{"id":46,"date":"2012-01-07T14:23:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-07T14:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=46"},"modified":"2020-12-09T14:38:54","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T14:38:54","slug":"david-cooke-reviews-bromley-and-little","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/david-cooke-reviews-bromley-and-little\/","title":{"rendered":"David Cooke reviews Bromley and Little"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carole Bromley: <\/span>A Guided Tour of the Ice House<\/a>. Smith\/Doorstep Books.  2011. ISBN: 9781906613310.  \u00a39.95.<\/span>
Pippa Little: <\/span>The Snow Globe<\/a>: Red Squirrell Press. 2011.  ISBN: 9781906700591. \u00a34.50.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Guided Tour of the Ice House<\/span> is a long overdue full length collection from Carole Bromley. Her two previous Smith\/Doorstep pamphlets, Unscheduled Halt, <\/span>2005, and Skylight<\/span>, 2009, were both winners in The Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet Competition.   She also has an impressive track record in many high profile poetry competitions, including first prize in the 2005 Bridport Competition for her poem  \u2018The Lovers\u2019 which is collected here. Bromley is clearly a class act whose work is well crafted and consistent. However, her debut collection shows that there is more to her work than technical proficiency. Whilst her title poem is certainly a tour de force, it is also paradigmatic of the way her imagination works and her ability to see beneath the surface of things. At first the tone is bluff and matter of fact: \u2018Please mind your heads, ladies and gents, \/ and button your coats. We will be underground \/ longer than you think.\u2019 Soon, however, we are drawn more deeply into its weirdly discomfiting world:<\/p>\n

While you\u2019re down here adjust the lamp
on your head. Notice how, at the edges,
the ice turns soft and how, in the middle,
leaves are caught and mayflies and even
the tail-feathers of a swan.<\/p>\n

By the time we imagine that the \u2018tour\u2019 is drawing to its close an increasingly ominous note is sounded: \u2018You might be thinking too how odd it is \/ the secret passageway is sealed\u2026\u2019 A self-assured performance in which she successfully highlights her talents, it is immediately followed by \u2018Unscheduled Halt\u2019 a brief poem which shows how effortlessly she can capture a deeply personal moment: \u2018The night pricked with stars. \/ A stopped train. Midnight.  A new moon.\u2019 \u2018In Another Life\u2019 is also a delicately rendered poem in which \u2018emotion\u2019 is \u2018recollected in tranquillity\u2019: \u2018I would have liked to take you to Pyramid Lake. \/ If you went there you\u2019d understand why.\u2019 The memory is then slowly pieced together until eventually the absent loved one is introduced to complete the scene:<\/p>\n

I love to imagine you there in your green shirt
Lighting a cigarette, the quick, brave flare of it in the dark.<\/p>\n

The majority of Bromley\u2019s poems deal with familiar domestic themes and relationships:  a wife and her husband, parents and children, growing up, bereavement, all of which  might lead some to dismiss her work as having nothing new to offer. However, this would be a mistake. In the ever more populous field of contemporary verse, where lesser talents might feel the need to strive and strain for a degree of \u2018originality\u2019, Bromley sheds a wise and wryly humorous light on subject matter that we can all identify with. In \u2018A Man Thing\u2019 a wife fails to get the point of fishing and is then shocked on the way home by \u2018your bloodied hands \/ giving it some throttle\u2019. In \u2018Desperate Measures\u2019 we see a mother \u2018dancing \/ to Venus in Blue Jeans across the kitchen tiles\u2019 as she attempts to placate a child for whom \u2018Sleep did not appeal.\u2019 The seeming omniscience of fathers is evoked in \u2018Dads\u2019 but is then subverted in the poem\u2019s final lines:<\/p>\n

But they did not know what to say
when the boy who said you were beautiful
no longer wanted to know.<\/p>\n

