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For five years, Hilaire and Joolz Sparkes have been on a mission to excavate the hidden histories of London\u2019s long-forgotten women and celebrate their lives in poetry. Thanks to in-depth archival research (partly funded by an Arts Council Grant) London Undercurrents <\/em>offers a cornucopia of female experience across four centuries, from spirited cockneys and land girls, to factory workers and women in service. The result is both fascinating and educational.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The poems speak clearly from each page in generous point size, with only a letter S or N to indicate the poem\u2019s provenance. For the curious, Joolz Sparkes has written the north London poems, and Hilaire, the south-of-the-river poems. But it\u2019s quite possible to relish these stories without needing to attribute authorship. It\u2019s a truly collaborative project \u2013 not just between two poets, but across time, and between each poet and her subject.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I decided to read the poems right through without interruption. They flowed, dare I say it, like the river that runs through the whole collection. \u00a0Reference notes at the back are handy. Some are small prose poems in their own right. Others reveal the journey the poet took to find her subject. A few divulge shocking information. Coining money was a capital offence, for example, but I had no idea that male counterfeiters were hanged, whilst their female counterparts were burned at the stake.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So what of the poems themselves? They are largely free-verse, with a handful of form poems, including a classy villanelle about a missionary wife; a delightful concrete poem across two pages which \u2018shows\u2019 a tightrope walker crossing the Thames; a ballad in rhyming quatrains about a gypsy encampment; and two sonnets about work in a fountain pen factory.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Many of the poems carry the rhythms of natural speech, creating a deceptive simplicity that is wholly appropriate to their subject matter. Mostly they\u2019re written in the first person.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A French Huguenot plants asparagus in \u2018First Crop\u2019 – \u201cfervently\/ larding the beds\/ with manure, praying\/ for engorgement\/ embonpoint<\/em>.\u201d In \u2018Sacked\u2019, a girl who \u201cnever pilfered, never dibbed\/ a wet finger in a sugar bag\/ for a sneaky suck,\u201d is caught dancing the Charleston on the worktops of Cook\u2019s Confectioners.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The sheer escapism of cinema is captured in the aspirations of a 40s housewife in \u2018Hollywood\u2019 Comes to Holloway\u2019: \u201cI\u2019ll style my hair like Joan\u2019s, drape over\/ the settee bought on HP, dream of the man\/ who doesn\u2019t leave his socks on the floor\/ or try it on when he\u2019s back from the boozer.\u201d\u00a0 \u2018Dido Belle Sits for Her Portrait\u2019 introduces one of the black women to feature in this collection: \u201cFather shipped me\/ half-slave, across\/ waves of guilt.\u201d Dido, the natural daughter of a slave owner, is \u201cfull-placed\/ in an artist\u2019s\/ composition yet\/ kept at the edge\/ of the real canvass.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There\u2019s fun too \u2013 plenty of it. The \u2018Lady Cyclist\u2019 in Battersea Park, circa 1895, cares \u201cnot a fig\/ for my flushing cheeks\/ my runaway hair\/ the flash of azaleas\/ nor the gentlemen who stare.\u201d \u00a0And there\u2019s rebellion under the surface in \u2018Clippie, Top Deck\u2019: \u201cI won\u2019t be cooped below stairs\/ when I’ve had the run of London. . . .Whatever peace brings, from here on in\/ I\u2019m polishing nothing but my own boots.\/ Step up now.\/ Hold tight.\/ Ding ding! Ding ding!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some poems tell a tough tale. In \u2018Cat and Mouse\u2019 a suffragette waits \u201cto cast off knee welts, for gums\/ to bud skin torn by metal jaws.\u201d The brilliantly titled \u2018Marking The Sheets\u2019 offers us a 13 year old apprentice laundress who spends 9 hours a day stitching household codes into sheets, then finds her own sheets marked \u201cfor the first time, a fistful of cramp\/in your belly, staining the sheets,\/ helpless to staunch the flow.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Back-street abortions, lead poisoning, sit-ins by Gujarati workers, frost fairs on the Thames, 18th<\/sup> century lavender harvests, knitting for the Spanish Republicans \u2013 wherever women have tilled, toiled, laughed, suffered or survived, Hilaire and Sparkes follow, with empathy and imagination.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Very occasionally the vernacular tips towards clich\u00e9, but capturing speech patterns across 400 years is no easy matter.\u00a0 The poets have tapped into a rich array of character and circumstance and transformed it, with exuberance and clarity, into poetry which is fresh and accessible. The design is vivid and inviting \u2013 and at \u00a310, London Undercurrents<\/em> is surely ludicrously good value. Exactly the kind of book you can give friends and know it\u2019ll be a hit. That\u2019s Christmas sorted, then.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Claire Booker<\/strong> lives in Brighton. Her poetry pamphlet Later There Will Be Postcards<\/em> is out with Green Bottle Press ((www.greenbottlepress.com\/our-books<\/strong><\/a>).and her work has appeared in Ambit, Magma, The Rialto, The Spectator and Stand among others. She blogs at www.bookerplays.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n