Heaventree New Poets, Volumes 3 & 4
(Heaventree Press, Coventry, pamphlets, pp. 40 (vol. 3) & 39 (vol. 4), £3 each, isbn (vol. 3), 0-9548811-7-6; isbn (vol. 4) 0-9548811-8-4)

It's good to see a small press doing one of the things small presses do best: introducing young and little-known writers and giving them the space to showcase a wider selection of their work than would be possible in most magazines. The Heaventree New Poets series publishes 3 or 4 contrasting poets per pamphlet and, by allowing each about 10-15 pages, provides a clear enough idea of each poet's work to know whether you'd like to see more of it.  

Volume 3 contains poems and prose by Ziqian Chan, Victoria, Heath, Leila Rasheed and Michael Rose-Steel. Ziqian Chan's work is represented by long, quasi-narrative, 'prose-poems' that for me tip a little bit too far towards experimental fiction to sit comfortably within the genre. There's more than a touch of Barthelme and Borges here. But this ain't really the moment to reignite that debate. Whatever else, these pieces are certainly examples of well-observed and accomplished writing. The style is laconic and witty; the subject matter touching and absurd:

Amid the laughter that surrounded the opening of the museum, one thing was overlooked. The original plan had included a wax figure of ______, the finishing touch to this historical re-creation, allowing visitors to walk into the museum as if into his life during those three years on the island. Yet it has never been sighted. Photographs on websites and in newspapers are proof of this, as only dust and air occupy the chairs. Faces have appeared in the room but none belong to the man in question.

This is the opening paragraph of 'The Five Myths of ______', itself apparently an excerpt from a longer piece called 'The Museum of ______'.  It's more-ish stuff so I hope we'll see more from him in the future.

The best of Victoria Heath's poetry displays a fascination with language, its character(s) and mechanisms. Here's an excerpt from 'a e i o u':

            violet 'i' takes Harper's BAZAAR to lunch.
            violent time.
'i' sparkles in drift
and on the purple stump of blight:
sharp.   spiked
like tin-tipped thought   
it flowers in the grass

To my mind this is some of the best writing in either pamphlet, and Victoria Heath continues her engagement with the nuts and bolts of language in 'cut' and 'ace paint', both of which are compact and playful technical displays, but not without heart too.

 

Leila Smith is a more conventional sort, employing both rhyme and meter in poems that draw heavily on mythology. I'm less attracted to her work than that of some writers in the series, but it's a matter of personal taste: her craft is pretty much beyond reproach. She writes clearly and intelligently, she handles her self-imposed forms well, and there are nice touches of homely surrealism:

            Who says they have not seen the wind?
            Its telephone is ringing in the wood.
            The cyclone of an olive trunk
            has knotted up Penelope's split ends.

(from 'Dryads')

 

The final poet in volume three is Michael Rose-Steel. His work covers a broad range of subject matter and, accordingly, style. The more conventional lyric poems are capitalised and punctuated, full of well-observed images, and display an admirable fluidity. The rhythms never jar, even perhaps when they ought to. Sometimes I felt a startling idea could be better highlighted by a jerk or a rhythmic stop: it's too easy to get caught up in the music and bypass points of interest, which is sort of a compliment I guess. I think his work is much more exciting when he abandons easy-going meters and punctuation and lets the reader come to him, filling in any gaps him-or-herself. The poem that rounds off this anthology, 'to explain', is perhaps his most (and very) successful. This is the opening:

            what we see is empty
            this sculpture is unending
            speaker to speaker never
                           a shape             a path             we follow
            marbling words presenting not
            escaping the last blank voice 

 

Volume four kicks off with Patrick Gilmore. He has a quirky imagination, occasionally straying into kitsch (that's no bad thing: there's a neon statuette of the Blessed Virgin on my desk right now), as in 'American Cowgirl', which involves 'standing by your man' and 'a hoedown/ when everyone left in twos'. 'The Invention of the Parachute' is a beautifully whimsical bit of writing and I hope Mr Gilmore doesn't mind me quoting it in full:

            One day Lenormand showed his design
            with two parasols: as he leapt from a tree

            two girls, sunstruck, looked on. One asked
            if one might snag on a sprig

            as, steering from his beech lair,
            he felt air pucker and pummel

            into his intricate canopies.
            He held them so closely, their flounces lapped

            then slowed as he fell, so he could watch
            not the sisters – with dresses like sheets –

            but beyond, perhaps: cow and calf,
            a meadow nearing, a butterfly's teeter

            under the air-plump silk. So the parasols
            that once had formed a floating raft

            were given back to each girl, as if a secret
            might be better kept, by being halved.

I think aerial-pastoral may even constitute a new genre.  

Gregory Leadbetter writes the kind of poems that win prizes. They're elegant, the line-breaks are beautifully placed and timed, and most end with a well-executed cadential pay-off. He also, and admirably, manages to avoid cliché when writing about the everyday and the natural world. I'm sure we'll be hearing from him again. This is the last stanza of 'Who put Bella In The Witch Elm':

            Fire had so hollowed the trunk
            that its weight vaulted the empty
            space where she was hatched,
            where I found wildflowers laid
            in a guesswork bouquet of runes.

 

A selection of poems from Jonathan Morley wraps up volume four. His work ranges from the delightfully and deliberately graceless to the coolly satisfying, taking in some streetwise dialect along the way. My favourite of his here is 'Spon', a poem largely about fog, which demonstrates both his ability to pile sharply focused images and his knack of undercutting them with sudden moments of tender bathos. Here's a chunk of it:

            lamplight swings into triangles and cones,
            trees knuckle at churches, grass glares white,
            and like earth huddled in a cold amnion
            a water-skin films privet, hornbeam, herb
            and our hair.

I don't know about you, but I think that's rather lovely.

I've not seen the earlier two volumes in this series, but on the basis of the poetry in 3 and 4, I'd certainly like to. It's a pretty eclectic mix, and it's good to see a publisher taking a punt on interesting new and young writers. I think I should probably buy them all just to show support: I know the best things in the world (such as review copies) are free, but occasionally I get a twinge of guilt. It must be my Catholic upbringing. I have to go now. Mary needs her batteries changing.  

 

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Copyright © Nathan Thompson, 2007. All quotations are copyright © by the authors, 2006.