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John G.Hall
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J.Barrett Wolf
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Neil Campbell's "Zero hours" reviewed by John G.Hall
In many ways this is a young mans book. A life of work, sex, football, booze and books. Yet because it is written by a working class poet with a poets eye for the wonder in the ordinary it makes us care about his characters. Neil Campbell's work is rooted in his Manchester homeland, but it is a homeland that is full of bastards, saints, sinners and yes, poets. At times his raw sexual explorations are honest and faulty, as they all are of course. The story swings between jobs and sex and the company of writers, that the young poet aspires to be part of , and ultimately finds solace in. Campbell is very influenced by the American Beats but his technique is closer to Charles Bukowski. This book does not touch on the authors own childhood as Bukowski does in 'Ham on Rye', but gathers characters and their story much more like Bukowski's 'Notes of a Dirty Old Man'. Bukowski's book ranges far and wide, from mentioning Karl Marx to 'hard ons'. Campbell's work is more accurately compared to Carver & Kerouac. However because this author is rooted in the Manchester working class he cannot help but become a deeply political writer. Some reviewers see Campbell as a dead pan ultra-realist, always reeling out a negative line with a underplayed up-side, I am always struck by his angry political rage at a social system that traps people in dead end jobs and the limits set on our imagination. Add to this rumble of dissidence a crackling sense of humour and a gift for raw truth telling and you have a great slow burning read. If you want to understand Manchester, England, and working class life in 2020 you need to read this book. 'Zero Hours' is the second of his Manchester Trilogy, see the first 'Sky Hooks' and his latest 'Lanyards'. |
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Review: Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.
By J. Barrett Wolf The world of poetry has been leaning toward dark confession for decades, now. Slams have come to take on the aura of a pain contest with the clearest rendition of one’s invisible scarring taking the prize, even as judges and audience alike wince. It was not always that way. There are things to be felt, enjoyed, and described that do not hurt us. Things that evince wonder and warmth. Things of love. The chance to leave the scraping pain aside and revel in desire are rare enough, but an avenue to take is one of Pablo Neruda’s greatest works : Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. This work inspired my own voice and I cannot commend it more highly. This work is not without heartache. The title makes clear where we are going and that it will not always be elves and strawberries when we get there. On the one hand is a line I consider one of the most sensual and beautiful lines in poetry: “I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” And there are, of course, other aspects of desire: “How terrible and brief was my desire of you! How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid. Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs, still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.” There is good reason Neruda is considered a premier writer of sensual and romantic poems, and it is worth your time to take the evening off from confrontation and consternation to witness the voice of courting and connection. |
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Jumping into a Waterfall By Anna Percy,
Review by John G.Hall. Anna Percy's collection of poetry is divided up into five sections, two are responses to the natural world, three are responses to the poets internal world, or rather her struggles to incorporate all the nature's of existence she encounters. The natural world has the ability to pull out the poets inner feelings, inner dialogue externalized in big breath measured lines organised in lyric form. These poems are observations that evoke memories that need to be story. There are examples of this that appear almost as flash fiction given the touch of poetry. This is the poet as sensory organ, noting the feel of sand, the fragrance of flowers, the sound of water, the colour of sky, the intimacy of flesh, the withdrawal of love and the sensation of loss. There is the love of words, their picturing, their sounds and their patterns, that remind you of Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath. However this poet lets the contents push her work towards experimentation and the utilization of literary influences that are used deftly and without affectation. But the overwhelming feeling when you read this collection is that pleasure and passion, struggle, love and loss is worth the living. That the ordinary can be given a magical sheen, cut up, stitched together, and turned into beauty. Each of these poems is a patchwork world, the poetic line sitting next to the casual dialogue, the map upside-down next to the magical sea beast. In this way Anna Percy becomes your personal magician and these poems your chance to peer inside her spell-book, recite them out loud, and see what happens. |