NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

This is one long poem of 64pp in nine sections, introduced as a poem which

unearths an archetype that today's society needs and undervalues.

If the premises are exaggerated, on the other hand the themes of Goodfellow, Puck &c find an affectionate and passionate place in the poem. How much is Taplin as Puck or Puck alone on his individualistic way is anybody's guess. Wild but not woolly often in rude rurality, the crude technique of it all mixed with more precise observance comes over, inducing a pleasant latitude of acceptance to the reader (or should do unless he/she is hidebound) as the lines push out any pre-sense of orderly expectation. In parts it is simple to puerile, but put the parts together and an elephantine Puck stamps down analytic or academic opposition to technique and content as he trumpets on his way as the pages advance.

I can't do much better than quote at random commencing with Taplin's observation of Goodfellow, which I suspect is an individual need projected as universal:

	All I can say is that we need him
	like we need soil, and salt, and a good laugh.

	But chiefly he's lived in the south of England:
	Pookhill, Pookreed, Poukepit, Poppets
	Puckscroft, Puckstyle, Puckshot, Pugneys
	Puck Hay, Puck Pit, Puck Pool, Puckrup,
	Powk Lane . . .

	Let's have a dog so fierce she said
	that it has to go out with its jaw tied up
	yes let's he said and make it one
	that has the tail curled up and back
	so that everyone can see its arse

	Goodfelllow's been a cockney in his time
	piled a barrow with fruit when it pleased him
	driven a black cab
    
	'I seed that lady larfin'' he said once
	& she liked to quote it over & over again

	now the church had problems   
			 with playfulness
	or with any power 
			not its own
	so when you get
			to the Middle ages
	the priests are preaching 
			the one Pouke
	who was the Devil and
			utterly damned

The good poetry in this booklet deserves better treatment than it gets. There is an impression, and it may be unfounded but nevertheless it is there, that some of the middle-of-the-book poems with their smaller typeface and crammed appearance have simply been copied from the magazines in which they first appeared; and it is as if these somehow lesser middle-of-the-book poems deserve less favourable treatment than those at the front and back of the collection — those in the shop window. That's my gripe. It's now out of the way.

The publisher's note informs that

some of this poetry first appeared

SNOW BUNTINGS AT BARTON POINT takes its title from a verse in part 2 of the opener STUFF:

	when the world is too much with me I pick up
	the phone & dial the South-east birdline

	a flock of snow buntings at Barton Point

	as little kids coming home from a walk
	carry flowers, feathers, pebbles & bits of twig
	so I bring bits & bobs in the mind's pockets
	this New Year's Day.

	a black bullock looks at me over the fence
	his breath smelling so much sweeter

	a worn woman and her big simple son
	pass me in the lane

	a brown old woman is sitting against a groyne
	she is hump-backed ...
         
	she wrestles back her sand-brown legs 
	into her beautiful jade-green tights 

	...
	
	letting the sea enter where no man enters
	and as she rubs her skin with a gritty towel
	a little water warmed by its sojourn inside her 
	trickles down

	"Beg as checkuns" — the farmer spreads his hands —

	... a tough man with an eye patch
	talks on the phone in Gaelic and sounds so tender

common celebration of the natural world and walking in it

In this collection there's a little parading of irrelevant knowledge; the classics and such things. Several poems are sprinkled with names and quotes, when they might be better off without them.

I hope Kim Taplin continues to focus on her bits & bobs, her wrynecks and snow buntings and all the other curiosities spied along the highways and byways for that is her forte. Her fans will then shower her with fivers.