“That water Speaks in Tongues” by Siobhan Campbell
published 2008 by Templar Poetry
UK price £4.00
www.templarpoetry.co.uk
Here are the opening lines of ‘Quickthorn’:
Don’t bring haw into the house at night
or in any month with a red fruit in season
or when starlings bank against the light,
don’t bring haw in.
From here onwards, Campbell sets the scene for a collection drawn from fairy tale and myth, blended with sex appeal and sensory detail. In fact, if I were a betting woman, I’d stake a lot on her being an Angela Carter fan: her poems are a hotch-potch of circus elephants, princesses and tattooed men, not to mention strong mother figures.
Particularly reminiscent of Carter is the circus-themed ‘Will of the People’, which crackles with energy while exploring the vulnerability of women, using the metaphor of a tight-rope walker. The ‘will’ of the title relates to the revolt of the audience as they turn against the establishment:
Elephant keeper, how could you let it happen?
How could you take us to the brink of ourselves,
knowing that we make her fly through our sparked clapping,
how we swig our emotional track when she runs the wire?
Another theme running throughout the collection is wildflowers, which adds to the sense that the work is suffused with folklore. As a wildlife enthusiast, I’m a sucker for the use of flower (or animal) names in poetry, and consequently loved ‘Giving the Talk’, which takes the romance out of flowers by exploring the morbid nature of the British countryside:
I know every stick and stone of this old road
every hollyhock and foxglove
where the flesh fly lays her eggs in devil spit
and finishes with the brutal nature of humanity, at a car crash hotspot:
No-one puts flowers
or one of those little crosses. Slowing down
on that bend, as everyone here knows,
is treacherous.
To me, that ending is particularly successful: “everyone here knows” evokes the malevolent nature of small communities, where people are too proud to leave flowers, or warnings, for victims. This dark undercurrent builds up to the last piece, the title poem, about a water trough in which various animals have drowned, including “sow’s disgrace squealing through the night” and birds “trapped in slow-flapped deaths”. Campbell’s final image is of a stuffed cat:
in its drowned
death no longer Tabby, but something more dead,
more of a shock to find in the wide morning
of visitor delight than any reminder
that we know nothing yet.
The whole collection modernises myth, rhapsodises about death, and is as sharp and shocking as Red Riding Hood graffitied onto the wall of an abattoir.
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