Ahead of tomorrow’s National Poetry Day, Nicholas Reid reviews new releases.
The Girls in the Red House Are Singing
by Tracey Slaughter
Although the title might suggest something joyful, Tracey Slaughter’s very detailed collection is the poetry of trauma and angst. The first of four long sequences, Opioid Sonatas, which won the prestigious Manchester Poetry Prize, deals with a car crash and its aftermath. In fragmented statements, the patient conflates images of doctor and hospital with trauma: “She bleeds out / in an off-road church. Two hundred & fifty milligrams of south / facing blue. The doctor, half-in, locks the clutch …” A later poem, Quicksilver drumroll suicide pretty please, looks seriously at the allure of self-annihilation after going through much pain.
The second long sequence, Psychopathology of the Small Hotel, deals with illicit affairs in a sleazy hotel and the disappointment of one-night stands. “Blessed are the adulterers / for they shall inherit / cheaper rates / on the brown velour of memory / & the nicotine threadcount of per-room promises.” The sequence The Girls in the Red House are Singing delves back into childhood and adolescence with a dread at confronting adults. Three detailed poems, labelled The Rape Mosaic, in part detail a teenage girl being sexually assaulted in a drunken gathering. Last comes Nudes, Animals & Ruins, which deals with loneliness in a run-down neighbourhood during the Covid lockdown.
All this does make for somewhat gruelling reading, but Slaughter’s use of rhythm and sound is spot on, in orderly stanzas, free verse and prose poems with strong rhythms, especially when she is presenting the images that flock an anxious or worried mind. And she takes a mighty whack at the false feminism of advertising agencies.
The Girls in the Red House Are Singing by Tracey Slaughter (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $30) is out now.
Slim Volume
by James Brown
In stark contrast, James Brown’s Slim Volume has poems that are ironic and often funny. The longest poem in the book, Amen, is printed sideways, categorising over six pages the shortcomings of men. Almost as long is The Book of Credence, an odd sort of apocalyptic tale where the brain vies with reality. But the poems are mainly brief. In a kind of wink at the reader, Brown doesn’t give section breaks but tells us about them and congratulates us for reaching the end of the book.
In very general terms, this collection deals first with childhood and school; then with teen and student years; then with now. After the primary school behaviour, a “found” poem about the toy Hornetroid and the perils of doing a milk round, there is self-referencing irony in Beryl Brown’s Poem, where he tells us, “Other points of view, people tell me, can be notoriously difficult to see. That sounds snarky, but I don’t mean it to be. No one wants to read angry poetry …”. Later his Another Palmerston North Poem is deliberately written as doggerel in mild mockery of the city he finds dull.
Cycling Down Happy Valley Road at Night is a vivid account of how darkness creates a different world: “The horses, dark in the paddock beyond, / might outpace me, but they have to / set themselves free. The nagging issue is / the dark houses, even their mice sleep, / whose occupants snore through / dreams of compost and gib.” Unfamiliar Text is a jeu d’esprit, bouncing through Tolstoy, Thomas the Tank Engine and the woman who runs the cafeteria. The laughs are real.
Slim Volume by James Brown (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $25) is out now.
Other poetry well worth reading:
About Now by Richard Reeve (Maungatua Press, $25) is a collection of many moods with an acute feeling for the environment and awareness of structured poetry. Departures by Dunstan Ward (Cold Hub Press, $28) recalls many travels, looking deeply at different cultures. Tsunami with Mushrooms by Te Awhina Rangimarie Arahanga (Steele Roberts Aotearoa, $25) is a gathering of poetry and short stories as the tides rise. Based on a True Story by David Gregory (Sudden Valley Press, $25): takes on the post-truth era.
