{"id":5935,"date":"2013-12-06T09:00:43","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T09:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=5935"},"modified":"2013-11-27T11:40:27","modified_gmt":"2013-11-27T11:40:27","slug":"james-naiden-on-gill-mcevoy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/james-naiden-on-gill-mcevoy\/","title":{"rendered":"James Naiden on Gill McEvoy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Plucking Shed<\/em>,\u00a0 2010. Cinnamon Press. \u00a0 Rise<\/em><\/a>, 2012. Cinnamon Press.<\/p>\n

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To survive cancer, as this poet has done, and to write about the experience without fear or bitterness is remarkable, and yet life\u2019s journey is not necessarily laden with gilded ornaments, rousing sex, and unforgettable adventure. No, it is most frequently a harrowing experience the older one gets. Gill McEvoy was born in 1944, when the buzz bombs from Germany were wreaking havoc and despair although it was well seen to be the last maniacal act of Britain\u2019s greatest European antagonist of the twentieth century. As an adult, McEvoy endured a problematic marriage to a violently ill man, raised their children, saw her husband die and leave her with the domestic mess, as it were, to clean up. On top of that, she then became sick herself, but now \u2013 approaching seventy \u2013 she has come out on top of her troubles. Or so one gathers from these two collections of verse.<\/p>\n

McEvoy\u2019s poems, collected late in book form, are not only statements of fact to her readers but reminders to her (now grown) children that the poet endures not without effort. More than that, an intelligent good will marks both of these books, published within two years of each other. She makes art from the quotidian elements of her life, and we see that a British woman\u2019s life is no different in essence than someone working hard in Salt Lake City or in Winnipeg, in Warsaw or down in Rio. From The Plucking Shed<\/em>, here are the opening and closing stanzas of \u201cPreparing Fish\u201d:<\/p>\n

I have lived inland all my life,<\/p>\n

got no further than sticklebacks<\/p>\n

glowering in jars,<\/p>\n

never once ate trout.<\/p>\n

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Here in my new kitchen<\/p>\n

this strange fish slips from my grip,<\/p>\n

slithers and slaps against the sink.<\/p>\n

It smells of foreign things.<\/p>\n

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—————<\/p>\n

When you walk in \u2013 starving, as you say \u2013<\/p>\n

you find me lining out the frail specks<\/p>\n

of starlight on the drainer\u2019s edge.<\/p>\n

The recognition of effort in daily life, not slothfulness, even after the anxiety and physical pain of a bout with cancer, is what informs McEvoy\u2019s poems. This is not a diction borne of dilettantism or overly cerebral mirages. Neither is it conscious of itself entirely, either. The poet can be blunt as well, as in these final lines from \u201cMessage to the Well-Meaning\u201d: \u201cSo \/\/ the next person to come along and say, Think positive<\/em>, and all that sort of crap \/ will get it right between the eyes. \/ For I\u2019m a hard woman now; \/ I am diamond, carborundum, \/ and I wipe out fools.\u201d Now, can you argue with that? I can\u2019t, and I only remark that putting frustration into a succinct, \u201cin-your-face\u201d poem meant to be both serious and good-humored is what all poets and artists \u2013 those who create something from supposedly nothing \u2013 strive for constantly.<\/p>\n

Rise<\/em> is more concisely ordered in some ways than The Plucking Shed<\/em>, but no less vivid and memorable in facing quandaries and uncertainties. For McEvoy, observing \u2013 for that is all one should do \u2013 natural life, not wrought with human structures but certainly so affected \u2013 is what makes her life bearable, or at least that\u2019s the message throughout these poems, succinctly crafted, sculpted (as Sigrid Bergie might say), to fit recognition, understanding, and in the end our admiration. Here is the entirety of \u201cMagpie\u201d:<\/p>\n

Outside my window<\/p>\n

he\u2019s a pure sun in an aura of black.<\/p>\n

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Brilliance pings from his feathers,<\/p>\n

blinds me, shrinks my room<\/p>\n

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to zero.<\/p>\n

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Later in this second collection, there is the \u201cNuala\u201d sequence, about a small girl in her mother\u2019s company who is learning the limits of what she can have and experience. McEvoy captures this frustration convincingly, as in the opening lines of \u201cThe Balloon Man\u201d \u2013 the child doesn\u2019t see danger, but her mother does:<\/p>\n

She stops to look at the man<\/p>\n

twisting balloons into animal shapes.<\/p>\n

She tugs her mother\u2019s arm:<\/p>\n

What?<\/em> Snaps her mother whose mind\u2019s<\/p>\n

on shopping and the fearful price<\/p>\n

of children\u2019s shoes\u00a0 . . . .<\/p>\n

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McEvoy also plumbs the vortex of a single woman living alone \u2013 more than just an empty nest \u201csyndrome\u201d but both a horror and a freedom, as if leaving her house and just walking in the woods for a spell, not being home, could alarm the neighbors. The sequences of \u201cAlmond Street\u201d poems evoke this plurality of oneness very well, at least to this critic\u2019s American sensibility.<\/p>\n

In sum, then, both The Plucking Shed<\/em> and Rise<\/em> give ample testimony, if such could be said, of a significant poet \u2013 Gill McEvoy \u2013 living in non-London England, one who has married, raised children to adulthood, been widowed, survived cancer \u2013 at least for now \u2013 and has written masterfully about her life and those of others, characters in a novel or play of poetry \u2013 for that\u2019s what good depictions are, essentially: how to describe this journey of life from childhood through adulthood and trying to keep death at bay, and writing delicious poems not always mellifluous or delicate, but facing difficulties head on. Would that we all had such courage!<\/p>\n

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                  The Plucking Shed,\u00a0 2010. Cinnamon Press. \u00a0 Rise, 2012. Cinnamon Press.   To survive cancer, as this poet has done, and to write about the experience without fear or bitterness is remarkable, and yet life\u2019s journey is not necessarily laden with gilded ornaments, rousing sex, and […]<\/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-5935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5935","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=5935"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5938,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5935\/revisions\/5938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}