{"id":848,"date":"2010-10-14T16:11:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-14T16:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=848"},"modified":"2010-10-14T16:11:00","modified_gmt":"2010-10-14T16:11:00","slug":"fiona-sinclair-reviews-angela-frances-occupation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/fiona-sinclair-reviews-angela-frances-occupation\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiona Sinclair reviews Angela France's 'Occupation'"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occupation<\/span> by Angela France.  Ragged Raven Poetry,  2009  ISBN: ISBN 978 0 9552552 6 7: \u00a37<\/span>

In <\/span>Occupation<\/span>, Angela France creates a rich parallel world peopled by extraordinary individuals. The collection is threaded with magical references to mystical hares, witches, monsters under the bed and even 'The God of Lost Letters.' <\/span>

At the heart of the collection are marvelous women who are at odds with a pedestrian society. In 'Preparations for a working da', the narrator instructs herself to “select a round stone to keep in your mouth\/to trap words of flight”. Flight becomes a recurrent theme throughout the poems. It symbolises an escape from a dull world.  I particularly enjoyed \u2018Rejecting Gravity\u2019 where the poet uses enjambment to successfully ape the motion and sheer joy of flying: “My first thoughtless soar ended in daylight on the car park roof”. Humour is used well throughout the poems suggesting the narrator's thrill at consciously breaking social taboos. <\/span>

Inevitably many of these poems end on a grim note. The women must conceal their true identity by becoming “weighted women” to protect themselves from patriarchy which in 'Rejecting Gravity' is manifested in the form of “Pot shots from hunters” and “boys with air -guns.”  But I liked the way France hints at the power that lies dormant in such women in her potent lines: “We exchange looks, move on.  We know what we could do.” <\/span>

Other works are portraits of characters that although not directly linked to a fantastic world are nevertheless on the periphery of ordinary life.  These individuals frequently have occupations that deal with death (grave diggers, morticians, funeral florists) and it is this I think that causes them to seem marginalised. Through skillful use of monologue, these characters are revealed as possessing an understanding of humanity, born of their occupations. They have too profound a sense of vocation. Far from being depressing such poems reassure the reader that at times of absolute vulnerability, we will be treated with great dignity.  Thus the mortician administers to corpses' hands with the care of a beautician and a sexton tending a graveyard adjacent to a converted chapel “re-buries fragments quietly, with a nod at prayer;”. <\/span>

There are also darker characters in the collection. In the poems \u2018Quatrophobia\u2019 and \u2018Victor Knows the Danger of Words\u2019 France presents two men with serious personality disorders. Her use of an everyday tone to detail the rigid regimens of their lives coupled with a proliferation of verbs to emphasise how exhausting such compulsions can be, “He checks for gaps in the rows, phones out for replacements”, “Victor unplugs the radio, muffles it with bubble wrap and gaffa tape” successfully help the reader understand what it is like to be driven by such obsessive imperatives.<\/span>

The level of specialist detail shown by France throughout the collection particularly in 'Learning to Play the Violin by Holding a Bow' and 'The Hangman Speaks of Art' is impressive and suggests to me that she researches in depth the particulars of her subject matter before embarking on the work.<\/span>



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…Reviewed by Fiona Sinclair
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Occupation by Angela France.  Ragged Raven Poetry,  2009  ISBN: ISBN 978 0 9552552 6 7: \u00a37In Occupation, Angela France creates a rich parallel world peopled by extraordinary individuals. The collection is threaded with magical references to mystical hares, witches, monsters under the bed and even 'The God of Lost Letters.' At the heart of the […]<\/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-848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848","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=848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}