New British Poetry: 12 Nothing Desperate
Similarly wide-ranging, my final recommendation for 2003 is SATURDAY NIGHT DESPERATE (Snitterfield: Ragged Raven, 2003). This is the fifth anthology of poems from Ragged Raven, and it features work from forty-six poets. Surprisingly, for an anthology this size, I thought there was very little that was weak or undeserving here, and the range of styles is complementary without being either narrow or random. Instead, as is the case with all the works published by Ragged Raven, the hallmark seems to be the authors' integrity. The emphasis is upon immediacy, clarity and a lack of superficial thought or stylistic adornment.
While I liked a great many of these poems, I was most impressed by the work of David Swann, who is represented here by three pieces, all of which are engaging and imaginative. Nearly a witness to the tragedy, he writes in 'A drowning off Brighton Pier',
their faint hopes fluttering in all our chests/ until a helicopter scowled into the chaos/ and revealed in its searchlight only tyres, weed.
Later, after the beam of that great machine/ had raked my face and passed into the dark, I thought/ of rust on his hands as he parted from the girder.
This manner of bringing the unseen into focus gives Swann's poems a voice that is at once self-deprecating, and yet never wholly lacking an appreciation for the value of personal judgment and memory.
Very different is the Browningesque monologue of Terence Brick's 'The Lute-Maker of Bruges', where, once again, the speaker is revelatory, yet not lacking in poise:
My task is a labour/ of love without romance./ My workshop's a huddle-/ worthy of Bosch/ -imported wood/ in a garden open to the sky./ Beechwood is gold as honey,/ pine is white as flour./ I see the world in a lute.
This stance of single personality and single experience is repeated frequently in SATURDAY NIGHT DESPERATE, but the sheer variety of tones, shades, nuances and verbal play-all within the framework of lived, sometimes emphatically or excessively-lived encounter-make it an enjoyable read. In fact, unlike most anthologies, or even poetry magazines and journals, it is something that can be read for a long sitting, without that feeling of creeping editorial sameness overtaking the mind, and flattening the responses. If it isn't a chorus, it is certainly a succession of very talented soloists.
PRESENCE is available from www.katabasis.co.uk, and SATURDAY NIGHT DESPERATE from www.raggedraven.co.uk. Both books can be purchased from www.amazon.co.uk.
2004 will see a number of new writers and publishers
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