There is also a poignancy in Bromley\u2019s acceptance of the ageing process. In \u2018Stepping Out\u2019 she begins by examining \u2018My poor old legs \/ criss-crossed \/\/ by spidery red veins\u2026\u2019 However, when her husband kisses her in a certain spot it takes her back to an earlier self: \u2018I\u2019m striding, leggy, \/\/ twenty-one, towards you \/ in that dress.\u2019 Finally, mention must be made of several deeply moving poems written in memory of her father. In \u2018The First Time\u2019 he returns as a ghost \u2018rattling the locks \/ of the French windows; \/ \/ he didn\u2019t know about the bolt \/ I\u2019d had fitted since he died\u2026\u2019 \u2018The Morning  My Father Died\u2019 is a convincing portrait of someone for whom the reality of bereavement is sinking in whilst they are dealing with the banalities of social intercourse: <\/p>\n

I think my father may have died,<\/p>\n

I said, as if trying out the words,
I couldn\u2019t remember whether you take sugar.
The talking stopped. They looked at me.
I swept some pastry crumbs up with my hand,
slowly pushed down the plunger.<\/p>\n

What makes Bromley\u2019s poems so appealing is not only their truth to real lived experience but her wonderful way with imagery as here in \u2018Skylight\u2019 where a wife is lying awake in bed while her husband sleeps like \u2018a baby \/ who\u2019s taken a swig from the nurse\u2019s bottle\u2019: <\/p>\n

Anyway how could I sleep tonight?
I lie in what\u2019s left of the bed
like a jigsaw piece in the wrong puzzle
and watch the stars who don\u2019t care
staring back from another millennium.
They\u2019ve seen it all before.<\/p>\n

In \u2018Bockhampton\u2019 we catch a glimpse of Thomas Hardy\u2019s first wife, Emma, \u2018with her hats like collapsing \/ birthday cakes.\u2019 In \u2018Fifties Kitchen\u2019 the cheeriness of a work-free Sunday is convincingly evoked: \u2018On the window-sill even the wasps sing \/ in their raspberry-flavoured graves.\u2019 The wit and intelligence which underpin this particular image is highlighted again in the extended metaphor of \u2018Lovers\u2019, her prize-winnning Bridport poem based on Magritte\u2019s painting, in which she captures that sense of risk mixed with exhilaration which is experienced in the early stages of a relationship: <\/p>\n

Once the veils were on the laughter stopped,
now we were a blind bridal couple
feeling our way.<\/p>\n

Rooting, fumble-mouthed for dry kisses
under a white shroud. Not like kissing eyes closed.
It was more than that and stranger.<\/p>\n

He was a stranger, I was a stranger.<\/p>\n

Poignant, wise, and sometimes deeply affecting, A Guided Tour of the Ice House<\/span> is collection which can be warmly recommended.  Carole Bromley is a poet to buy, keep and return to. <\/p>\n

The Snow Globe<\/span> is a substantial new chapbook of some 30 poems by Pippa Little who was a Gregory Award winner in 1984. However, in spite of this early recognition, she seems, until recently, to have published relatively infrequently. An earlier collection, The Spar Box<\/span>, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, while her second collection, Foray: Border Reiver Women<\/span>, was published in 2008 as a result of her winning the Biscuit Poetry Competition.  A further collection, Overwintering, is now scheduled for publication by Carcanet in 2012. Born in Tanzania, Little returned as a child to Scotland where she grew up. Following this trajectory, the poems in The Snow Globe are divided into four sections: The Africa Chest, Another Life Called Scotland, The Snow Globe<\/span> and The<\/span> Deer Larder<\/span>. In the opening poem \u2018Fatouma\u2019 we are offered fleeting glimpses into some of the poet\u2019s earliest memories:
<\/span><\/p>\n

You lift and lower me
into bath-water, ocean-water,
swaddle me in towels, between your knees.
Sucking my thumb, I drowse
in your lap, ear to your heartbeat.<\/p>\n

