Shock value or just shockingly good value?
Bobby Parker’s second collection, Comberton, from his KF&S trilogy, Ghost Town Music, leaves nothing unsaid. A haunting mixture of text, hand written confessions and line sketches through which it punches its predecessor hard in the face. There is a consistency within Comberton which shows Parker’s growth as a writer.
In the first instance, I was daunted by the size of this perfect bound book: at a staggering 150 pages, this is no mean feat. I was instantly disheartened by the prosaic presentation of work from this ‘poet’, but the more I learn of Parker through his work, the less I care about labels or what a poem should or shouldn’t look like on the page. Poetry is constructed from more than the aesthetic. There are clear instances where poetic techniques shine through, reminding the reader that this is a writer who knows what he is doing when it comes to handling language; half rhyme, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm grace these stories with their presence. And it is through these carefully constructed poetic elements that the brutality of subject matter is softened somehow. That along with the occasional slip from brutality to genuine humanity, “I hesitated before writing this down” (97), and, “I’m not sure how I feel about this” (140): it is a vulnerability that is endearing. Writing, for Parker, holds its own power that is uncontrollable even by himself. There is an honesty of process, then.
Parker invites us into his world…wait, ‘invites’ is too soft a word – he grabs us by the ball sack and drags us into a reality that is beyond paper, pen and typeface. This is a reality where both the Devil and God are equally tyrannical, yet the Poet is put on a pedestal: this hierarchical shift illuminates religion as inane and writing as a more tactile and beneficial social crutch. Is this merely personal testimony, or an inverted philosophy by which we should all abide?
The word ‘taboo’ clearly doesn’t exist in Parker’s vocabulary. Drugs, sex, violence and rape are commonplace. Section 12, “Stabby Jim”, is probably one of my favourites. Jim steals women’s dirty underwear and uses it for masturbation stimulation. After reading this section I had to check that my own underwear was still there, lest Jimmy has snuck in whilst I was distracted reading. After that initial response I laughed out loud in an empty room. Parker embraces the move from shock to humour with an interesting ability to speed up the process of hindsight and exploit it. It begs the question: am I laughing out of some awkward reflexive fear, or something more sinister? I believe that these short ‘stories’ are now anecdotal realism for the reader to share in. These are painful memories that Parker has implanted in my psyche, making them very much mine, but he also grants me the ability to laugh at these scenarios, purely because of the fact that they become my own experiences. It is a basic human response to laugh in a situation of impending doom, as we seek to find humour in order to counteract the painful reality of the matter. Shock isn’t nearly as shocking if you can’t laugh about it after.
The figurative sketches that accompany the text reside somewhere between the haunting of L.S. Lowry and the humour of Purple Ronnie. There is no infatuation with perfection, as both drawings and handwritten elements only add to the reality of Parker’s situation. Personally, the typeset speech bubbles on these pages distract from their merit. This inclusion could be said to bridge the gap between ‘art’ and ‘text’, but there is a clunkiness which transports these images into a processed formality within which they don’t belong. (With the exception, of course, of the cover image, where the typed text “Help us!” on the television screen just seems to fit.)
The typographical mirroring of “?” and “ ” in the hand written notes across the double page spread (22, 23) embody Comberton’s concerns and reflect a broader cultural struggle. Despite the personal testimony within, Parker takes genuine concerns over religion, growing up, writing, life and death, and magnifies them to Earth-shaped proportions: there is something for everyone within the covers of this book. The fragmentary nature of both text and image make this collection accessible, structurally working to complement the hard-hitting subject matter by allowing the reader blank space within which to recuperate. This is a book for the marginalised, for anybody that has ever felt alone, and I guess that amounts to, well…just about everybody:
I WISH I
COULD SHOW
ALL THE
NORMAL PEOPLE
HOW WEIRD
THEY ARE. (69)
Comberton is by no means perfect, every time italics emphasise the text I am left feeling disappointed and confused. The inference isn’t where I hear it in my head. Reading Parker means to surrender so much of yourself, therefore, this simple, yet occasional, removal of reader control feels contradictory to the openness of the text. This is one small sacrifice I am willing to make as my original concerns regarding a sustentation of quality across such a vast collection of work are unfounded. Again, it is that level of consistency that makes this collection well worth the time it takes to read.
The hand written finale “WE ARE LIGHTS” (150) leaves the reader in a place of optimistic acceptance. Comberton somehow creates a euphoria, not out of some distanced-reader smugness that someone else is worse off than ourselves, but simply because the existence of these stories implies a finality to suffering, and a means to move forward, “eyes deep and dark in the sadness shining.” (56) Moreover, Comberton makes me question the accepted presentation of black text on white page: these words are the light shining out of a dark place. A text/page colour reversal seems more appropriate for the hope that remains.
Bobby Parker’s Comberton is published by The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2012. £7.00. ISBN 978-1-907812-78-1. Buy it here.