Memory, magic, and the art of reinvention

Introduction to Cloud Care - Laura Theis

maybe i’ll call gillian anderson - Rhian Elizabeth

(All dirt on book covers, reader’s own)

I bought these collections from Broken Sleep Books a few months ago, during a phase when writing at least one review a week seemed like a task I had more than enough energy for (seriously, what was I thinking?!). But even though this review is not incredibly timely, I have been reading and re-reading them the whole while, and they have remained grouped together in my mind, despite their apparent differences in style.

In fact, I think they have more in common than first appears. Both have gorgeous covers (typical of Broken Sleep), with striking, glossy images against a deep blue background. Both are from poets with many accolades and awards to their name. Both are tender and vulnerable, but while maybe i’ll call gillian anderson half-hides its vulnerability within a spiny lobster shell, Introduction to Cloud Care lets its layers of softness and ethereality cloak a deeper toughness and resilience.

Both collections also deal in humour and more than a little dash of the surreal, providing moments of levity that underscore the more serious ones.

My favourite poem from maybe i’ll call gillian anderson is lobster. I first became aware of this poem after it was Commended in The Poet’s Workshop Prize. It is a masterclass in the kind of studied nonchalance that smuggles in with it, a real emotional heft:

“and i can see from your

instagram posts that you

are happy now and have

found someone who probably

tells you exactly what the soul

looks like every night in

exquisite detail while i

knock my pincers futilely

against the glass.”

What I especially note about this poem is the way the line breaks feel almost apologetic, with a kind of falling intonation that makes it feel as though the speaker is always on the verge of trailing off without finishing what they really wanted to say.

This kind of intimate, natural pattern of speech is present throughout the poems, which formally move between stanzas, dense blocks of text, and everything in between, making good use of space to carry the reader through mood-shifts and perspectives. Regret is everywhere, as is its opposite, relief at having made it through. Many of the poems deal with (young) motherhood, and in particular the emptiness left behind when an adult child moves out of home. The collection is bookended with two moving poems dealing with this huge adjustment, from the titular poem with its daughter flying off “into the vast, calling sky of her life”, to the humour and acceptance of i didn’t call gillian anderson:

“i didn’t call gillian anderson in the end

because i learned a long time ago that

beautiful women aren’t the solution

to your problems and because, you know,

i don’t have her fucking phone number.”

Elsewhere, the utter bewilderment of motherhood and suddenly having to ‘adult’ when you feel anything but, is so accurately depicted as to feel almost painful:

and what did i teach you, in the end?

“i guess i always felt more

like the teenage babysitter,

dubiously holding down

the fort until the parents

returned

except i was the mother,

and no one was coming

to drive me

home.”

I also adore the poem camden, its combination of teenage chatter and daydreams with brave little asides, like “susanna is still selling her body,” and “i don’t know it yet / but in less than eighteen months’ time i will be a mother! / i am fifteen years old”. It reminds me of my own teenage self, wishing I could go to Camden to follow bands like Rachel Stamp around.

If I could draw another thread between Elizabeth’s and Theis’ work, it’s a sense of how we continue to be haunted by our past selves, but also a desire for reinvention. As Elizabeth tells us, in the most pleasing of things, “memory is a contemptuous old bitch”.

Introduction to Cloud Care also has several poems touching on both.

THREE IN TRANSLATION is one such example:

“old feelings aren’t supposed to be reheated

like leftover takeaway

I say none of us are the same

people we were back then

we each dream

in different languages now”

There is also something interesting going on with language here, and the fact that Theis writes in her second language gives us something extra, in how she is able to stand slightly apart from the English and use those gaps to probe for different meanings.

In A SMALL HAUNTING, the subject of haunting is used to explore the speaker’s sense of self – of trying to perhaps pin themselves down into something “less moonlike / less translucent”. There is a strand of whimsy running through Theis’ work, a feeling that we are grasping at strands of something (perhaps the clouds of the collection’s title) that are always on the verge of floating away. But although whimsy can sometimes end up feeling a little contrived and sugary, here it is underpinned with something denser and, at times, darker and sadder..

A LESSON IN ROSEWOOD is a tender conversation with a “non-existent daughter”, who reminds us all that sadness “is meant to be /audible to those around you / that it should be / a summons”.

Equally, in the last poem, TRUTH BOMB, we are taken back to the land of the speaker’s childhood – the land of “dark forests/ grimm siblings”:

“our endings don’t mention happiness

instead our folk tales sign off this way:

and if they managed not to die

they’re still knocking about

somewhere to this day”

Dark fairytales, magic and transformation. These are threads with which more personal reflections are also woven. In the prose poem I WONDER HOW OVID DEALT WITH THIS, a series of gloriously surreal happenings are put to use to explore the process of writing a book and, I suspect, writing a self. There are giant balloons, miniature leopards and an elaborate dress to wear to the ball. The feeling of revelling in playfulness is really captivating. There is a sense of the poet-as-magician, conjuring meaning from disparate words and images. In a similar vein, I enjoyed VOLARY, where the speaker literally takes on magical powers:

“I have known for a while now

that I am in control of the birds

yes you have me to thank for the

dawn chorus delay

but don’t thank me yet

I am also responsible

for the black and white streaks

of pigeon poop on your window”

I enjoyed the humour of this piece, which is the penultimate poem of the collection. I also think it shows the subtle movement towards confidence and an acceptance of one’s own power in the world, that to me the span of the collection embodies.

These collections are inventive, funny and profound and I would recommend them both.

Broken Sleep books are also open for pamphlet submissions until 30th November.