Love and Other Conflicts by Geoff Stevens (poems on CD)
This morning my hangover didn’t want to let me go, pulling me back into bed each time I tried to stand up. Leave off, I said to myself. Geoff Stevens made me promise to review his new CD. If I don’t do it today it will disappear into that world of fluff and pennies under the couch! The first thing that strikes me as I peel the wrapper off is the cover artwork, one of Stevens’ weird collages: A man with a huge elongated eyeball reaches out with a blood red arm and squeezes the breast of a woman made of cut outs from at least three different magazines. Quirky and whimsical and I haven’t even listened to the first track, of which there are 26.
I read to you
a short story by Brautigan
a meagre page that is a long seductive paging
of the memory
of women when they put their clothes on
in the morning.
Stevens' Black Country accent translates well in the recording studio, coming over as warm and friendly. I begin to make associations between the cover and the poems, both quirky and whimsical (but not without darkness), eye catching; pleasant to the ear.
Because when the sun goes down
and when we go to bed
the bumpy day irons itself out
between the cool, clean sheets,
and between the soft, cool flesh of each other.
By this point I am genuinely amazed Geoff Stevens isn’t as popular as he could be. We cannot argue that he isn’t a good, prolific writer and promoter of the cause of poetry itself. We can’t ignore the hundreds, literally hundreds, of magazine appearances over the years, with poems that continue to pop up between our pages and international journals with furious regularity. But I’d like to see Stevens get the credit he deserves, even if this means I must convince you to get in touch with him and order this CD. Love and Other Conflicts is the perfect introduction into Stevens’ mind and the way he makes words work for him.
People unkindly stare then look away
try not to imagine the aged bodies
that lie wrinkled wasted and waiting
standing there on the final parade.
Darker moments like this keep the listener in a state of enjoyable anxiety; will he make me laugh a mouthful of tea over my legs? Will he make me look out the rainy window and consider my own mortality?
This is a good CD, the artwork, the poems, the voice – a short classical piece to fade us out, which is our signal to go away and do something else. I’m going to write some poetry. What more can I say, the mood is infectious.
Darkness is all shape and no sight
you reach out to touch its face
hoping it won’t bite you
and feel a soft breast instead,
it’s your lucky night.