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THE WORLD IS MY OYSTER, 2 Feb 2004
In the Company of Poets anthologizes over a hundred contempory poets and translators. The poems are presented in strict alphabetical order - no chapters, no thematical groupings, nothing that overtly shapes or forms the poems into a collection. My initial reaction was that I'd found a bag of pearls with no string to hang them on.
The difference in material and poetic styles is both surprising and groundbreaking in places. Big pearls, Dannie Abse, Alan Brownjohn, John Heath-Stubbs, (Queens Gold Medal for Poetry 1958) and Mimi Khalvati, to mention but a few, sit side by side with lesser-knowns and unknowns. Therein lies its charm. Poems of geographical and historical moment pop up between poems of family and friend. There are political poems, sexy poems, poems that deal with physical and mental disabilities, poems with a marked difference in cultural values. Poets voicing their different views. The scene is set at the outset with Dannie Abse's Dog on a Beach. Abse's howling dog, attentive to the inaudible
world of Eternity, faces
the unfolding, funeral-paced,
incoming waves of night
and begins to howl. is not 'sentimental.' He's not looking for his master. His reaction is deeper, more basic than that. Abse uses the word 'purpural' to describe the sky, as if it bleeds with the going down of the sun. The dog howls for the dying day. The stage is set and one by one the poets walk out to voice their truths, just as they have done for over 21 years at Torriano. Abse is followed by Shanta Acharya. Her poem City Slickers gives us an insight into the life of 'A single, Indian female, I am trapped alas,/ in a cage of bomb-proof, shatterproof glass.' I, despite being a married British female, found complete empathy with her situation. The persona is 'trapped' in a man's world, trying desperately to 'mend the rules of the old boys' network'. The difference between Abse's work and Acharya's sets up expectancy in us. I felt like an explorer travelling unknown fields, finding a quiet spot here or there, as in Jane Duran's Coastal and James Harvey's Kaleidoscope. Such poems are juxtaposed against poems that lend us insight into human sufferings: Peter Campbell's, Night and Morning, a moving reminder of First World War casualties, 'The battered boys from Flanders'. War in Afghanistan by Pat Arrowsmith, (written and read at a protest rally in 2001). And so the show goes on, sexy scenes, Simon Darragh's hilariously funny, I'm After Leaving Monaghan. Sad scenes as in, Windows of the Soul, by Philippa Lawrence. Telling scenes that shouldn't be missed: Bruce Barnes, dis is able, a poem that shapes flags on the page - each a tribute to the disabled: The
first fruit is
impearment/impairment
a coming together that denies
the labels their sense of power. This book is a tribute to John Rety's lifetime devotion to poetry and his strong belief in the human right to free speech. A timely reminder that, 'the world is not my oyster', it is OURS. I take my hat off to him.
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