Poetry Review hits the north
The UK's leading poetry magazine, Poetry Review, came to Manchester on Monday 14 April, to launch its spring 'green issue'. Editor Fiona Sampson was joined by featured north-west poets Michael Symmons Roberts, Michael Murphy and (Centre PhD student) Sarah Corbett, who each read a selection of their work.
Michael Murphy's 'The Garden' and 'Thrush', from his collection Elsewhere, reflected the crossover of his new-found preoccupations at the time of their writing: tending the wilderness surrounding his derelict house and writing his first poems. He then unveiled a selection of work from forthcoming collection Allotments, as featured in Poetry Review.
The book's title poem describes the rubbish, reclaimed street furniture and thriving greenery to be found on plots close to Liverpool city centre, while the terrain described in 'Backyards' relates more closely to Michael's own outdoor territory. He concluded his selection with a poem influenced by Ovid and the irrevocable process of change, 'The Man Who Walked on Water'.
Given the theme of the current Poetry Review, Sarah Corbett began with two poems written on protests: 'Tunnels', written during the Newbury by-pass protests, and 'Lights', written at last summer's Heathrow climate change camp. She then read the title poem from her first book The Red Wardrobe, and one of the 'mother poems' which formed both its starting point and its heart.
Now a mother herself, Sarah's poem 'Rainbow' was inspired by her son's holiday homesickness and the feelings invoked by the promise of home. Two sets of poems concluded her section of the evening: three short works describing mistreated or suffering horses and two about very different kisses.
The 'Pelt' in Michael Symmons Roberts' first poem is the world's, found hanging on the back of a door in a dingy hotel. The poem can be found in his most recent book Corpus, which also includes a series on poems relating to the human genome after Michael worked alongside the leader of the UK team mapping it.
To help provide a metaphor for their work he wrote a driving poem, using images of speed and the carving of straight paths through deserts of 'dead code'. A later poem likened the genome to a newly-discovered landscape, in homage to John Dunne's use of the same metaphor to portray his mistress at rest.
'The Half-healed' and 'Armistice' gave tasters of Michael's forthcoming collection, the former again taking place in a hotel room, while his poem from Poetry Review, 'Horsemen', imagines the horsemen of the apocalypse absorbed into modern life. He concluded with a final, hotel-set work, the love poem 'Room Service'.
The panel discussion which rounded up the event touched on poetry's role as a vehicle or medium for political discussion, and the potential tension between inward-looking and 'external-facing' dialogue. Asked whether every aspect of life related to poetry, Michael Symmons Roberts concluded that anything could indeed be a subject, but that if everything could itself be perceived as poetry "...the unique moments it tries to create in language wouldn't exist."
You can read more about The Green Issue of Poetry Review, and buy or subscribe to the magazine, on the Poetry Review website.