{"id":1094,"date":"2007-11-03T09:30:05","date_gmt":"2007-11-03T09:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1094"},"modified":"2007-11-03T09:30:05","modified_gmt":"2007-11-03T09:30:05","slug":"review-separation-overlap-a-three-ring-circus-of-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/review-separation-overlap-a-three-ring-circus-of-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Separation & Overlap – a three ring circus of poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Separation and Overlap, a Three-Ring Circus of Poetry<\/span>


\u2022 Slide by Brendan Hawthorne, produced by Poetry Monthly Press, \u00a37-99 from 20, Wharfedale Street, Wednesbury, West Midlands<\/span>
\u2022 The Pig by Peter Lewin, Flux Gallery Press, \u00a37-95 from 33 Orders Lane, Kirkham, Preston P24 2TP<\/span>
\u2022 Catch a Falling Tortoise by Paul McDonald, \u00a37-99 from Cinnamon Press, Meiron House, Glan yr afon, Tanygrisau, Blaenau Ffestiniog LL41 3SU<\/span>


Ex-saddle maker Paul McDonald is a lecturer in American Literature at Wolverhampton University and both ring master and clown in the arena of this review. His interest in literature comes through with poems about Bukowski, Gertrude Stein, and Delmore Schwartz, in which we learn that <\/span>beer isn't for sipping, wine not for sniffing<\/span> but both for gulping. Gulp! And Delmore is an old man at 47 and down on his luck, whereas Gertrude is lucky that Alice Tolkas knows one other genius, Picasso, and he is willing to do Gert's portrait..<\/span>

Lewin is the man who spreads the sawdust in the ring, his literary persons are the lecturer,<\/span> who believes himself an undiscovered Ezra Pound and thinks today's poetry is crap; and one Liam, who is <\/span>Bukowski, Lenny Bruce and Jerry Lewis all rolled into one<\/span>.<\/span>

Hawthorne is up all night moving the big top to its next destination. He has had one succesful major poetry book published, in which he massaged his readers with a bit of what they were looking for, and now he wants them to share with him the traumas of staying up all night worrying about the arrival of the answers to everything in life (… and how to get some peaceful sleep!).<\/span>

There are wild animals in Lewin's circus, head-bangers living in hostels, mothers who look at their sons and say <\/span>Who the fuck are you?<\/span> while Hawthorne is always walking tightropes between suicide in steel grey rivers and walking home with a bag of chips, and McDonald is clowning about. He throws pies in the face of his old science teacher concerning his toupee, tells of a kid playing hide and seek with no one bothering to look for him, and stays in a hotel that displays Liberace's truss in the lobby.<\/span>

McDonald lectures abroad, and also likes his holidays, and there are poems of his visits to Athens, China, and Vegas, whereas Lewin is more at home in the Lancashire area, his childhood cocking a doodle do at the newsreels in the cinems, his adult life partaking of over-cooked cabbage, visiting charity shops.  Hawthorne, except for a rain-rattling stay in a caravan, is mostly at home nursing <\/span>his moody delinquent of a liver<\/span> (too many brandy-snaps?), observing the <\/span>painted trout<\/span> of a trolley lady in the town's bus shelters; the ghost train of fairground lying in a ditch.<\/span>

Hawthorne's range of mood can be wider than this, but the tightrope, the trapeze, and the lion's cage, with an occasional hug of one of the sequinned ladies, is what he wants on this current billing. He is intent on putting over the wanderings of his mind during the sleepless nights of middle aged twenty-first century man. There's lustful propositions, perfume like a thorium injection, and constitutional bullying amongst other things. It's an evening performance not a child's matinee.<\/span>

McDonald says that <\/span>games of silly buggers often end in\/tears<\/span> and points to the murder of Joe Orton, and so he is careful to announce the end of a comic poem, like having your back massaged with a slug, with a crack of his ringmaster's whip and moves quickly on to hunting for crabs off the pier, Buildwas Abbey, or discussing his mate's vow to have the balls of the boys who stare at his young daughter on cocktail sticks, with squares of ham and cheese, if they dare to touch her. This is a book that throws itself into your face like the torn printed-paper from the clown' s bucket, and leaves you soaking it all up.<\/span>

Lewin charts the violent intent of the wolf that sits outside the door and waits for the latch to lift. He is the blade of the flick knife, the sperm at the crime scene. The poet's packed his bag and said goodbye to the circus, and wants to get on, but is wary of <\/span>thinking he's Philip Larkin<\/span>, or <\/span>doing a Phd. in English Lit. and bragging about it<\/span>. He's good at sticking three darts in every subject, but should perhaps try the rifle-range and shoot from a different angle occasionally. He smears cheese on the settee, spills coffee down the back of the telly, send the cat running up the curtains, and he's only been asked to look after the babby while his daughter gets on with her knife-throwing act. If you pitch your tent on similar fairgrounds-for-comment, you'll love this volume.<\/span>

If Hawthorne was thinking of changing his job its too late now, he's stuck his head in the lion's mouth and done the roaring sounds. Now he's waiting in that ghastly 3am hour of fear and dread, for the seal of approval. The ball is in the air, and we shall see if this brave attempt at doing something different, without a safety net, has come off. The show as gone on and now its up to you audience. Go on feed your brain, you can't live on candy floss forever!<\/p>\n

\u2022 Review by Geoff Stevens
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Separation and Overlap, a Three-Ring Circus of Poetry\u2022 Slide by Brendan Hawthorne, produced by Poetry Monthly Press, \u00a37-99 from 20, Wharfedale Street, Wednesbury, West Midlands\u2022 The Pig by Peter Lewin, Flux Gallery Press, \u00a37-95 from 33 Orders Lane, Kirkham, Preston P24 2TP\u2022 Catch a Falling Tortoise by Paul McDonald, \u00a37-99 from Cinnamon Press, Meiron House, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}