issue 5 march 2016 a literary pamphlet €4 plum tree– too in the ofthe —1— Life Writing Blake Morrison from shingle street (chatto and windus, 2015) You’re trying to bring to life what’s in your head, a story that’s discomfiting but true. Your interest in inventing stuff’s long dead. You know that all worth saying’s all been said but strive to tell it straight and make it new. You want to bring to life what’s in your head. The names of all the ones you took to bed, the triumphs and disasters you lived through: you’d like to set this down before you’re dead. You comb your troubled past from A to Z. You drag forgotten memories into view. Your memoir brings to life what’s in your head. But Tim, best mate at school, was really Ted, and Tania’s nut-brown eyes were turquoise-blue. They phone you late at night and wish you dead. The humour and affection go unread. Your candour earns you merciless reviews. Don’t try to bring to life what’s in your head. It’s safer telling lies about the dead. —2— Susan Millar DuMars Connie Roberts Little Witness arlen house, 2015 Madelaine Nerson Mac Namara The Riddle of Waterfalls bradshaw books, 2015 Breda Wall Ryan In A Hare's Eye doire press, 2015 hy do women poets tend to Connie Roberts’ book, Little Witness, publish debut collections conforms to our expectations of later in life than their male first collections in that it’s intensely counterparts? One could autobiographical. It also defies expectations Wanswer that our professional lives take on by being astonishingly unified in terms a different shape than that of men – that of themes and images. Roberts was born we take time away from careers to nurture into a painfully dysfunctional family and families. I feel it’s more intrinsic than that, did most of her growing up in an Irish however. Poets must be individualistic – industrial school. The story these poems confident enough to stand on the periphery tell is harrowing. Roberts delivers up the of life and observe. Boys who do this are details with candour and a clear-eyed lack praised as bright, independent thinkers. of sentiment that make the work more Girls are told to get their head out of the powerful. You will hurt for this child. clouds and muck in. We’re told in a hundred ways each day to care less about how we see However, the poems that lingered longest the world than about how the world sees us. in my mind were not the ones depicting Some of us take a long time to shake off that violence and deprivation. Instead, I was conditioning. Some never do. How many marked by the poems in which these things women have I met with drawers full of lurk, waiting, beneath a crust of fragile writing, never finished, never sorted, never civility. In ‘Doctor Rabbit’, a summer day shown to anyone? So many I’ve lost count. in rural Ireland, 1971, is described. The children play on the road, Mother smiles So let’s celebrate the fact that, this year, all around a cigarette, Father takes his daughter three debut collections nominated for the blackberry picking. But we know this easy Shine/Strong Award are by women. To warmth and safety is just one side of the be sure, none of the three are in the first coin. At any moment, the coin may flip: flush of youth. Neither was I, when I first ‘Father takes the twine from Cyclops’ neck, // published. But they did take the pages from and the dog swims in the indolent water, / the drawer, did say here I am. Here they are. his head bobbing like a buoy. I think / of the —3— day he tried to drown Mother / in the canal, The Riddle of Waterfalls by Madelaine his hand grasping her blonde mane / as he Nerson Mac Namara also contains poems plunged her head up and down.’ At the end about family history. But here, chaos comes of the poem, the father dances his daughter from outside; relations are the heroes. around the kitchen... ‘The Fort’ is about the poet’s Parisian grandmother: ‘Until that fine morning / as mother, peering over her bowl of when she goes for her walk / and meets on berries, the way back / the courageous concierge / waits for the other shoe to drop. posted round a corner. / He warns her to move on. / The busy Gestapo / is emptying We understand from this that cruelty her home / to the last toilet brush.’ And hasn’t scarred this girl as much as the here is a portrait of that plucky woman’s son unpredictability of cruelty; kindness being (from ‘Mimosas’): something one can’t trust. Similarly, the poem on page seventy-seven presents two City bred, my father turns children playing house in a cowshed. The passionate gardener, amazed poignancy of their activities (‘We made a by his own green fingers home’) is only fully felt when one takes in the nine an old war has left him. the poem’s title: ‘Rondeau On Hearing Of He plants small mimosas Your Suicide’. against a sea background. In two years their shade There are four pages of notes at the end of at midday is taller than me. the book, explaining not only references but inspirations. I have mixed feelings about They stride through the book, this family this. I’m glad I didn’t read the notes until and their cohorts; resourceful, proud and so after I had read, and formed my own obviously loved. The golden light that shines relationship with, each of the poems. In off these portraits is a balm. There were just its need to make us understand, the book a few places where I (a poet reared on the perhaps loses a bit of potency; readers enjoy confessional style) wondered whether the gathering implications, analysing subtext, depictions were too good to be true. One for themselves. Roberts should trust the case in point is at the end of ‘Mimosas’, depth and strength of her own spare, when the beloved trees are cut down. ‘But unflinching voice. Mother claims her view / and he fells my totems. / The only thing ever / I’ve had to —4— forgive them.’ If this is really the only thing mothers and daughters, women, everywhere. she has had to forgive her parents for, theirs There are persona poems and compassionate, is a blessed relationship indeed! closely-observed narrative poems about a rich variety of women: a junkie, a widow I have some knowledge of modern French addressing St. Paul, a mysterious Cailín poetry (Mac Namara has roots in France as Rua, a woman whose two siblings have well as Ireland), and find much of it to be been burned for witchcraft (‘Three Sisters’): gently philosophical in nature; posing big ‘Whip-graft my floating rib to a spur of the questions in a light, even playful manner. quicken tree / so my spirit endures as strong This quality is present in Mac Namara’s as the day I was born, / for I must destroy the work, and enriches it, in poems such as destroyers of Bella, Donna and me.’ ‘The First Question’ (‘The first question / I remember asking: / / “How can you be sure These poems come together as a sort of / the sun will rise tomorrow?” ’). This sparky hymn to the female – her suffering, strength curiosity about the world gives the book its and alchemising ability. This is very pulse-beat. There is only a very brief bio of accomplished work, using and transcending the poet provided, which is a shame, given the trope of the autobiographical first that the poems bring up questions about collection. At seventy-eight pages, Ryan’s the writer’s heritage. The book’s cover is my book sprawls; yet the contents are broken favourite of the three; a photo of grooved, into only two sections. I would’ve preferred pockmarked stone gleefully at odds with a tighter, more ordered construction. the waterfalls of the title. A juxtaposition as The design of the book is functional and impish as the best of Mac Namara’s work. attractive. I’m a fan of endpapers and they add a grace note here. If Roberts’ language is sure and transparent, and Mac Namara’s image-rich and musical, There is a way in which a poet’s engagement the language of Breda Wall Ryan, in her with their craft only begins after the first collection In A Hare’s Eye, is dense and book is published. It is after we self-identify richly textured. Long lines conjure lust, as ‘poet’ – at whatever age that happens – loss, hauntedness. Of the three, Ryan is that we can begin to dig deep, bring to the least concerned with providing a narrative surface our own peculiar poetic gifts. I look accounting of herself and her kin. She’s forward to reading what each of these three a shapeshifter, giving voice to the young fine poets produces next. people who smile at us from homemade ‘Have You Seen’ posters in ‘Missing’, and to career fishermen in ‘Inheritors’: Susan Millar DuMars has published three collections with Salmon Poetry, the most We’ll dawdle downriver, recent of which is The God Thing (2013). find a spot to haul up in the shade, Bone Fire will be published by Salmon pluck a lapful of holes from the air, Poetry in April, 2016. She published a book knot them together to make of short stories, Lights in the Distance, with nets to go fishing, come Monday.