What I've Been Reading 8

Poetry of disquiet emanating from kitchens, city streets, supermarkets, and troubled times.

A Parliament of Apples

It’s always a pleasure to read something from Mick Jenkinson. He is a songwriter of considerable ability as well as a poet and brings a musicality to everything he writes. His latest collection, A Parliament of Apples brings a host of previously unpublished pieces together with a number of poems that he has had published online in recent years. (Mick was number 34 of the Sixty Odd poets.)

Much of Mick’s works about connections, with people and places, simple situations and interactions are often presented in a romantic light, natural settings are blended with urban landscapes and frame the emotions and observations he makes in familiar ground. We sit with him in Doncaster Railway station, healing a heartache, and watching the comings and goings.

We see him at the Arboretum realising that the pink edged flowers seen against the far wall in full sun resemble the pattern hon a lover’s dress.

But there are more sinister interactions and ideas within these pages. The intrusion of nature in the form of unsettling owl eyes revealed as he slices into apples - a parliament of apples, and the uneasy interaction with a crow which has peeled off from all the rest in its murder to present him with a solitary rose.

In Calm, the unease reaches terrifying proportions as Mick considers a series of wicked acts of murder and cruelty, opening each thought with - Which one of us has…not considered, …not desired, …never wished, … never planned. If Mick ever gets into serious trouble with the law, the tabloids will make great capital with this piece.

My favourite poem in the collection is The Shouting Man. Having recently experienced an encounter with a shouting man in Leeds, and a shouting woman in Doncaster, I found this a keen piece of observation, an excellent and not unsympathetic piece of writing.

As ever with Sherwood press publications, it is best to secure your copy by directly contacting the poet, or failing that, drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do. This one is worth reading.

The Shouting Man - Mick Jenkinson

Never seen to ride the buckled bike
He pushes it with head bowed down -
A basket jammed with god-knows-what -
And hides amongst the bushes and the trees.

It’s only once he’s sure that he’s alone 
The shouting starts, the railing at the world;
A universe of pain let loose
In half coherent strangled cries.

At everyone and everything he’s ever known
He hurls obscenities and threats
And rails against the waste, the hopelessness
Of each succeeding day.

And if by chance you come by him
He’ll fall to silence, eyes cast to the skies
His body held as rigid as a rod
Until he’s sure you’re out of sight.

Then he’ll strike up again and fill the air
With all the misery, futility of life
He’ll howl until the failing evening light
Sends him back the way he came.

In Your Mouth

Paul Brookes is another well published poet (and number 3 of the Sixty Odd). His collection In Your Mouth, recently brought out by Culture Matters, features poetry largely dealing with the covid pandemic, from his perspective as a South Yorkshire supermarket worker.

I am often put off by pandemic poetry. Largely because it often means very personal poetry written during the pandemic, when we all felt the need to somehow communicate our experiences, as there was little else to do, and which has little relevance beyond that difficult time. However, Paul’s work takes a view that manages to be both personal and to take a wider perspective. Whether this is due to looking at things from almost half a decade later, or something that is woven into his deceptively matter of fact delivery, I’m not sure, but it is an approach which cut through my misgivings and had me thinking about that time, and how it affected people living in the working class communities around me who could still remember the ravages of Thatcherism and the miner’s strike.

The collection is divided into three parts. The first, On Covid Till, details Paul’s experiences working in the supermarket, a key worker, who is reluctant to see himself as the hero that some consider him to be. He tells of customers such as the Burly Man bending the social distancing rules, or those complaining about the behaviour of others like the Stooped Old Woman, and generally trying to remain sane under strange and unsettling circumstances.

Effective images bring that time back into sharp focus -the empty shelves have labels like headstones advertise what is missing, and at the end of a work day, he walks home through a spring gleaming graveyard.

The second and third sections comprise almost entirely of sonnets. These are a brave choice, but Paul is adept at using the form intelligently and employs varying approaches to guard against staleness. The Daily Self Isolation Sonnets catalogue his home life as, first his wife and then he himself succumb to the virus, and he is left with time to dwell on his domestic situation and his relationship with her. The death of a close friend adds both sadness and a vivid illustration of the seriousness of the situation. The sequence ends with a tribute: My greatest debt has been to my wife, lifts me when I fall, curses me when I fall short. I hope to repay her consistent attentiveness someday.

The final section, My Conflict Sonnets stands back from covid and takes in a range of situations from childhood, the days of mining, and past conflicts to current ones.

There is plenty of food for thought in this collection. Here is a short piece from that last section, which seems to capture something of Paul’s poetic gaze.

Towers - Paul Brookes

Climbing Towers takes us further away. 
We can see further, but folk are smaller
They are things moving below, in a way
it makes them not people, can’t hear them holler.

Towers are social distancing fear homes
History is far away, behind glass,
unreal. Towers are solid safe zones
Until struck down in planned attacks. 

Reading Boy - Eastman Johnson (1863)

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