(Please forgive me all the hyperboles. I'm still ridiculously excited at finding this book.)
Annoyingly, I can't remember where I got this book. It was either a Foyle prize or a Poetry Society renewal of membership freebie. Either way I'm more than grateful to them for giving it to me. After several months sitting inconspiculously on my shelf, I picked it up abset mindedly for some light reading and have discovered one of my favourite books of all time.
So this is it: surely you know this, a small book of poetry by Wendy French.
It's published by Tall Lighthouse, a rather lovely poetry publishing firm, and is Wendy French's second Anthology.
In terms of physical qualities, it's just 63 pages long, with most poems only taking up one page. The design of the book is rather beautiful, with a very readable typeface and an endearing sense of simplicity. If I can personify the book, I'd say that's it's a book that wants to be read.
Inside, the poems are divided into three sections:
1. present tense (sappho fragments)
2. she says / he says
3. stone
Each sections has an entirely different character. 'present tense' is full of allegorical language, ambiguous phrasing, experiments with syntax. The poetry has a surreal, dream-like quality. It's hypnotic, and yet also entirely relatable - something I would say of the entire book. French has a marvellous way of drawing the reader into her poems so they seem like a new aspect of something very familiar in your own life, but yet also something new. Even the poems dealing with situations unfamiliar to me, like the 'old woman'/mother in Rocking, Rosendale Road (stone) became real through the lyrical, tangible quality of her words. 'she says / he says', the second section, is written in prose poetry. The poems alternate between taking a female voice or male voice, and share mysterious, dazzling fragments of other people's lives. Both 'present tense' and 'she says / he says' contain fractions of other poems as the starter for each poem, which I'll get to in a minute. The third section of the book is the simply titled 'stone', a section of mixed prose poems and poetry. The voice here is often distinctively the authors, yet there is a tremendous amount of imagination and passion. 'stone' does deal with the more difficult, raw aspects of life, yet it is also a tremendously hopeful section.
French's poetry allows for a great deal of reader interpretation, so reading her poems is a very personal experience. She also has a completely unique tone and a remarkable gift for honesty. Her work stands alone somehow, a new current in 21st century poetry. I honestly believe she is someone who is going to take poetry somewhere, and as a literature student I'm very excited about her writing - after all, the advantage of discovering a new author is that very few critics have written about her yet. Although she deserves lots of critical praise, it's nice to be able to form my own opinions on poetry before it's put into the GCSE syllabus and analysed to death!
French also leaves a lot of questions for her readers, although unlike some poets *coughcoughTonyHarrison* her poetry isn't so litered with classical references you need google open to understand the poetry. However, I've never heard of 'sappho' (althoguh it's a very pretty name!) so I'm now going to google it and find out.
According to google, Sappho was an ancient greek woman poet, whose poetry has only survived in fragments, some of which feature in 'surely you know this' (Which, incidentally, is taken from one of the fragments!). Her poetry was apparently very famous and beautiful, but also shrouded in the mystery of time, which has destroyed much of it. If anyone knows anything more about her, please comment. I'd love to know!
This site has some good information: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/318
Wendy French's 'surely you know this' is a collection which I'm going to come back to over and over again. It's the anthology I wish I'd written myself. interestingly, much of it reminds me of my own poetry - with a few hundred years more polish - so I am a little envious of this anthology... if ever I become famous (haha) I shall be a French-esque poet xD
I would recommend this collection to absolutely any literature lover, even those who are not big fans of modern poetry, and to anyone looking to discover a new and exciting writer.
For more information, her page on Tall Lighthouse is:
Get Reading!
J xx
