FRED JOHNSTON: THE ORACLE ROOM Cinnamon Press Ty Meiron Glan yr Afon Tanygrisiau Blaenau Ffestiniog Gwynedd LL41 3SU UK ISBN 978 1 905614 21 9 £7.99 email Cinnamon Press visit the website of Cinnamon Press Web design by This page last updated: 21st December 2007. |
FRED JOHNSTON: THE ORACLE ROOM | |
This is where the political is a barometer for the personal, as Fred Johnston frequently blends both easily, as in THE SOUND OF PLEASE There is a world To argue with, to oppose, Outside this grey-walled world.He gives an inkling of the impetus to protest, in LETTER BEFORE SETTING OUT Something in people like us Is always unfaithful to the rest of the world; I will keep on the move.And then, of course, there's PROTEST itself, arguably the most potent item in this collection, balancing that public/private experience of seasoned demonstrators, with ..they sang Lennon, Dylan, and dull men in a silver car Photographed them. In the dulling sky Aircraft angled upwards and down, ..Beyond A perimeter fence warplanes dozed.No, it's not the expected holier-than-thou ending - the male protestor has his eye on the young girl, .hopping from One argument to the next — while He, scanned by the fire of her, became More see-through by the second, A refugee in his own heartYou see how complicated the public and the private becomes. Back in the personal life there is commemoration of Gerald Davis, Dublin's latter-day Leopold Bloom, I went away from every meeting with a Jazz CD like a bright, surreal coin in my pocketWhile there are verses on Sousse, Tunisia, Paris, London, Brittany, Moscow, Josselin, the face of Ireland (and Galway in particular) shows through insistently. There are constant references to water. But just as most writers would rest on the scenery (the usual trap of most Irish writing), Fred Johnston like a true citizen-journalist goes further into the structure and points out local defects, including the prostitution of males as well as females on a postcard promenade. He is also outspoken enough to write about THE SUICIDES, which was like an epidemic. Yet just as he seems in the thick of social comment and chivvying, he can dart off like a guerilla back into the landscape, in KILLALOE, The river is a mirror, the sky shaves in it, A lather of cloud flicks onto the bone fields.And then it's back to THE ORACLE ROOM, where the material is sifted into lyrical newsprint, coping with the complexities of the new Ireland in X-FILE, A bald man like any other Said he fixed small countries. He said this like you would Say: I work in a garageIt is when Fred Johnston holds up a mirror to such shenanigans, exposing the trickery, that he produces his best poetry, willing to speak out. There is even a warning about the poetry world itself, where he shows, in THE KAFKA PRIZE FOR POETRY how it has degenerated into a kind of sheep dip. You have been warned. That's what oracles do. | ||
reviewer: Pat Jourdan. |