “The brain is talking to itself but not to me … testing out an alibi”. Unfortunately, the brain “can’t locate / a clear dark streak of purpose / in anything that happened here today”. According to Jungian theory, a person unaware of their shadow can violently project it onto another person without knowing why. This places in the centre of the reader’s mind the question of free will and moral agency. The future is certainly predetermined, and disturbingly the persona will follow a path “like me”.
Like me
he’ll be confined, assessed,
will be on lists, will undergo
the years of process.
The “years of process” will hopefully enable the shooter to be aware of their shadow which can be integrated into the psyche. This links back to the narrator’s exhortation to “be aware” in the early ‘Slip into Hackney’ section and indeed the collection’s title Face it.
I highly recommend this book particularly as it intelligently explores the complex question of free will and determinism in contemporary settings as well as issues of creation and destruction. It is in places a disturbing collection – but this helps to make it a memorable one.