From these lines we sense immediately Little\u2019s strengths as a poet. The intimacy between child and servant is conveyed beautifully, enhanced by cadences which mimic the lapping of water.  That this is a poet whose ear is finely attuned can be heard in the interplay between the liquid sounds and labials in the first three lines. It is a poetry which demands to be read aloud and savoured. The child\u2019s sense of loss on leaving Africa is captured in \u2018The Africa Chest\u2019, where the long delayed arrival of the chest brings only disappointment: <\/p>\n

A tumble of stuff, dulled by flat north light.
We poked and pulled, my sister and me, looking for clues,
but the dolls\u2019 limbs and the animals
broke my heart.<\/p>\n

In \u2018Trick of my Eye\u2019, the child slowly comes to terms with a new world and its new colours: \u2018From the upstairs kitchen window \/ I see yellow fields. Black pines \/ and beyond both a strip of North Sea.\u2019 Throughout the remaining sections Little examines the various connotations of that elusive and emotive word \u2018home\u2019, seeing it as a place, people, a mythology and a history. In \u2018Fear of Heights\u2019 she evokes the relationship between a child, her father and \u2018the world you made for me.\u2019 In \u2018Yes\u2019, the child and her father are again out together, \u2018giving your mother a rest\u2019, though the poem\u2019s sense of affirmation comes unstuck on their return: \u2018And in her sleet-smeared face the Yes!  was lost, \/ somehow I knew I\u2019d never find it \/ even if I went looking.\u2019 \u2018However, beyond the immediate family there is a wider world of \u2018gloopy vowels\u2019, \u2018sea haar\u2019 and \u2018wee bisoms\u2019.  \u2018Newburgh Raincoats\u2019 is a wonderful celebration of all things dank and dour:<\/p>\n

We wear our Newburgh raincoats\u2019
dreich indecision of khaki or grey,
belted them tightly,
pulled up our knee socks so they meet the hem
but still cold slinks in and under. It\u2019s still
raining inside the car, a nicotine-fine mist.<\/p>\n

In the second half of the collection the poet casts her net more widely. Ironically, the poem \u2018Home\u2019 is about a homeless old couple who \u2018choose a new place each night, \/ their snow queen\u2019s train of sheets and quilts behind them.\u2019 \u2018Billy Blin\u2019s Shoes\u2019 and \u2018The Clootie Well\u2019 are inspired by folklore, while other poems such as the St Salvator Sisters and \u2018Whaligoe Steps\u2019 evoke specific places and their history as if in updated versions of the Gaelic tradition of  dinnseanchas. Finally, in these powerful lines from \u2018The Deer Larder\u2019 the notion of \u2018home\u2019 is again evoked, but against the tragic backdrop of the Highland Clearances\u2019:<\/p>\n

Across the water, hearth fires
put out with factor\u2019s piss, a village entire
gralloched so clean
its lintels clot in the moss
soft, boneless.
McCaig asked who owns the land
in this country of stones piled up
and stones torn down, whose
scrawn home is this?<\/p>\n

Although The Snow Globe<\/span> is published in the modest format of a pamphlet, it has the emotional weight of a full collection. It has a sense of purpose and a unity that is more than the sum of its parts. The poems it contains are intense, mysterious and musical. I will certainly be looking out for more of this poet\u2019s work.  <\/p>\n

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

….reviewed by David Cooke<\/a>
<\/font><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

 
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Carole Bromley: A Guided Tour of the Ice House. Smith\/Doorstep Books.  2011. ISBN: 9781906613310.  \u00a39.95.Pippa Little: The Snow Globe: Red Squirrell Press. 2011.  ISBN: 9781906700591. \u00a34.50. A Guided Tour of the Ice House is a long overdue full length collection from Carole Bromley. Her two previous Smith\/Doorstep pamphlets, Unscheduled Halt, 2005, and Skylight, 2009, were […]<\/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-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","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=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23757,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions\/23757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}