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It is hard to escape the feeling that Brett Evans \u2013 or, at least, the poet Brett Evans, if you will accept the delicate distinction – was born in the wrong place at the wrong time, or perhaps in the right place at the right time with the wrong constitution.\u00a0 He is, properly speaking, a blues singer, part Delta, part Chicago, who has found himself instead a \u201cfat, pink alkie\u201d in a small town in North Wales at the beginning of the twenty-first century.\u00a0 As he says in the same poem (\u2018Reading Sean O\u2019Brien in the Bath\u2019), \u201csomething is amiss\u201d.<\/p>\n
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This short collection is very much of a piece, the themes pulled \u201cover troublesome stones\u201d through it, like the Gele river itself: myth, Wales, pubs and drink, jazz, religion, poetry, and desire.\u00a0 And perhaps the displacement is perhaps not so great, perhaps he\u2019s a Celt from across the sea, and should have been a Dubliner.\u00a0 His tipple after all is stout (even in his erotic fantasies he lathers his lover\u2019s hair \u201cto a Guinness foam\u201d).\u00a0 One way or another these poems are written from the Celtic twilight.<\/p>\n
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The melancholic confessional is a hard thing to pull off without self-pity, but there\u2019s none of that here.\u00a0 The collection\u2019s first poem, \u2018Marshes\u2019 starts in childhood \u2013 \u201cwe swashbuckled summers across the weir\u201d \u2013 and powerful fantasy, and ends in two connected sadnesses which can never be erased: the defeat of Wales and the realisation that \u201cwe\u2019re who we are\u201d \u2013 an end to childhood.<\/p>\n
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Dreams and fantasy fuel much of Evans\u2019s poetry, the paradox being that they earth him in the single place he writes from.\u00a0 He dreams of being in bed with the great blues \u201cmoaner\u201d Ma Rainey; he rides \u201con the trail of the buffalo\u201d with Ramblin\u2019 Jack Elliot; he is an extra in a Spaghetti western \u201cwith an unforgettable score\u201d. He dreams simply \u201cof a song\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Do you notice? Music is a constant \u2013 the devil\u2019s tattoo. Most of the drunks are singing (usually \u201cA lament for, and from, the anonymous\u201d), Ma Rainey is singing Jelly Bean Blues, Coltrane\u2019s sax is here beautifully kissing the breeze, Armstong\u2019s doing over \u2018Stardust\u2019, even a scarecrow sways like \u201ca metronome to an orchestra \/ of gale and sleet\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Like the dreams of music, the myths of Wales, the \u201cugly, lovely children\u2019s world\u201d, desire too keeps the poet busy.\u00a0 The barmaids \u201ccome and go\u201d (probably not talking of Michelangelo), and he dreams of pampering them all. Or, peering from a pub window in the touching \u2018Not Raglan Road\u2019, he watches a woman in suede boots: \u201cThere is only her moving through this world\u201d.\u00a0 The poet imagines \u201ca handful \/ of raindrops may just find their resting place \/ in her hair\u201d.\u00a0 This image, almost clumsily described \u2013 \u201cmay just\u201d is perfectly awkward \u2013 is delicately erotic. As is also the \u201cfantasized unclothing\u201d of the sycamore stem in \u2018Carving a Lovespoon\u2019. \u2018Positions in Bed\u2019 contains not only \u201can imagined lover\u201d but also \u201cdream pubs\u201d.<\/p>\n
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My favourite poem, and one I think would do well in schools (that sounds faintly praising but is not at all meant to), stands a little apart from the rest of the collection.\u00a0 It is not confessional, and yet, insofar as Evans does come close to self-pity it may be the most confessional of them all.\u00a0 It is called \u2018Scarecrow\u2019.\u00a0 There is explicit analogy with the crucified Christ \u2013 \u201carms outstretched, forsaken, \/ he wears his unkempt crown\u201d, and later \u201cThis son of Man \/\/ is blind to purpose, rooted in solitude\u201d \u2013 but here there is no redemption.\u00a0 The suggestion is of a godless world, and God does pop up more frequently in these poems than one at first notices.\u00a0 How could he not, given the presence of the blues, of Guinness, of Wales?\u00a0 But he\u2019s here in passing, in ghostly form. The devil is much more real.\u00a0 There is, in \u2018Anticipating Pints of Stout\u2019 a marvellous description of the drink lined up on a bar: \u201ca lechery \/ of pint-sized priests to knock back without repentance\u201d.\u00a0 Drink, not religion, brings salvation.<\/p>\n
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The collection ends as it began, in childhood, or rather in the memory of childhood, and reflections on the present:<\/p>\n
I haunt our stomping grounds, my shadow striding<\/em> Do we have a word for nostalgia without the fleck of sentimentality that makes nostalgia kitsch? The Welsh word hiraeth is often translated as homesickness, but it may also denote a longing for the past.\u00a0 Might it do to describe the spirit of these lines?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 I am not a Welsh-speaker, but maybe.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The devil\u2019s tattoo drums through all our lives, and the poet\u2019s desire that \u201cthe familiar must become the unfamiliar\u201d \u2013 which I take to be one of the things poetry does –\u00a0 is what defies that beat and makes the real tolerable.\u00a0 Sean O\u2019Brien and Dylan Thomas are both presences here, both poets capable of seeing wonder in the quotidian.\u00a0 It is an ability, a tendency, that Brett Evans aspires to, and often achieves, in this short, punchy, thoroughly engaging and coherent pamphlet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Brett Evans’ The Devil’s Tattoo<\/em> (Indigo Dreams) is the runner up for Best Poetry Pamphlet in this year’s Saboteur Awards<\/a>. Buy your copy here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is hard to escape the feeling that Brett Evans \u2013 or, at least, the poet Brett Evans, if you will accept the delicate distinction – was born in the wrong place at the wrong time, or perhaps in the right place at the right time with the wrong constitution.\u00a0 He is, […]<\/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":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8665","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=8665"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23697,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8665\/revisions\/23697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nout before me: a giant ghost, coat flapping in the wind.<\/em>
\nAnd the water before the weir forever lapping at the child.<\/em><\/p>\n