Tag: poetry sequence

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Sin Cycle, a new poetry sequence from Peter Kenny

Epigraphs, we’re told, are risky – they have a habit of upstaging the poem that follows. But the quote from William Blake is an apt start to Peter Kenny’s Sin Cycle, a sequence of twenty-four poems recently published in Issue 29 of E.ratio, an online journal of Postmodern Poetry. There’s a Blake exhibition at Tate Britain at the moment: ‘radical and rebellious’ he’s called in the exhibition notes, and reading Sin Cycle there are moments when you feel you’re inside the madness of a Blake painting. I know Peter is also a writer of horror fiction, and it’s clear he enjoys a strong sense of the macabre.

The work bristles with energy and inventiveness. Right from the first stanza we’re jerked inside the narrator’s head:

…
Then He came. Grinding my bed-wetter’s face into dandelions,
wrecking their stalks, weeping their wart milk.

My skin was a surface he secured without slippage,
till His prick burst the ghost clock of my head.
…

(‘Original’)

We’re taken  through a series of good and bad days, self-obsession and tortured thoughts. The world through this person’s eyes is full of squirming creatures, human and otherwise, destined for the slaughterhouse, the dustbin, ‘squelching late-night screenings’, or just dead, fossilised, taken, ‘yawning for air in their anxious hell.’ The narrator saves his harshest criticism for himself, who he sees behaving badly in some scenarios, and victimised in others.  Catching the reflection of his face as he tortures a fish out of boredom ‘I hate myself, / loathing whatever thing is watching me.’ (‘Siamese Fighting Fish’). A game of pool is going well, and then: ‘He’s back, that version of me, / the choker who doesn’t deserve it. So I choke again’.

I found myself compelled onward through the sequence and really enjoyed the form – each poem just two stanzas of four lines each – there’s a loose narrative arc driving it and the sheer exuberance and creativity is wonderfully gripping. Not so much a romp as a yomp – there’s no missing the real anguish here, but it’s worked through with such wit and originality. Sin Cycle succeeds in being luscious, gruesome, poignant and hilarious somehow all at once. Peter happens to be a friend and I was fortunate to read versions of Sin Cycle when it was a work in progress. I was sure it would be snapped up by a UK small press, but it took a US publisher to appreciate it. But who knows, *whisper* we may yet see it in print.

You can read Sin Cycle in its entirety here, but for now here’s another taster, one of my favourites in the sequence:

(vii) Commuted

En garde, I whisper, lunging onto the train,
my elbows dexterous in their micro-aggressions.
We’re all on the same line, and I re-read
the same line, until a well-Wellingtoned woman

treads on the tail of my eye. She follows a red setter
carving through cow parsley into an open field.
He sprints, I sprint, into the priceless possibility
of a place with no station and nothing to stab for.

Angst/

Individual poems v collections – still on the learning curve

poems for pamphlet

Putting together a collection of poems is proving to be harder than I ever expected. For a while now I’ve had a number of poems on a theme, which originally I dared to call ‘a pamphlet.’ I tried it on a few pamphlet comps: a couple of long-listings came of it, but basically nothing much.

So I looked very hard at the poems. Some were definitely stronger than others. Some I ditched entirely, some I took to workshops, some I worked on, and continue to do so. I sent them out as individual poems to a few places and it took a while but eventually a few of them have now been taken by magazines. But no-one has taken more than one, even though I’m now sending several as a ‘sequence’, or at least calling them ‘part of a sequence.’ I still believe very strongly in the sequence (or pamphlet, if that’s how it ends up) and perhaps I have more poems to write which may find their way in. But only a few of them ‘stand alone’ out of context. On the other hand, if I cut some poems and settle for a sequence, little else that I’ve written sits logically with it to make even a pamphlet. I feel like I have a lot of individual poems, but they have nothing in common with each other.

Showing groups of poems to various people in recent months has been difficult and nerve-wracking – feedback is mixed, and I feel knocked back, much more so than the feeling you get when a magazine submission is rejected, which I’m quite used to now. I’m very grateful for the feedback, especially if it’s offered as a favour, but asking someone to critique a collection of poems is very different from workshopping an individual poem. I find it impossible to link general comments to what’s not working in specific poems. I’ve also finally come to the conclusion that I struggle with written criticism, particularly if I’ve not actually met the person. You have no chance to interrogate the issue, get to the bottom of it – no dialogue, no chance to say ‘oh yes I see what you mean, so this doesn’t work because….if I do this, then…’ This has been an issue for me when I’ve taken part in online courses, for example.

I’ve thought for a long time what I need is a mentor, but as a poet friend pointed out to me recently, that may just be a cop-out. No-one has the magic answer to all this, or can tell me ‘what to do’ – or rather, they can, but is there ever ‘right’ advice? I need to work more on my writing, read more closely, and figure it out for myself.

I suppose I am learning though – for example, I’m learning which poems I feel strongly about, and which I can let go. Also, by looking endlessly at ways of ordering or re-ordering poems, and looking for possible links, I’ve actually identified a Key Poem – one which I used to think was nothing special, almost lightweight, fun in performance but no big deal. It’s a poem I’ve always struggled to explain to people but I can see now that it introduces overarching themes, and although it was OK as a standalone poem it can contribute more, has more to say, as part of a sequence.

I’m very interested to hear how others have tackled these kinds of issues, and any ideas of how to move forward, what’s worked for you. Do share, if you feel able to. Thanks.