|
John Barnie is best known as the editor of the magazine Planet, which is essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in the affairs of Wales as seen in an international context. But he is also a poet and prose-writer who writes elegantly and passionately about environmental issues, among other things, as well as playing in a poetry-and-blues band, the Salubrious Rhythm Company.
As one might expect, his poetry is sophisticated, wide-ranging and utterly modern in its preoccupations and styles. He is concerned with the individual in an increasingly impersonal world and with the damage which governments do to the environment we all inhabit. He has no religious faith and the world, for him, has no ultimate meaning, and yet man has responsibilities for his fellow-man and for all forms of life on our planet.
The poems in his latest collection teem with flora, fauna and aviana, from sea-lilies (now extinct) to seals and sandpipers, but also with people – astronauts, gospel singers, drunks, war widows, schoolchildren, lovers and the new-born. The book takes its title from a hotel in the Bolivian desert which becomes an image for the modern world of ecological extremes.
Some of the most memorable poems in the collection are about the landscapes of Monmouthshire, where John Barnie was born in 1941, and in which his individual voice can be heard at its most impressive. In ‘About the Usk’, which seems set to become an anthology piece, he writes: ‘If this were America, the river grumbles, I’d be called red and they’d make up a song about me.’
In the second and third sections, John Barnie has tried out what may be a brand new way of signifying the line-break, in an attempt ‘to create a forward surge in the rhythm’, thus:
Have you seen those wor-
ms that dehydrate in Antarc-
tica to be blown almo-
st weightless by a deser-
t wind/until by a deser-
t wind/mill in a spo-
t with a touch of moistur-
e/a degree less cold/th-
ey rehydrate and carry o-
n . . .
This can be quite effective sometimes, but only at the second or third reading, and often it is plain irritating, ruining the reader’s enjoyment of the fluidity of the line and breaking up whatever image it may contain. This fracturing, says the poet, ‘is also a part of the poem’s meaning, a reflection of the way in which in this rapidly changing, speeded-up culture, the human need to see things whole is baffled, so that nothing can be taken for granted.’ Yes, but that is surely one of the functions of poetry: to see the world whole, in all senses of that word, and not to be baffled by it.
I hope the poet has now got this particular bee out of his bonnet because he has a lyrical gift which can do without this kind of technical mannerism. He says in a Note: ‘Once the reader gets used to the technique of disruption, a pattern begins to emerge.’ Few readers will stick around long enough to see it, I fear.
I much prefer the simpler, but no less effective impact of poems like ‘Border Town Report’, ‘Afternoons’ and ‘A Letter to the Local Press’ in which he catches the peculiar atmosphere of towns like Abergavenny, his native place, and the Borderlands of Gwent. These are the poems that will mean something to the reader who hasn’t the patience to read the more typographically unorthodox poems. I prefer, too, the poem ‘Facts’, which runs for 28 lines but is no more than a single sentence: it has enough technical daring to satisfy even the most jaded reader.
Meic Stephens
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 ganiatad Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.
|
