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New British Poetry 24: A Literary Lion

© Dr J D Ballam

I am always pleased to receive new work from London-based publisher Katabasis, and their newest offering, THE LION IN THE FOREST, by Kathleen McPhilemy (London: Katabasis, 2004) is certainly an estimable collection. This is McPhilemy third solo volume, and there is evidence throughout that experience, imaginative power and technical expertise have fused once again to produce some original and memorable poetry. The voice throughout is intellectually confident, deploying inter-textual devices skilfully (but not opportunistically), and yet there is no sense in which these features downplay the unquantifiable or not-wholly-determined scope of the writer's emotional field. She is, in other words, a poet who strives to find a balance between the irrational forces that drive her - inside and out - and the rational ones of an acutely-fostered mind. For example, the book uses sources as diverse as the poetry of Romanian-born author Paul Celan (1920-70), and segments of the Latin Easter liturgy, or Tenebrae Responsories, meditating, as it says on an 'exploration of the idea of "home"'.

Thus it would be entirely wrong to suggest the book is only suited to literary critics, or lovers of semi-obscure foundational materials. Instead, listen to how this stanza from the book's inaugural poem 'Home' derives part of its significance through the sonority of its voicing, carefully mimicking - through rhythmical repetitions, abrupt shifts in the register of the diction and well-timed line-endings - the images it describes:

Where the heart is, where the hearth is,/ home is where she is, but what she knows,/ the heart is in the body and hers has changed so much./ From egg-head doll with tiny fingernails/ through hefty girlhood to anorexic frailty;/ ripe, tight as a plum, the bloom of babies/ then earthward sag of cheek, upper arm/ and folds of stomach: with every change of shape,/ a change of heart till she understands herself/ and knows that home is discontinuous.

Ingeniously it sallies forth pleasurably, before shortening its stride, only to relax through the decline of the latter lines, before ending with virtually a saddened shake of the head. Not everyone would even attempt this level of control.

Plainly it is strong spirits, resisting spirits, I might say, which attract McPhilemy's admiration. In a poem entitled 'Confined Spirit', she addresses Sylvia Plath's shade in a tone that suggests both sympathy and dissatisfaction with that poet's work:

Words are for more than wrapping wounds,/ private pearls round private pain;/ you went down, down to your own roots/

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