UNDERSTANDING: NEW & Selected Poems by Anne-Marie Fyfe and Love, Sorrow And Joy: A New Voice in Irish Avant-Garde Poetry by Graham Gillespie are both landmarks for the poets concerned.
Fyfe’s Understanding (Seren ) gives the reader a sense of her poetry in its entirety, including selections from each of her three previous books as well as 31 new poems. Gillespie’s collection, on the other hand, is his debut.
The publication of a first collection of poetry is always a great occasion. Fyfe was born in Cushendall, County Antrim, but has lived in London for many years and her poems are very engaged with the idea of place and memory. However she is not the sort of overly serious type which such a description might initially call to mind.
The title of one of the poems here, ‘No Jitterbugging in the Aisles, Please!’ is clear evidence that Fyfe is in possession of a sense of humour. A crucial thing this, because without it a poet is in danger of being crushed by the gravity of his or her own perceived seriousness
In many ways Fyfe seems to be a poet caught between her memories of the small Antrim town she grew up in and the accelerated world of places like London, now her home, and America, which she has visited several times.
‘Dog Days on Main Street’ is a small town poem full of vacant telephone kiosks, slow cats, and bleached boxes of peppermint creams. In ‘Waterloo and City’ the experience of travelling on the London Underground is perfectly described: “The underground today is a transit of rooks/packing-out seats, arm rests, staking each/inch of platform”.
In ‘Elevator In The Dark’ she is stuck in an elevator in Seattle and imagines the “concierge/long gone, right now he’s ordering fajitas/at Garcia’s three blocks away.” These are fine poems from a poet who is the best kind of perfectionist.
Graham Gillespie’s collection is prefaced by a 14 page essay by Dr Mícheal Ó hAodha and an interview with the poet himself. Gillespie has some lovely lines, such as the first one in ‘Providence’: “Every time you place a foot on a manhole cover, you trust”, or in ‘Promises’: “My provisional and qualified maybe/Is now a resounding yes!” I also greatly enjoyed ‘Moments’: “I am sipping a strawberry milkshake/Its sweetness sinful though there’s nothing adult/Or sophisticated about the experience./I am a child again with his birthday treat.”
The one criticism I would make of that poem is I don’t think its title does it justice. It’s a little vague for a poem in which the imagery is generally so wonderfully specific. Graham Gillespie has talent and takes the act of writing poetry very seriously. It is perhaps a stretch to describe him as “A New Voice in Irish Avant-Garde Poetry”, as the front cover of his book does, but then young poets have always tended to make grandiose claims, and long may they continue to do so.
