Paula Jennings

I recently received "From the Body of the Green Girl", by Paula Jennings, a pamphlet of poems from Happenstance Press and I can't remember when I have ever enjoyed a pamphlet as much. The blurb on the back describes the poems as "rich, strange...of surreal imagination.. unconventional spirituality". They are certainly all of that, but more than that they filter into your mind, and haunt you with their freshness, their bold entry into other dimensions until you feel that you are living simultaneously in two different spaces, this tangible, visible world and an 'other', invisible world, the one we all try to imagine, the one beyond this; a world that Paula Jennings has no hesitation in visiting at will, and thereby bringing the reader into it. In "Elegy for Ben" she imagines Ben in that other world where animals 'converse with no words' and Ben

'inhabits
the language of lean muscle,
the narrow muzzle that translates complexities
of scent'

as if Ben has slid into the animal world in every sensual way while we 'are dull strangers' in a world 'where the foxes trust us with nothing'. Jennings has a remarkable abilty in her work to slip into the very skin of things and be something other than herself. In "Driving in Autumn" she enters a dream of abandoning daily stress and letting her animal archetype carry her; there is a 'flow of fur from road to verge' she 'brakes', 'unbuckles' herself into her animal and then they are travelling through 'stiff stars of cow parsley' observing black leaves against the moon, listening to the 'wing-beats of sycamore keys' until 'every weed in the ditch is breathing'. It is wonderful stuff, the transformation of self into something other, a journey both beyond and yet also vividly into our familar world. And it is this quality in the poems - of the thing that lies beyond or beneath, brought to life in vital and real, grounded terms, - that makes these poems so memorable. It becomes quite chilling in the poem sequence "Looking for God" where Jennings lists the vast canopy that makes up our planet and ends

'I give you dominion,
he says,
nudging it all towards me
with a polished boot'.

I found in those brief lines a perfect summary of why it's all gone so badly wrong for us; this God is more like some kind of Nazi figure, and his entrusting us with 'dominion' is like setting us a terrible test that he knows we will fail.`
The poem that most encapsulates Jennings' power for me was "The Day Before the Last One", an apocalyptic poem where the last things she is given are a tin mug and a left shoe by people whose 'eyes are empty but whose 'guns are full of purpose'. Her 'unreachable mind' sees the shoe filled with mountains, the mug filled with goat's milk.
And because I too am getting older I really enjoyed the poem that contains the title line of the pamphlet, "Autumn Equinox" where Jennings sees old age surfacing from the 'body of the green girl' and turning into the Cailleach or Crone, 'flapping her rags' shuffling through 'dry leaves', which turns into a very reassuring and uplifting poem when the Crone

'smiles my seasons into me, so implacable
and tender that I want to keep her.'

These are poems that smile their seasons into you and are themselves so implacable and tender that you want to keep them with you, always.

Ballet Rambert

Last week I went to see Ballet Rambert at Theatr Clwyd, to watch three dance pieces: Eternal Light, The Carnival of the Animals, and Infinity. It was so good I went twice - I had a spare ticket for the Friday night which I had intended to change but instead I hung onto it!

I do not have the language of a ballet expert to communicate precisely what I saw but I want to try and describe my response to it.
Eternal Light was a requiem piece which focussed not on a life well lived but on the young: a requiem for them for the loss of our planet, and also for the loss of young lives in World War 2. It was influenced by Gericault's painting of The Raft of The Medusa, an extremely moving painting that depicts a group of men on a raft, in a triangular formation; they float towards a wide break of light in the sky, the hands of the men standing lifted towards it, and those sitting either kneeling up to look at it or comforting the prostrate dying. When the ballet opened the tight formation of the dancers and the beautiful synchrony of their movements reflected this scene intensely. During the section that dealt with war dead the poem 'In Flanders field the poppies grow' was sung and the stage backlit with crimson while, very slowly, lit crosses were lowered down, until they formed even military rows of memorial crosses. It was quite harrowing. Colours in this ballet were minimal: mainly white, with some green and red. Nothing else, which made it more poignant. Towards the end of the piece the dancers performed against a huge waxing moon whose light became so intense that the whole audience was lit by it, and the effect of it was so wonderful that you could clearly observe how emotional people felt. I honestly think I have never before sat in an audience who were so unanimously moved by a ballet, and it was an astonishing event. The music was specially composed for the ballet and it too was wonderfully moving. I was so, so glad I had a ticket for a second performance, and was equally moved on the second night.

I must be giving the impression that the other two pieces counted for nothing, and of course that is not the case at all. It's just very difficult to be so profoundly moved by a ballet and then have to try and shift gear to concentrate on something very different. What I would like to comment on in The Carnival of the Animals is the joyful verve with which it was danced, and the exquisite solo of the swan was a delight. 'Infinity' I found deeply sad and very powerful, with a strong element in it of the chorus from a Greek tragedy. And in fact on my second visit I couldn't bear to stay for it: I simply wanted to hug the vision of 'Eternal Light' tight to my chest.

During the intervals I spent my time looking at the exhibition of photographs, taken by Rhori Jones, of the mountain people of North Albania. Theatr Clwyd is a treat in that it uses its very long, wide corridors as art galleries, and I have been lucky to see some superb displays in these, including, some time ago, the vast, brilliantly coloured paintings of Welsh artist Mary Lloyd Jones whose work I very much admire. But back to the photographs! They were taken between 1992 - 1999, and were of a harsh, tough people whose lives were hard and rigidly governed by codes that swung between high Catholicism and pagan practice. The faces were thin, hard and careworn; clearly a very poverty-stricken life and very cut off both from each other and the rest of the world: mostly they travelled between villages by boat on the large mountain lakes. Blood feuds were common, and could last as long as fifty years until the oath of bessa was taken to end the feud. Tiny babies were still dressed in swaddling cloths. One of the pictures showed the funeral ritual for the poet Martin Camaj, a poet I had never come across before but have now looked him up and found some of his work, and was relieved to see that it very much echoed the quality of life as shown in these photographs; so there was nothing at all artificial about them. They were truly extraordinary shots.

