{"id":250,"date":"2011-05-07T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-07T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=250"},"modified":"2011-05-07T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-07T09:00:00","slug":"julia-webb-reviews-hannah-wakers-nasty-little-intro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/julia-webb-reviews-hannah-wakers-nasty-little-intro\/","title":{"rendered":"Julia Webb reviews Hannah Waker's 'Nasty Little Intro'"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nasty Little Intro #1<\/span> by Hannah Jane Walker, <\/span>Nasty Little Press<\/a> 2011, \u00a32<\/span><\/p>\n

It was with some trepidation that I came to review Hannah Jane Walker\u2019s Nasty Little Press sampler, which is simply titled Nasty Little Intro #1<\/span>. I have seen Walker perform live and she is a great performer but I am aware that work for performance doesn\u2019t always translate well to the page. Performance poetry is not the poor younger brother of page poetry as some of its critics would have us believe \u2013 it\u2019s just different.  There is generally a lot more humour in performance poetry and the stresses, rhymes and nuances are given different emphases, and these differences mean that it doesn\u2019t always translate well to the page (just as some \u2018page\u2019 poetry doesn\u2019t work well read aloud).  It\u2019s a bit like the difference between a play and a short story.  <\/p>\n

There are only five poems in this pamphlet so it really is a sampler – and of these five there is only one poem \u201cVery Good Decision\u201d that I felt was not really offering the reader quite enough as a page poem, although I can see that it would work well as a performance piece. It is a kind of humorous list poem: a series of thoughts given voice.<\/p>\n

I hope when you look at me,<\/span>
you think: good at affection,<\/span>
remembers to give back borrowed books,  <\/span>
makes excellent playlists,<\/span>
does not take jokes personally\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

It reminded me (and now I am showing my age) of a Victoria Wood monologue. For me, I think, the reason I wasn\u2019t so engaged with it as with her other poems was not because it was humorous but because it felt too close to everyday speech. There was no moment where the poem changed that took us beyond the everyday world to some other, better place. As Ruth Padel says in 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem<\/span>: \u201cThe challenge is for the poet to relate particular sounds, and therefore the words and ideas that go with them, so strongly (but not obviously) that their closeness feels inevitable, and the sound-relationship becomes part of what is said…A good poem is a love affair of sound and sense\u201d (p13)  <\/p>\n

The other poems though work much better on the page \u2013 they still have all the characteristics of successful performance pieces \u2013 rhyme, half-rhyme, internal rhyme etc but they also have something else – an indefinable magic that makes a poem a poem and not simply prose written in a different form. My personal favourite poem of the bunch is \u201cAbout Working in an Office\u201d a gorgeously anarchic flight of fantasy that anyone who has ever worked in an office will instantly relate to. This poem has that extra spark that takes the reader beyond the page to someplace else \u2013 moments of madness, rebellion and the sheer joy of being able to go in poetry where you can\u2019t go in real life.  <\/p>\n

    I wrapped spreadsheets round my wrists<\/span>
    and in the evening made out like a data Medusa<\/span>
    neon-snaking text off each hip.<\/span><\/p>\n

There were moments in this mini-selection that reminded me of other poets too \u2013 early Sophie Hannah perhaps with a bit of Selima Hill thrown in.  I would have really liked to have read a few more of Walker\u2019s poems though as I felt that I was just beginning to engage with her writing style. I fully expect to see a proper pamphlet or a full collection sometime in the future. Walker is certainly a name to watch – it will be interesting to see how she develops.  <\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

…..reviewed by Julia Webb<\/a>
<\/font><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nasty Little Intro #1 by Hannah Jane Walker, Nasty Little Press 2011, \u00a32 It was with some trepidation that I came to review Hannah Jane Walker\u2019s Nasty Little Press sampler, which is simply titled Nasty Little Intro #1. I have seen Walker perform live and she is a great performer but I am aware that […]<\/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-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","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=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}