{"id":12108,"date":"2016-11-30T09:00:49","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T09:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=12108"},"modified":"2020-12-09T14:30:17","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T14:30:17","slug":"jeffrey-loffman-reviews-david-hughes-matthew-clegg-and-jane-routh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/jeffrey-loffman-reviews-david-hughes-matthew-clegg-and-jane-routh\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Loffman reviews David Hughes, Matthew Clegg and Jane Routh"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2-9781908853547\"<\/a>\"whitesilence-s1\"<\/a>\"navigators-jacket-2-26-april-2015\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Three poets whose poetry contains a sense of place and being where edges, historic, water- flowed or rock faced allow us readers to engage with themes worthy of the time and effort required.<\/p>\n

Those of us who are moved by rock\u2019s edges will empathise with David Hughes in his posthumous collection, EX LIBRIS. Losing a friend on a rock-face, as any grief, startles and sears. Encouraging others in writing and poetry, as teacher, friend and support is a life well lived. This is the poetry that comes from this life.<\/p>\n

Hughes\u2019s poems are gifts to others, often dedicated to them – none more so than his climbing companion and friend, Barry Daniel, who was killed while leading an expedition of students on the Austerdalsein. His befriending of Young Dave, and the prison letters and poems composed as a response to the process of forgiveness and response to Young Dave\u2019s attack on him are another element, and this not without the down-to-earth humour that eschews sentimentality \u2013<\/p>\n

Perfection, where all things are fixed and true?<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t sound the kind of heaven to strike<\/p>\n

you<\/em> dumb with wonder; you\u2019d have nowt to do<\/p>\n

You\u2019d much prefer a heaven where gods might hike<\/p>\n

on sponsored walks that you could organize \u2013<\/p>\n

to build a climbing wall, or something like.<\/p>\n

Valediction <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The skill of a shorter breath-based, structured stress lines vary. Sustained line lengths also form a part, as in East of Ypres, Sanctuary Road <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

November night in Sanctuary Wood: the broken Old<\/p>\n

Contemptibles<\/p>\n

have re-assembled in the low ridge lee, where field-gun<\/p>\n

shrapnel<\/p>\n

tears the year\u2019s last foliage from trees that splinter, till it<\/p>\n

seems there\u2019ll never be<\/p>\n

a spring sprung green again. Soldiers, sleeping shallow<\/p>\n

under leaf-mould<\/p>\n

and while \u2018Soldiers, sleeping shallow\u2019<\/em> may have too many sibilants the musicality of consonantal cluster and internal rhyme pressed against the length of the line catches the breath enacting a struggle fitting for it subject, Ypres. This horror at the outrage of war is all too timely now –<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Seven of the players down by Armistice Day \u2013<\/p>\n

And even the slender boy in the Umpire\u2019s coat,<\/p>\n

Yes, even the Umpire lost his cheerful name<\/p>\n

By the end of the War by being Jolly dead.<\/p>\n

Summer 1913 <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A touch of Sorley. It\u2019s the details observed which register the value of true friendship and an evocation a reader can really engage with hearing \u2018stories to tell <\/em>\u2018 accessible, lyrical and felt.<\/p>\n

my own life<\/p>\n

at the cwm\u2019s rim<\/p>\n

or on the steep<\/p>\n

escarpment\u2019s sudden edge.<\/p>\n

Becoming competent, having the scenery mapped,<\/p>\n

began to guide others.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to take you all the way.<\/p>\n

Prepared Early <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Poetry Business prize-winner Jane Routh <\/strong>gives us an historical edge, ice-packed in THE WHITE SILENCE.<\/strong> Franklin\u2019s ill-fated attempt to discover the North-West Passage was a Victorian equivalent of someone today landing on Mars. In such enterprises the apocryphal has an ineluctable place\u2026. but each poem has its own view, like walking around a mountain and taking in a different vista. Here are thirteen pages of sustained, accessible and accomplished lyricism that goes beyond the fossilized past.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Even if there were a passage, Scoresby carped<\/em><\/p>\n

