{"id":221,"date":"2011-04-13T12:54:15","date_gmt":"2011-04-13T12:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=221"},"modified":"2011-04-13T12:54:15","modified_gmt":"2011-04-13T12:54:15","slug":"mark-burnhope-reviews-ghost-town-music-by-bobby-parker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/mark-burnhope-reviews-ghost-town-music-by-bobby-parker\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Burnhope reviews 'Ghost Town Music' by Bobby Parker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Couch Potato Poetry<\/span>

Ghost Town Music<\/span>, Bobby Parker (\u00a37.00, Knives Forks and Spoons Press<\/a>)<\/span>

The words \u2018irreverent\u2019 and \u2018anarchic\u2019 are often used about things which really aren\u2019t either. This is both. Even the front cover has a punk aesthetic: the same dark green, the same texture, as a school exercise book (and you\u2019ll find no schoolwork \u2013 or even poetry workshop work \u2013 inside). The title is in teeny-weeny print on the bottom left-hand corner, as if saying: \u2018O yeah, btw, I\u2019m a poetry book. Cool, huh?\u2019<\/span>

It\u2019s cool, but is it poetry? Yes and no, because it has at least one eye on that other overused word: \u2018collage\u2019. It opens with a comic strip: \u2018Washing Up! A Short Comic by Bobby and Emma\u2019, a tribute to Harvey Pekar of <\/span>American Splendour<\/span> fame, innovative for being among the first comic book writers to make autobiographical \/ mundane \/ blah life into publishable material. Pekar looked upon his geek world saturated with superheroes, and he saw an opportunity: a neglected readership. So has Parker, except that here, <\/span>superpoets<\/span> are getting the axe.<\/span>

The poems are about relationships, sex, death and everything in between. Bukowski comes to mind, also \u2018anti-poetry\u2019, but this stuff feels even less sincere than those, like it should be ingested alongside the misery-groove of Beck\u2019s \u2018Loser\u2019.<\/span>

But, that elephant in the room trumpets: it would all be an epic fail, a self-indulgent novelty, without craft (and arguably without the pictures). So, do the poems work? Well, on the whole, yes. The mundane details here are sluggishly revealed line by line, so that the experience of waiting for a friend to hurry the hell up is reflected in the text (and in the final line, becomes something else entirely):<\/span>

My friend made me stand<\/span>
in the snow<\/span>
outside a busy shop<\/span>
for thirty minutes<\/span>
while he waited for the stunning<\/span>
shop assistant to lean over<\/span>
and give him an eyeful of cleavage<\/span>
God rest his soul.<\/span>

It won\u2019t be everybody\u2019s cup of tea. But when so many collections say \u2018this poet deals with the everyday\u2019, and then every poem is about the flash of a skylark wing, it\u2019s weird: the flash of a skylark wing isn\u2019t everyone\u2019s everyday. Whereas some lyrical epiphanies come from that skylark wing-flash (and I\u2019ve written a few of my own), this one comes from a flash of, um, something different. O but then it gets serious; we arrive at that flicker of a memory of the friend who passed away. It\u2019s real, surprising, affecting. It\u2019s poetry \u2013 even if the rhythm, alliteration and assonance are harder to spot (because they\u2019re all there).<\/span>

And here:<\/span>

I sold a painting & blew the cash<\/span>
    in the bookies & walked home<\/span>
    (THE EDITOR THOUGHT THAT THIS LINE WAS TOO<\/span>
    LYRICAL TO BE INCLUDED IN THE COLLECTION)<\/span>
    the soles of my shoes sobbing\u2026<\/span>

OMG it\u2019s like Luke Kennard juvenilia!<\/span>

The rest is full of photocopied typing, comic drawing and scrawling about drugs, sleeping rough and cheese sandwiches. But I\u2019m going off-piste to comment on two section headings, \u2018Dead Bugs\u2019 and \u2018Burps from the Armchair\u2019. Visual poems, they continue the theme of splicing text and art together, a technique which \u2013 when it works \u2013 can communicate beyond the limits of either medium. The first shows a hand upturned on a sofa, opening out like a spider in the process of snuffing it. The second is an armchair, its seat cushion lifting at one edge like a mouth burping. It\u2019s a picture of boredom: video-gaming and eating crisps all day in nothing but your pants. But then it hums with questions about death. Whose chair was this? Is it living on without company, getting so bored of itself that it\u2019s burping for its own entertainment? The poem isn\u2019t afraid of mixing emotion and toilet humour. Indeed, the entire collection assumes they are sexy bedfellows, going at it like rabbits.<\/span>

I recently reviewed Radiohead\u2019s latest, saying that it was possibly the most Marmite album they\u2019d ever made. This is Marmite poetry (it reminds me of an album sleeve pull-out, back when album sleeves mattered, even <\/span>said something<\/span>). The trick would wear off if Parker wasn\u2019t multi-talented \u2013 with text and image, found and made \u2013 but he is, so it doesn\u2019t.<\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n

….reviewed by Mark Burnhope<\/a><\/span><\/font><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Couch Potato PoetryGhost Town Music, Bobby Parker (\u00a37.00, Knives Forks and Spoons Press)The words \u2018irreverent\u2019 and \u2018anarchic\u2019 are often used about things which really aren\u2019t either. This is both. Even the front cover has a punk aesthetic: the same dark green, the same texture, as a school exercise book (and you\u2019ll find no schoolwork \u2013 […]<\/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-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","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=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}