Mab Jones delivers us six of the best new entries from the British poetry landscape of June 2024, including titles from Caerphilly’s clare e. potter and Newport’s Nigel Jarrett, plus American in southwest England (on a Welsh imprint) Carrie Etter.
Healing The Pack, clare e. potter (Verve Poetry Press, price: £10.99)
Pwll-y-Wrach the witches’ cauldron
soup of iaith words held and spoken
rhythm pulled by moon and tongue
hear its pitch from swell and belch
wrack and kelp of vowels sung…
Healing The Pack – the highly anticipated second collection of new poetry by clare e. potter – is, as its title intimates, a book of fulsome, soul-fueling spirit medicine, containing insights and instances that offer a mirrored pool for a reader to reflect, recognise and dip into; and which holds a space, like a magic circle, in which the poet, her progeny and ancestors, the wider community and the reader too can enter and, as with any pack, feel that they are not alone.
This poet’s witchiness is apparent not just in her words, with their incantatory, aural spellcasting, but in her earthiness, her remarkable powers of observation, and her innate ability to sense spirit “in the splinter”, or in the “gap” within a simple, everyday act such as her child jumping on a trampoline, “between / going up and coming down”. Amidst double-deckers, breezeblock walls, manmade lakes, and factories, as well as forests, valleys and skies, are moments of wounding, witnessing and wonder. A series of ‘bird prayer’ poems lifts us up; the past and its effects are clearly, personally addressed (I particularly identified with the lines “I have / skulked – like any creature with a wound does – to the safety of my battered chair” – and wolves run, and run some more, into the future, and into our future selves.
A repetition of the word ‘lip’ across several poems speaks strongly to me of how voice (as in, being ‘lippy’), being a woman (because this is a description usually reserved for women), and jumping off from the ‘lip’ of a thing (for example, a figurative cliff edge) all intertwine here. In particular, potter’s subject matter extends to childhood trauma, ancestry / lineage, and motherhood, and in these the unspoken, too, is courageously explored. Every poem here is perfectly pitched and weighted, perfectly hewed and honed, and like her previous book, I love this one very much. Reading = healing, in this case, making Healing The Pack less a book of shadows (which is what witches call their spellbooks) than a book of light. Powerful, profound, and full of poise: this will change you immeasurably.
Grief’s Alphabet, Carrie Etter (Seren, price: £10.99)
From new poetry that is healing, now, to grief. I turn randomly in Grief’s Alphabet by Carrie Etter to find its shortest poem, which is just a title: F Is for Fuck This. Although grief is the word chosen for the title of this book – and this is a collection that deals primarily with loss – there are so many other emotions here, including those that are overt, like anger, but also more subtle or nuanced, even without name.
This gives Grief’s Alphabet one of its great strengths, as we recognise some feelings but also come to understand those that are unfamiliar. In one poem, The Lauras, Etter – as an adopted child – ‘blazes’, ‘shines’ and feels ‘newly seen’ when she is mistaken for her sister. This poem, although short, puts us right in that moment and into her shoes.
The poet’s relationship with her mother is beautifully evoked by the image of a bird, which is also featured on the book’s cover: “I was like that red cardinal on the white lawn, easy in brightness, except I was two: we”. And then, later, an everyday domestic detail that says so much: “For weeks I rummaged and sorted / and, going into the garage, / saw her car. In the trunk, two books: / Facing Loneliness; Cooking for One”. It’s heart-rending stuff.
Grief’s Alphabet ends with a hopeful image, however, of a floating seed and the concept of reincarnation. This final, spacious, space-filled poem uses the whiteness of the page to expand out and imagine something more – the ultimate ‘open ending’, as it were. It’s beautifully, deftly done, as are the other pieces in this very fine collection.
Shadow Reader, Imtiaz Dharker (Bloodaxe, price: £12.99)
In Shadow Reader, poet Imtiaz Dharker engages with shadows, and what I believe is called shadow work: exploring humanity’s darker side and, in particular, those who are outcast or sidelined – who become shadows or are themselves overshadowed. She’s exceptional at seeing how beings are restricted (“You can squat in this room if you don’t say a word,… / you can be in the group if you get enough likes”) and demeaned (“the slights, the casual put-downs, / the sideways swipes, being overlooked / and underpaid…”) – or, rather, how we diminish ourselves.
There are demons early on in this book, but later there are angels, and a mysterious figure called the Shadow Reader tells us: “To understand the shadow, / you have to see the light”. The gaps for this poet are inhabited by lost souls, but there’s defiance, determination, and, in the book’s final poem, a deliberate fuck-you to the Shadow Reader and to all notions of inhibition and control.
