So, in an effort to update this blog more (HA!), I thought I’d move my biannual Poetry Roundups from my now mostly defunct work blog to here. You can view Poetry Roundups 1, 2, 3 and 4 here.
For the uninitiated, I read a lot of poetry books and I point out those I liked and loved over the past six months.
Here we go!
Recommended:
Kayo Chingonyi – Kumukanda [Penguin]
Bhanu Kapil – How to Wash a Heart [Liverpool University Press]
Kit Fraytt – bodyservant [Shearsman]
Jeff Mann – Redneck Bouquet [Lethe Press]
Ella Frears – Shine, Darling [Offord Road Books]
Charlotte Geater – poems for my fbi agent [Bad Betty]
RJ Gibson – Scavenge [Seven Kitchens Press]
Eavan Boland – In Her Own Image [Arlen House]
Ben Kline – Dead Uncles [Driftwood Press]
Gustavo Hernandez – Flower Grand First [Moon Tide Press]
Kayo Chingonyi’s Kumukanda is an excellent first collection with great wit, verve and control. My favourite from the collection was Guide to Proper Mixtape Assembly which opens with the line “The silence between songs can’t be modulated by anything other than held breath”
Bhanu Kapil’s short, but intensely packed, collection How to Wash a Heart was magnificent. Telling the story of an immigrant living in an increasingly unwelcome house, Kapil is a master of craft.
Kit Fryatt’s bodyservant is a lexical conundrum full of seriousness but also puns, word games, allusions and, importantly, laughs. A major work.
Perhaps Jeff Mann’s saddest collection, and almost certainly his best, Redneck Bouquet tells of an aging gay redneck lusting after the men around him to supplement what’s missing in his relationship. Sad, sharply observed and beautifully written.
Ella Frears’ Shine, Darling was wonderful but, for me, it’s the central section Passivity, Electricity, Acclivity – previously published as a pamphlet – that is the absolute hands-down standout.
A book kind of about Twin Peaks? I’m there. And Charlotte Geater’s poems for my fbi agent doesn’t disappoint. Clear, weird and febrile; one to read and re-read.
RJ Gibson’s Scavenge is one of those books that holds you as if it were a pair of hands up against the wall until you’ve finished. Essential.
I’ve been reading Eavan Boland’s collected, In Her Own Image (alongside the previously mentioned Night Feed) is one of my favourites so far.
Full disclosure. I was asked to read and blurb Ben Kline’s Dead Uncles – and both were a joy. Here’s what I said: “When parents dub their friends as Uncles to their child, it sends a message that family can be earned, attributed. But it works both ways. Kline’s Dead Uncles highlights these men, some of whom are related, some not, some of which are cautionary tales used to scare the little ones – these men, dead and dying, the ghosts in the barn, the embodiment of lines being crossed – and some perhaps are just outcast and queer like the narrator’s burgeoning, and terrifying, sexuality in world where swelter // that feels like heaven and hell. We learn the lessons society, religion, and family expect us to from those who came before us, whether we want to or not. Kline’s Dead Uncles is immaculate, vital and febrile, it’s a keening for an adolescence whose shocks are still being reckoned with, and the best thing he’s ever written.”
Finally, in the recommendeds, and as you can guess, I’ve had a hard time keeping some out of the top 4 – Ben and Gus could have easily been in there too! – Gustavo Hernandez’s most, most excellent Flower, Grand, First: a real powerhouse of a first collection showing the depth of his interests and craft in one book.
Highly Recommended:
Victoria Kennefick – Eat or We Both Starve [Carcanet]
Nell Regan & James Hadley – A Gap in the Clouds [Dedalus]
Travis Chi Wing Lau – Paring [Finishing Line Press]
Peter Scalpello – Acting Out/Chem and Other Poems [Broken Sleep] – ROUNDUP PICK!
It was hard to pick just four for this round-up’s Highly Recommended, and even harder to pick a Round-Up Pick. Like, I dithered over it for days.
Victoria Kennefick’s Eat or We Both Starve has been long-awaited. Her 2015 large-format pamphlet White Whale was incredible and this book is just as good, if not better. Intense, funny and full of craft, this is one I will reread for years to come.
Nell Regan & James Hadley’s A Gap in the Clouds is a new translation of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, a standard Japanese text that is so common its not only taught in schools but is a card game too. It’s 100 tanka by 100 poets and Nell and James’ translations are fresh and vibrant. Shoutout to the beautiful book design, incorporating the original Japanese in script form.
Travis Chi Wing Lau’s first chapbook, after his excellent micro-chap The Bonesetter, is out now. Regular readers of this will know that I really respond to excellent craft and throughout Paring, aptly, are poems with such amazing precision and imagery. Essential readings.
So, to the round-up pick. Peter Scalpello’s Acting Out/Chem and Other Poems is a double pamphlet (and his first) and it stuck with me long, long after its reading. Influenced no doubt by his day job in sexual health, it deals with chemsex and queer fragility and these dark, finely wrought, beautiful poems talk about something I’ve never seen talk about – at least not so well as Peter is doing here. Also, the layout of a double-format flipbook, works incredibly well exploring the two sides of the same coin. Absolutely essential. And as is tradition, we end with a poem from the book, this one is from chem & other poems:
pass it on
i don’t know who it was.
from the lapse in time, an interval which
defined, thus a lapse in also judgement,
i could speculate – a set of
clenching shoulders, freckled from burn –
his inner thighs, angled in longing –
the sting of your beard, abrasive unto
my grimacing cheek – a feeling
of presence, motion that declares he is there,
so then i am here , too.
no, i don’t know who it was,
& yet i concede the relevance
of certainty, for are we not cumulative; a seed
surely provoked by proximity, so willingly
invaded, to receive quota of a shared grief?
reciprocal bite made
unique, our cellular rivalry
has domesticated. I ponder you now,
faceless clone- baring mutual insignia,
how to each other we
remain unknown.
