behind the ordinary - caroline cook
Allison McVety's first collection comes highly recommended. Jane Draycott writes that “sensuous detail, intellectual curiosity and an echoing, confident music all make this a fully-imagines poetic world,” while David Morley calls this “an impeccably clear and sculptured collection. It signals the opening of a career of a writer from whom we can expect wonders.”
In fact, the Trotsky of the title only drops by once; the main theme and thrust of the book is concerned with McVety’s family history. A father in Special Operations in World War II, an uncle who drags the docks for bodies, women and children left at home in Salford. Stories, memories.
McVety invokes the past with care and precision, without sentimentality. Her language is clear, precise, rooted in reality. She is concise; few of the poems run to a second page. Her tone is serious and the places and people in the poems have a sense of real existence. One can also have a faith in her titles: a poem called ‘Front Door’ is about a front door, but more, too. McVety’s world is one of substance. Often her mind dwells on bone, wood, dough, cloth, the feel and smell of them. The oven
burns furze, the dough pulls
at itself to come to bread.
(‘Hardy’s grandmother...’)
I rub sage, picked fresh this morning
into a Pyrex dish, into breadcrumbs,
sausage meat, sweet sweated onions,
bind it with egg and roll into patties
with flattened palms, coil in bacon streaks
or stuff in the neck-end.
(‘Outside the Gates at Paxo’)
Her poems are well wrought and impress us with their solidity. Sober, workman-like and insightful they are portraits of an age gone by, or people formed by a hard, municipal landscape. She empathises with them; she sees the truth and remains affectionate. In this way she is able to move the reader.
my father is trying his death for size.
It’s off-the-peg, but even so,
consultants attend to the tailoring,
consider a final tuck.
(‘On a side ward’)
The majority of the 54 poems in the collection fall into the “family Memory” category. I wonder if it might have been better had McVety’s first collection had just comprised these? That said the other poems are equally strong and each bears her poetic hallmark of tactility and weight.
McVety writes extremely well. She has the ability to get behind the ordinary in order to illuminate it. Her work is honest, thoughtful and also heartfelt. It is not surprising that her name is rapidly becoming better known.
Published in Staple