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Pugh’s work illustrates an excellent deployment of concrete detail and description of the commonplace, and she is adept at using the so-called non-formality of free verse. In her new collection of poems, line breaks, end stop and enjambement are all used to proper effect, and the work is well-crafted in clear, simple language with familiar poetic tokens and images.
This is accessible poetry par excellence. As if to emphasise the point, the author introduces her long sequence, Fanfic, with a helpful note that explains its provenance and points to the glossary that follows, while the series of poems under the title Lady Franklin’s Man includes historical notes on its references. The collection offers many good examples of the kind of work to which those who are learning the craft of creative writing can aspire: the diversion of small novelties; the odd inflections of everyday experience; and the typical twist of the conclusion, comprising an unexpected shift in perspective, or a startling image, or perhaps a suggestion of the macabre.
I read poetry in order to be picked up and set down rather changed – to be taken out of the commonplace, or to have the commonplace transformed – but such an experience is not on offer in this work. This is not really to fault the writer or her poems – they both do well what they set out to do, which is, in the anti-elitist tradition, to celebrate ‘the small ingots of the commonplace’, as Pugh’s poem 'Lockerbie Butter' concludes (according to the formula).
That such an experience is not on offer does, however, fault undemanding cultural expectations. It is hard to read work like this without asking what purpose it plays socially. This new collection is a good example of what appears to be a confusion between, or perhaps a conflation of, the particular with the commonplace. As such, its effect is socially conservative. There appears to exist an economic compact between writer, publisher, critic and reader that, in giving primacy to small-scale reach and reference, and assigning significance to the commonplace for its own sake, deprives us of work that is potentially dangerous. We should demand much more.
Jasmine Donahaye
It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgement should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.
Gellir defnyddio’r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.
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