So what? \u2013<\/strong> You\u2019d have to overwinter in the ice:<\/em><\/p>\n

it would still be faster round the Cape.<\/em><\/p>\n

And safer. But William Scoresby<\/em><\/p>\n

was a whaler. Of no account.<\/em><\/p>\n

[Franklin, in prospect]<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It reaches a frozen present. A possible discovery if only the missing jigsaw piece could be found, the cold dread of how failure looms with time passing by.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Wake up, Sir John, and shape yourself.<\/em><\/p>\n

wherever they buried you, hacking<\/em><\/p>\n

the permafrost, break out: its soft now.<\/em><\/p>\n

Your passage is dark and open water.<\/em><\/p>\n

[Franklin, cryogenically preserved]<\/em><\/p>\n

Jane Routh\u2019s previously published collections included themes about our relationship with the environment and how we manage in it. In \u2018Lancashire Life [23.10.14]\u2019 she writes \u201c I have been interested in memory for a long time\u2026. our memories do not record facts but explanations for our lives\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What they charted was the nineteenth century\u2019s<\/em><\/p>\n

flatteries, friendships and obligations<\/em><\/p>\n

– a sea for Beaufort, an island for Banks –<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

as if rock and ice and vastness<\/em><\/p>\n

had no reality without their names;<\/em><\/p>\n

as if the landscape did not know itself.<\/em><\/p>\n

[On reaching the Arctic map]<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This investigation is an explanation of confronting \u2018the white silence\u2019<\/em>, \u2018the grip of ice\u2019,<\/em> the ice that will not let go and questions of being itself may abound from such confrontations.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The titles give a hint \u2013 \u2018Franklin, in prospect, \u2019\u2019Three Photographs, 1845\u2019, \u2018On reading the Arctic map\u2019, \u2019Franklin, ice-bound\u2019, \u2019Franklin, in retrospect\u2019, \u2018Franklin, the evidence\u2019, \u2018Franklin, cryogenically preserved\u2019, \u2019Sir John Richardson\u2019, \u2018Franklin, a postscript\u2019, \u2018And afterwards\u2019<\/em>. Only recently were the ships discovered. The mystery of ends provides such a resonance, consider Mallory, Irvine or \u2018Titus\u2019 Oates. Tackled chronologically to looking back from now provides evocations which poetry, Empsonian-like, can create.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Imagine ice.<\/em><\/p>\n

Imagine cold.<\/em><\/p>\n

Imagine a ship held fast all winter long.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Start again: you have to remember<\/em><\/p>\n

its an Arctic winter: no daylight.<\/em><\/p>\n

How to picture such darkness? <\/em><\/p>\n

[Franklin, ice-bound]<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The structure varies but each poem has its place. We are gathered into this world where close observation and asides (e.g. the place of Richardson!) draws us in.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a story<\/em><\/p>\n

the local people always told: one listing<\/em><\/p>\n

then down, in deep water off King William Island.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s enough: what we want is the other<\/em><\/p>\n

terror, something we can\u2019t know,<\/em><\/p>\n

Something greater that resists us \u2013 <\/em><\/p>\n

a white silence we can\u2019t fathom, that compels<\/em><\/p>\n

imagination, to conceive its questions.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

(O Lord, give us back our ice.)<\/em><\/p>\n

[Franklin, a postscript]<\/em><\/p>\n

Matthew Clegg\u2019s THE NAVIGATORS <\/strong>sense of place \u2013 as magnetic as north \u2013 connects through time, flows as water. Forms vary from sonnet to free verse, tidal undulations that have observations life affords us. An aggregate of \u2018minute particulars\u2019 that being alive may be seen as extraordinary.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I get so close<\/em><\/p>\n

to thinking I\u2019m locked<\/em><\/p>\n

out of this life,<\/em><\/p>\n

when openly<\/em><\/p>\n

its glittering<\/em><\/p>\n

off the sheen<\/em><\/p>\n

of the highest<\/em><\/p>\n

greenest leaves<\/em><\/p>\n

and the miracle<\/em><\/p>\n

is a lake, a sea,<\/em><\/p>\n

lifted into the arms<\/em><\/p>\n

of the trees<\/em><\/p>\n

by a faith<\/em><\/p>\n

that can only <\/em><\/p>\n

take hold<\/em><\/p>\n

in this light.<\/em><\/p>\n

[The Lake in the Trees]<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The three sections of the book lead us, perhaps, to the last songs Orpheus sang, a lost paradigm, – of the resilience that place allows us. The lost song is not just of remembrance, but of clear and astonishing presence – across time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

