NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

Now in its tenth year of publication PULSAR 45 contains a live poetry review as well as reviews of poetry publications and individual collections. The body of the magazine is, as it should be devoted to the recent work of contemporary poets connected with the magazine. Here there are 36 poems vying for individual attention in this splendid multi-facetted collection. I was particularly struck by the overall feel of the work, which has an honest directness about it, un-hampered as it is, by the contemporary academese that seems to dog so much of our currently published poetry.

For instance, Robin Daglish, in LEARNING TO WRITE, points out;

	Word of mouth could carry its story,
	the nib of the tongue writing on air
	scribe to the inner ear.
	...
		the living transfer vibrating air to paper:
	writing is the voice made visible,
	the fusion of sound and shape;
	Lepidoptera— netted by language,
	senses pinned to the page.

	to escape from the tyrannical logic
	of your mother tongue
	you wandered, wandering
	through earth’s length and breadth
	subjecting your old self to another syntax
	a whole set of grammatical rules
	strangely new to your lips

	This poem will harm nobody
	Point the finger at nobody
	...
	this poem will say nothing
	controversial or otherwise
	about nothing and nobody
	...
	this poem will not even entertain
	one semi-colon
	what about that then?

		Edwin Grimmett,
	Back sickle-bent with (too much) ditching,
	His face a brazier fuelled
	By mulled cider.
	
		*	 

	Did I betray you Edwin,
	When I broke your bread
	Amongst townsfolk and commuters?

	But all is not ruin.
	Here is the barn conversion,
	20% off London prices;
	And here the Manor House
	Turned into time share.
	Buy a stake.
	Become a countryman
	Two weeks a year.
       
       	*		
		
	In Cotswold,
	The future is pure investment.
	And the past tarted-up
	For postcard.
	Only the moon shriek legend.
	And visits the next generation.

	They smelt a bit
	The stinking rich.
	...
	In death, funds and status
	Provided the means and apparatus
	To be conveyed to another realm
	Faster than a speeding arrow,
	But at the terminus
	Their marrow slowly disintegrated
	Became sand
	And along the way niffed a bit;
	Putrefying — vicious slick,
	The stinking rich.

Well printed and presented I looked forward to reading the latest PULSAR magazine — even though, having first flicked through the pages, there were only one or two poets I'd come across before. I was disappointed.

The majority of the poems have no real impact. Some are pleasant enough, but lack a distinctive poetic syntax; they neither absorb nor uplift. The voices here are too similar. They are voices that can be heard in most creative writing groups, worthy perhaps, but dull.

I did like MEADOW NED by Chris Hardy. This is a richly descriptive and action filled short poem. Here is a distinctive voice (one that can be heard in his excellent small collection, SWIMMING IN THE DEEP DIAMOND MINE): this from the beginning stanzas:

	His foaming brow is solid marble.

	Ned's dark eyes doze in the hedge.
	   Grumbling like a tiger he blows
	         hay-sweet humid breath
	  from sopping nose and barbel lips,
	    his elephant's ear dewlap drags
	       behind his mowing tongue,
	           I never saw him run.

I enjoyed a couple of poems by Philip Howarth — both very different. The first, THE SUNDIAL, is not only a delicate evocation of a neglected garden, but also a subtle spur to the imagination:

	Beneath a sundial, tiny flies
	hide inside water lilies
	while plastic

	bags in trees flutter
	above an empty greenhouse.

	When the sleepless and lost
	limp back to this place
	they carry a compass

	and whistle sweetly.

	I have never photocopied my anus.

	I despair of an untidy kitchen.
	I have been known to weep openly.
	There are few things in life more tedious
	than a game of bar football.
	I think my boss is very good at her job.

keep writing.

For stay-at-homes (or the curious), Pulsar begins with accounts of live poetry readings in the Swindon area, at The Goddard Arms, The Calley Arms and The Nine Elms — three nights' poetry minutes, cleverly sliced. Then, four pages of reviews before the verses start — CROSSING BRIDGES by Catherine Brennan,

	a street photographer called; he stopped midstride;
	face caught in shadow, turning toward the light.

	as you adjust the meter to control the light,
	define the street within the camera's frame,
	comment on the bridge's span and height 
	as you catch my home town in black and white.

The annual Silent Minute is observed in a supermarket, in ELEVEN ELEVEN by Fran Burton. The ritual is broken by a customer demanding fish, destroying the moment —

	I turn and mouth the words
	'Minute's silence, mate.'
	The man taps his wrist
	'I make it a minute and ten.
	Step to it,pal.
	Chop chop.'

	they've become flesh
	representatives of familiar domestic things
	like the kettle, you pause, or like the breadbin.

At the other extreme is FEELING THE WORLD by Ken Head, a short story compressed into 33 lines, each one of them necessary— (I went back and checked them) — ending with

	She would sit at the kitchen table,
	still as marble,listening intently
	to the talk, but never saying a word,
	the fingers of her right hand twisting
	her wedding ring, endlessly round and round.

	Now you are in the garden,
	flattening the world's curvature
	or shocking it from your spade,
	careful not to tread on life.

	Only the children seem unaffected,
	Guarding their grains of truth
	With sandcastle defences.

	the hooded snakes in the grass
	will take wallets and mobiles
	from the small.
	and in spite of this
	it is as if they are created from mist,
	and are nothing to do
	with us at all

	Choking as ceilings fall; their last thought always
	"I am there!" as the event takes them.

This is one of the most enjoyable magazines I've read for some time. There is, like a swan gliding past, a good deal of nifty footwork going on here. The seemingly throw-away ease of style (no rhyme) hides the amount of reworking and sandpapering that has gone on. Not a dull one here. Don't be misled by the cover illustration— it refers to Martin Cook's poem BRUSH about a balding man — not a pleasant introduction.

A very snazzily-presented magazine, classy and yet approachable, glossy and yet down-to-earth. This issue starts off, as is customary, with a summary by the editor, David Pike, of Pulsar 'Live-microphone' Poetry Evenings held at The Nine Elms, Shaw, West Swindon and The Goddard Arms, Clyffe Pypard, near Swindon, Wiltshire. There are then a few reviews, plus information on the 2006/2007 Pulsar Poetry Competition, won by David Gill, and on the current 2007/2008 competition. The winning entries and recommended pieces for 2006/2007 are printed in this issue. Here is a sample from the third-placed poem, a keenly-observed piece, by Andy Humphrey, entitled THE JANUARY TENNIS CLUB:

	Thin and taut as a long steel ruler
	she hammers the ball across the court,
	bare legs pink with the raw slap of the wind.
	Eyes narrow under dark, emphatic eyebrows
	as she returns serve,
	determined as a terrier:
	her boyfriend, anorexia, exams
	beaten like the ball into submission.

	By noon, a low white sun has dissolved the frost,
	no traces left of your way to the outside world,
	your footprints gone, lost in the liquid grass.
	I wish it were so easy to remove
	your imprint on my mind.

		two sardines
	squashed together in a single camper bed.

	I ask you to marry me. You agree.
	Ahead of us the sea.

	I wish I had a mission that cut
	all the drudgery and dullness from my life.
	And a cool theme song, of course.

	I've not had soldiers
	With my egg
	Since the fall of
	Dien Bien Phu.

	We held on to our lives at that point
	like icicle-adorned handles of shopping carts
	outside during the last day of December
	or maybe the ankles of a panicked kid
	falling face first on hard tile
	broke and desperate for a pack of Marlboro Lights.

	This morning I caught them
	Against the headlands of rain
	Glowering in from the west;
	Half a hundred twinklings
	In the angry sky, a gust of somethings
	Grey against the greyness.