Stained Glass' by Sally Richards and 'cui bono?' by Steve Mann

'Stained 'Glass' is a great title for this collection by a bruised ex-convent girl, now a graceful Shropshire poet whose voice has been silenced more than once by the emotional trammels of life along the way. To borrow a stanza from the book...

She's been through a lot
been shut down,
lost the plot
lost some of her hair
down the plug.

But these days, the introduction to this book tells us, 'the fragments are coming back together'. Sally Richards is very much a product of the rich and beautiful landscape she grew up in and is known in Shropshire for her poetic treatments of favourite natural landmarks. Her work has appeared in a variety of regional publications and on local radio. I think of her work as 'delicate' and 'light' but there is nothing frivolous or superficial about it. She has the ability to weave words, with minimal punctuation, in a way that seems weightless on the eye, on the page - but the message they carry is as clear as cold steel. In this collection a narrator tells us that...

Just as the softness of reflected trees
begins to lull her into a painless place
dark descends, a different light calls

This poet's love of landscape is both lusty and intimate - almost confidential. The poems are more often conversations with natural features than descriptions of them. I really enjoyed the suggestions of leaping and tumbling in her treatment of 'The falls: Pistyll Rhaeadr' which ends up, as anything touching that water would have to do, in the pool beneath the falls:

energy spent, quelled; now submissive

tranquillity

peace

but the reader is not to be left in peace. The poem ends:
eyes travel upwards with the sound of you
constant, defiant, relentless.

The book isn't all natural landscapes though - many issues, human and otherwise are represented. My favourite - the poem that first brought Sally Richards' power to my attention, is 'The Journey' but I'm not going to tell you what it's about. It is such a pleasure to read it and work it out as you follow the ancient and magical pathways of the lines. I will end my review with a recommendation, again in Richards' words. This from 'Shell'...
Listen, you may hear the soulful melody
lala la la lala la la winding upwards
lala la la tormented notes
from a different place, another time.

- but don't run away with the idea that Richards is overly lost or distressed: She has a keen eye and a sharp pen which will give you pause for thought on many topics. If the joy of your favourite landscape or the tingling excitement of personal love fill you with trepidation as well as joy, try 'Stained Glass' and let Richards guide you along the paths of the human heart.

cui bono? by Steve Mann
Steve Mann writes lucidly and simply about the chaotic over-stimulation that we human beings must attempt to live with. The pages of cui bono? plummet and soar between visions of the numinous and a humiliating close up of a bathroom floor. Mann strikes me as the victim of an avalanche, unselfishly providing reassuring flashes of intelligence and humour to his peers as they tumble and roll through life.

Maybe the key to the book is in indecent exposure which paints a picture of one who is terrifyngly left to do what he can, finding himself ad-libbing into.... indecent exposure, craving a McCarthy or a Robespierre to silence him - but then on the next page, a humble and appreciative ode to the variety of birds that appear in the course of a day in rural England. Romance, but still bearing signs of tragedy dashed with humour - the knock of a woodpecker on a tree is interpreted as come out, be eaten, now! and as the heron sweeps towards the river, her supper waits for life's cycle fully turning.

The message I found in this book is the startling contrast between the chaos we find when we thrash around within our thoughts, and the peace that can be experienced when
quiet opens to the out-
side world the window
We are offered a tiny hero in Waiting for Gulliver. Facing the enemies who stalk through this book, from psychiatrists wielding drugs and shocks to serial child killers, and the plentiful proud who excrete bio-live yogurt Against enemies such as these, our hero is an
Expendable
white soldier
fighting infections
in the boils
of the overboiled

The poems address figures of the past, famous and unknown - the man in the hands of archaeological researchers, known only by such things as the type of pollen in his colon. We talk to dragons, to Gellert the faithful hound, to Nietzche, and to the hills of Shropshire: All with a wink and a smile, and an acceptance of life's wonder and terror.

Despite the baffling range of vocabulary, despite the frequent allusions to sickness and death, Mann's poems are neither difficult nor depressing. I am reminded of a writer on a workshop forum, exasperated by the complications of someone's lines, exclaiming 'it's not supposed to be a crossword puzzle!' Mann is never complicated in that manipulative way. The stream of references and verbal acrobatics serves to confound the intellect and cast it aside, thus revealing 'the royal road' to the heart of things. The only thing that's complicated is trying to talk about the poems, which caused me to think, cui bono? - despite the fact that I'm a bit vague about what it means. I didn't bother to go look it up. I just carried on and enjoyed the poems. And they are extremely enjoyable. This book is a treasure - go read!

The Launch:

22 Betterton Street
If you've ever had anything to do with poetry in the UK you'll probably recognize this address. It's the home of the Poetry Society in Covent Garden. I've written it on envelopes stuffed with my hopeful submissions so many times. Never having visited, I developed a strangely romantic idea of what must be there, at the centre of all things poetic.

So when I received an invitation to a Survivors poetry launch at that magic address, what did I expect? A high altar? Purple curtains? Nope, it's a funny little back-street café that would seat twenty at a push and, like poetry venues the world over, the café-bar is run like the refreshments stall at a church bazaar. They'd actually run out of ingredients for meals by the time we arrived and Sally's friends from Shrewsbury had to make do with bread and cheese for their long-awaited supper. Downstairs, an odd assortment of chairs and some cobbled together curtains have been employed to make the basement into a performance area and again, like poetry venues the world over, they haven't yet learned that you shouldn't stomp around upstairs collecting crockery when people are trying to read downstairs.

Am I complaining? No! It's a warm, friendly, quirky place and the poetry and the company, on this evening at any rate, were superb.

Sally Richards Well I already knew I liked Sally's poetry and I've read 'Stained Glass' about 15 times now but I'm still really glad I attended the launch. I've said recently that I'm not that mad about poetry readings but I can now qualify that statement: I prefer readings by poets who are good at reading. Sally brought the poems to life, really seemed to be living them rather than reciting them. Totally absorbing and I wish she'd had time to read the whole book.

Catherine Tate Who the heck is Catherine Tate you may be saying. Well, here's why I know the answer to that: Steve Mann's reading was the first one I've ever seen where the reader begins, having never seen his book before, by stepping up to the mike, turning the book over and over in his hands with an air of Christmas morning in his expression, grins at the audience and says 'it's green!' then looks at his publisher and says, 'it's a nice book, thanks.'

The publisher is the first I've ever seen who, when thanked from the stage at a reading can only grunt in reply. He's still in shock and whimpering to himself having emerged from the printers with a box of books, leapt into a taxi and yelled 'get me to the Poetry Café by nine o'clock or else!' and then suffered a taxi ride so hair-raising that the driver banged his own head on the windscreen several times.

Anyway, singer-songwriter Catherine Tate was launching her CD 'Leaky Umbrellas' that night, and kindly did a set that started when Steve had been due to read, entertained us with sweetly finger-picked guitar, a good voice and some quirky lyrics, and stepped down with good grace the moment the books arrived. So...
Steve Mann The launching of 'cui bono?' took us all rather by surprise, Steve being a modest type who didn't say an awful lot about it before hand and his publisher doing a hell-for-leather run to get the book out in time for the Betterton Street launch. Nevertheless it's a well-produced book and Steve's an accomplished reader. His work can be difficult to take in at first read but his placid, good-natured delivery brings it alive. An enjoyable performance, and one that left me delightedly reading snatches of the work out loud on the train all the way home. Excellent!

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