If there were stars<\/em><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t remember \u2013 <\/em><\/p>\n

only that you sat<\/em><\/p>\n

behind me, close,<\/em><\/p>\n

your arms pillion<\/em><\/p>\n

around my chest<\/em><\/p>\n

as we rode<\/em><\/p>\n

dark space<\/em><\/p>\n

before us<\/em><\/p>\n

[Two Fugitives]<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

There is an Odyssey here that starts in Lakeland and ends towards Ravenscar.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

you return<\/em><\/p>\n

from<\/em><\/p>\n

the storm<\/em><\/p>\n

and desire<\/em><\/p>\n

is the<\/em><\/p>\n

taste<\/em><\/p>\n

and tang<\/em><\/p>\n

of tingling<\/em><\/p>\n

electrons<\/em><\/p>\n

ferried<\/em><\/p>\n

by rain<\/em><\/p>\n

and caught<\/em><\/p>\n

on<\/em><\/p>\n

your skin<\/em><\/p>\n

[The Tang]<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The Trig Points sequence is a set of 27 haikus that Clegg describes as \u2018triangulations\u2019 \u2013 to a loved one, a loved place and time in all its tenses. When successful, the nuance of phrasing, of rhythm in short-breath (sometimes single word) lines married with the accumulation of particulars build a striking and felt image such as Phineus<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

When a blind man panics<\/em><\/p>\n

He can\u2019t flail his arms.<\/em><\/p>\n

He must haul his breath<\/em><\/p>\n

From the well of his gut<\/em><\/p>\n

Until the harpies in his ribs<\/em><\/p>\n

Stop flapping and clawing<\/em><\/p>\n

And his fingers unfurl<\/em><\/p>\n

Spiders from his fists<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The second section, \u2018The Navigators\u2019, has the accent of ordinary folk and the (The Sink Hole)<\/em> memories of Matthew\u2019s grandfather\u2019s boat, \u2018Jasmine\u2019. How Grandad was loved, built \u2018Jasmine\u2019, the journeys upon it, and the transformative learning and mixed emotions on mortality and growing when it had to be sold.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clock-tick, birdsong, cars.<\/em><\/p>\n

my palate wakes from last night:<\/em><\/p>\n

whisky, wood, smoke, stars\u2026..<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

A leaf turns over<\/em><\/p>\n

its green days on the stem, leaps \u2013 <\/em><\/p>\n

pioneers the air\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Where mud is deepest<\/em><\/p>\n

the traces of man and beast <\/em><\/p>\n

are one and the same <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Matthew Clegg is \u201cinterested in the drama of the human heart in time\u201d. We need to forage the path beset by the laws of change and mutability, as the realization of what different phases of life requires of us infuses these poems. For there are times when we must each of us dwell on such things.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

You may think of your life<\/em><\/p>\n

poised at the steer of a barge<\/em><\/p>\n

where canal steps down to the Don<\/em><\/p>\n

and lock gates unlatch and infold.<\/em><\/p>\n

Imagine the trip in your blood:<\/em><\/p>\n

As you gaze at river ahead<\/em><\/p>\n

And the cautious nose of your barge<\/em><\/p>\n

Sniffs then drifts into the flow<\/em><\/p>\n

You feel the current take grip.<\/em><\/p>\n

The barge is plugged into a mains<\/em><\/p>\n

So all you can from this point<\/em><\/p>\n

Is solder your fist to the steer<\/em><\/p>\n

And amp up your savvy to match.<\/em><\/p>\n

[When They Next Make You Redundant]<\/em><\/p>\n

Finally, to a place beyond the Whalebone and Staithes to a rich edgeland. The compass points and prompts reflection. Matthew Clegg has not held back as a poet, nor should the reader in engaging with \u2018The Navigators\u2019. Appreciation should also be extended to Longbarrow. Wayleave and Valley Presses who are excellent examples of publishers with an increasingly impressive catalogue focusing on high quality productions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You can order the books here:<\/p>\n

Ex Libris <\/em>David Hughes: http:\/\/www.valleypressuk.com\/book\/2\/ex_libris<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The Navigators<\/em> Matthew Clegg: https:\/\/longbarrowpress.com\/current-publications\/matthew-clegg\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The White Silence\u00a0 <\/em>Jane Routh: http:\/\/www.wayleavepress.co.uk\/?page_id=324&doing_wp_cron=1474647811.9356279373168945312500<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Three poets whose poetry contains a sense of place and being where edges, historic, water- flowed or rock faced allow us readers to engage with themes worthy of the time and effort required. Those of us who are moved by rock\u2019s edges will empathise with David Hughes in his posthumous collection, EX LIBRIS. Losing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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-12108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12108","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12108"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12118,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12108\/revisions\/12118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}