NEIL LEADBEATER Reviews
Slate Voices:
Islands of Netherlorn by Mavis Gulliver
(Cinnamon Press, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd, Wales 2014)
and
Slate Voices:
Cwmorthin by Jan Fortune
(Cinnamon Press, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd, Wales 2014)
It is rare that one has
the opportunity to compare and contrast the work of two poets addressing the
same subject, albeit from a slightly different perspective, on such an extended
scale but this is what is offered here. The subject is slate. The slate of Scotland
and the slate of Wales: “two for the price of one.”
Mavis Gulliver gives an
account of what was once the slate industry on the Islands of Netherlorn which
are located off the west coast of Scotland. Gulliver has researched her
material well. The poems are meticulously drawn and full of detailed
description. As part of her research she travelled to all the islands that she
writes about, even Belnahua, which has long since been uninhabited. Her
collection is divided into four sections which are named after the islands that
she visited. Each section opens with a short account of the island and is
followed by a series of poems.
This is poetry that is
very much grounded in the past. It is not, however, nostalgic but rather takes
on the mantle of a place and a time that is seen through the lens of history.
Only descriptions of the weather, abandoned machinery and disused quarries
bring us back to the here and now.
In Wild Weather
she writes:
Life on the western edge
inures you to gales
and in Going to Church
she describes how she walked in the footsteps of the slate-makers:
skirted shore,
climbed up and over moor
where rain flew in
like needles on the
wind…
Throughout the collection
we are treated to some haunting, memorable images: children swimming in quarry water on a bright summer’s day; the
disused quarry at Ardencaple and the abandoned "Ticket Office at Blackmill Bay
on Luing" where the last stanza captures
the atmosphere of the whole poem:
The door is padlocked
but there’s life inside,
nestlings call for food,
keep up a constant chirping
that magnifies
as swallows swoop,
flit in - flit out again
while butterflies
fluttering
between curtain and glass,
find no escape.
The past is brought back
to life through chronicles of history, especially the poem that recounts the
flood of 1881 and most effectively in the last section of the book that covers
the uninhabited island of Belnahua. In particular, the haunting poem called Census
1921:
No hand to sign a name.
No occupation to
record.
No wives.
No widows.
Not
a pauper left.
In poems such as "The
Night of 21-22 November, 1881"; "Catherine McPhail," "Remembering 1840" and "Leaving
Belnahua, 1914" historical fact is dramatically retold through the voices of
the past and in a style that is immediately effective in its impact.
An unexpected literary
connection sparks off Gulliver’s poem called "The Last Duchess, 1902."
Slates were given names according to their size and Duchess at 24 inches
x 12 inches was the second largest. The last Duchess, quarried on Easdale in
1902, can be seen in The Scottish Slate Islands Heritage Trust Museum in
Ellenabeich. Gulliver makes a neat reference to Browning’s poem “My Last
Duchess” in her opening lines:
Not Lucrezia,
whose smiles stopped altogether
at the Duke’s command -
but the last slice of slate,
split from quarried rock
trimmed to Duchess size…
This is an impressive
first collection from a Scottish writer who has dealt with her subject sympathetically
and has, in the process, crafted poems of great sensitivity and impact.
Jan Fortune’s collection
is more spare. The poems here are of a darker hue. Set in North Wales, they
inhabit a very different landscape from that which has gone before. In "Year’s
Turn Beneath the Steps" it is a
World drained to grey,
a phosphorous lamp,
one clod of snow.
Beyond the fence, mountains,
wind, the sag of marsh,
a hiss of steam.
Once again, meticulous
research has paid off. The poems offer an informed account of a past whose
presence continues to dominate the Welsh landscape today.
Stylistically, Fortune’s
poems are the more varied of the two. There are prose poems, poems written as
nursery rhymes and lullabies, poems with Biblical references, a sequence of
poems cast as a litany, poems with “echoes”, a poem carefully crafted out of
the definition of a place-name, a poem conceived as a bilingual alphabet, and
poems re-written as concrete poems where sheepfolds, cartwheels and inclines
are neatly re-defined in visual form.
In "The Underground
Men, 1936" Fortune brings back to life the men who laboured in the slate
quarries not only by naming them but also by framing them in the guise of “the
school photograph”:
They stand or sit on slate, rockmen, miners, labourers,
dust-laden, grinning at the lens, flanked by steward,
haulier with horse.
….
Their names people this valley still.
The work has long since gone.
For all the contemplation
of a people no longer with us, there is a resurrection moment in the final
section of the poem called "A Litany for Cwmorthin":
v. Hallelujah
Long past Imbolc,
beneath a stick-thin tree:
a single snowdrop.
This poem, beautifully
wrought with a few well-chosen words, sums up Fortune’s style where everything
is pared down to the bone. It is what makes this such a powerful collection.
In both sections,
evocative black and white photographs enhance the text. The title of each photograph has been taken
from the text itself. In this way the photographs become an integral part of
the book. Close collaboration between the two poets has helped to make this a
seamless collection whose strength and power amounts to more than the sum of
its two parts.
************
Neil Leadbeater is an
author, essayist, poet and critic living in Edinburgh, Scotland. His short
stories, essays, articles and poems have been published widely in anthologies
and journals both at home and abroad. His most recent books are Librettos
for the Black Madonna (White Adder Press, Scotland, 2011) The Worcester
Fragments (Original Plus Press, England, 2013) and The Loveliest Vein of
Our Lives (Poetry Space, Bristol, England, 2014).
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