It was a very rich night altogether, Eternal Light, and this exhibition as well. I had two thoroughly great evenings out! I can think of so many things I've been to that were eminently forgettable but this, I am sure, will stay with me for a very long time.

The Last of The Snowdrops

This post is a tribute to the friend who took her own life.



Among Snowdrops

She did it in snowdrop season
when the future was shut off by snow,
when the earth was cramped, cold and barren,
her heart like a black frozen pond.

She did it in snowdrop season,
among those cold, icy blooms in the snow,
the green hearts within the white hidden,
her own heart as bitter as sloe.

And her blood there, staining the snowdrops,
like bright berries crushed against snow.
She lay there, so white among them,
her body all frozen and closed.

Still. Very still. Among snowdrops.
All broken, those bloodied white blossoms –
I cannot endure them now.



Published in The Frogmore Papers, No 71, Spring 2008.
And in The Stony Thursday Book

Hellebores

They are strange flowers in some ways, opening their big moonlike discs that, in the case of the greenish ones, have a glow-in-the-dark quality to them, and lingering on for weeks until they're hard and dry like old paper. Now I can't remember where I saw it, or quote what it said, but I am sure Ted Hughes wrote a very unflattering poem about Hellebores, comparing their fat buds to slugs and generally not allowing the plant to have anything but a sinister, uncomfortable but fascinating ugliness. It isn't in his Collected Poems, so I must have seen it elsewhere. But where? It's driving me daft; I'd love to find it.

I feel similarly about snowdrops: sometimes I find them very beautiful, tough, brave, resilient; and other times sinister, eerie, like unwelcome night-lights. Their powers of multiplying themselves are quite astonishing: turn up a spadeful of them and there seem to be legions of maggot-shaped white bulbs on the blade. Un-nerving. I have written several poems about this, trying to get to the nitty-gritty of the effect they have on me. To compound this they are associated in my mind with a friend who committed suicide. I have written about that in a poem called Among Snowdrops which has been published in The Frogmore Papers, and also in Ireland in The Stony Thursday book.

Black Boxes

On Saturday I went into Chester to Caroline Smailes' book signing at Waterstones. I got a copy of her novel Black Boxes and read it Saturday night. It's the story of a post-natally depressed woman who in the last hours of her life (she's swallowed the pills) is recounting her obsessive love for the anally retentive control freak Alex. Alex is not only a control freak, he's the son of one: his mother, Penny, is a virago who claims to be a feminist but for Ana, our dying heroine, Penny is the angel of death in disguise, taking decisions to 'help' the couple that are not born out of generosity or kindness.
The book is laid out in black boxes, all small, all framing Ana's memories and thoughts. It gives it the quality of a play, particularly as there are apparent 'stage directions' in brackets accompanying each box; add to that the Greek chorus effect of Ana's repeated wailings of how she loves Alex, how she must not sleep, must not blink etc and you might indeed think Smailes is practising to be a playwright. It seems a style suited to the 'light bite' age but this novel is anything but a light bite: it's bleak; the only colours used are red, black and white, underlining the starkness of the story.
The most harrowing section is Pip's diary: Pip is Alex's and Ana's daughter who struggles to cope while her mother lies on her bed, unkempt, unwashed and helpless as family life slides into chaos. Pip is saddled with a tragic younger brother who soils and wets himself regularly, and she herself is repeatedly abused sexually by a cruel school fellow who uses her and then sneers at her. She and her brother use sign language to communicate, while Alex and his mother speak in a code of reversal, emphasising Ana's extreme isolation. At times I got annoyed with the constant repetitions of Ana's wailings, and skipped a bit. But I couldn't skip Pip's diaries; these are where the novel has force and a dark power that is truly tremendous, and are impossible to put down.

This is not a story to recommend to anyone who's down in their boots! If you want to find out more about Caroline Smailes she has a blog: in search of adam.

Indeed if it were not for Caroline I would not be writing this blog: she ran a blogging workshop in Chester last year as part of the Literature Festival's events, and I am grateful to her for that and for the generous help she has given me as I've floundered into blogging.

Pour yourself a large brandy and read Black Boxes - If your own life is a tolerably good one, you'll value it even more after this!

The Hare

On Sat Feb 28th, eve of the mad hare month, I and some friends were driving to Wigmore Abbey in Herefordshire where the a capella group The Polisumi Sisters were to'premiere' one of my poems in song at a concert in aid of the Red Cross. A hare ran across our path and crouched on the verge for a while and I thought of lines by Hilary Llewellyn-Williams: "moonlight silvering her closecropped fur" from a poem called "The Innocent Hare", only it was our headlights silvering the fur not the moon. But it was a beautiful moment, the kind of moment that brings a lump to the throat. Another lump rose in my throat when, later, I heard my poem "Sometimes" sung by the group and accompanied by the dulcimer; for a while I couldn't speak, the singing gave the poem an intense poignancy I wasn't prepared for. To hear your own work sung, as you sit in candle and firelight, under massive oak beams, with shadows dancing on the thick stone walls around you - well....how lucky! There is no doubt in my mind that the hare is indeed magical.