Indeed, the I’s walk, in this poem, becomes a poem too: “My walk is iambic… / My walk is a sonnet”. Life itself is the poem, then, but along the way there is “blood in the streets”, there are “bruises” and “battles”; however, although “the body is broken”, “the breath is butterfly” – and so are these terrific, transcendent poems, which go from grit to heart, sorrow to song, and all between. It’s a stunner of a collection, as a result, and the writing, throughout, is exceptional. You’ll be a better person, reader, and even poet yourself for perusing it.
With Love, Grief And Fury, Salena Godden (Canongate, price: £16.99)
Poetry and prose walk, sing and dance, arm in lovely arm, in this incredible hardback collection, With Love, Grief And Fury, from Salena Godden. I booked Salena in 2015 to perform at Heartspoken, a night I ran in Cardiff, and she was glorious then. Now, she’s more glorious than ever, and this book again proves that she’s a poet of the page as well as one who can command a stage.
For Godden is a poet who, as well as being dashingly clever and full of wit, speaks from the heart, and acts from there, too: “she’s yelling, / telling me to, / Get back on my boat /… [I] ask / Do you need a hug? / I stand with open arms / as wide as a map of the world”. Yes, there’s love, but the grief and fury of the title are here too. There are explorations of apology and constantly saying sorry; images of witch selves who burn and of inner monsters; flights of fancy entwined with astute observation, showcasing an imagination that’s compelling and captivating but rooted in the real. Many of the pieces seem autobiographical, but the angle into them is, at the same time, often very unexpected and inventive.
In one of my favourite pieces, Godden writes a mini-memoir in the form of old clothes, each outfit or item reminding her of a particular time. It’s deftly done and finely, funnily written. A book I’d happily take as part of my baggage allowance on holiday, and which I found made me smile, sigh, well up, and wince turn by delicious turn. It’s worth its weight in gold, while Godden is a future national treasure.
Gwyriad: Poems, Nigel Jarrett (Cockatrice, price: £9.99)
Set in the shadow of Newport’s transporter bridge, Gwyriad Poems, the second collection by Nigel Jarrett, often details place, sometimes people, other times moments. Although some of its scenes are recognisable – “Just moved into a place with things / I don’t need: a wall mounted bar / at the door to help me heave myself / into the house…” – the poet paints these with keen sight and a slightly wry tone which shows them anew. His people are often in relationship and, again, there’s a touch of humour alongside the poet’s depth and understanding: “I’ve snagged myself / on some fucking bramble”.
However, these poems take the reader to places that are most unexpected, too (“Injured after using a quack contraption intended to strengthen his fingers, the composer Robert Schumann was advised to plunge his hands into the guts of a freshly-slaughtered cow”), and there are some startlingly brilliant descriptions in addition (“We slept like cupped Geminis”) – as well as an acceptance of life’s ups and downs, its loves and enmities, its miseries and losses, ending with a succinct, scalpel-like poem in which a miniature fan from a father’s hospital bedside becomes both silly and symbolic as it “seeks the old man” who is the son. It’s wonderful, sometimes wan, often wily stuff, altogether a pleasure to read.
In The Shadow Of Gods, Rachel Deering (Black Bough Poetry, price: £9.95)
Trees and plants, saints and shadows, all intertwine in In The Shadow Of Gods from Rachel Deering. Many of the titles of these pieces simply refer to what’s being addressed or observed in the poem – Holly Tree; Hazelnut; Wren; Otter – an artistic act which speaks to me of ‘the lost words’ (a long list of common nature words that were removed from children’s dictionaries a few years ago) but also of the availability of beauty, the immediacy of nature, its ever-ready solace, its deceptive, magical simplicity, and how it continues to speak to us.
Mythology, folklore, and fairytales form part of the brew, here, and the “old words / of the dead” are keenly listened out for. These are poems which use the seen to search out the unseen, as it were; nature becomes a book and its spells are many, but perhaps its ultimate casting is when the poet / we humans become part of it:
I see the sun
blink through the emerald umbrella
of a summered ash tree; the cool green
of its fanned embrace, until
watered by dew and lying amongst
the long grass, I am no more
than just one more blade of it.
Highly imagistic, there is beauty and connection to be found in this book of new poetry for June, despite Deering’s own sorrows and sorrys which are explored alongside them. Deering is someone who always brings us back to a higher contemplation, a true, natural, mystical and highly enigmatic nature poet for our times, and I really enjoyed this fine and fabulous book as a result.
If you would like to submit some new, published poetry for potential review in this column, contact Mab via her website (you can find social media links there) or get in touch via Buzz.
words MAB JONES