The English Civil War Part 2 - Keith Chandler

narration offers drive and energy to Chandler's poetry

pp. 92

Publisher: Peterloo Poets, 2008

Chandler’s 2008 collection is a good blend of tragic and comic poetry. The long title poem imagines a modern civil war sometime in the future, bombarding us with images of the violence and devastation that seems to have no end, yet which is above all violently funny. As a man decapitates his wife with ‘one of his baked bean tins / packed with Semtex’, and Eton holds out ‘against a murderous mob / for two more weeks’; as ‘the Scots … / caused trouble where they could around the edge’, and ‘the Irish as usual caught the worst of it, / side dish of horrors, as an afterthought’; as all of this takes place, Kylie, ‘going strong at 60’, is kept ‘off the front page’.

The story of the war is told by an old man over dinner, with the occasional interjection from the frame narrative, such as, ‘(Pass the soup, will you? Same again, I’m afraid - / home made potato … Well, that’s how it is.)’ which really highlights the drive and energy that narration offers to Chandler’s poetry, and which in this instance makes the war appear to be thoroughly silly, told as it is in such a hurry between mouthfuls of soup and amongst the prosaic clattering of cutlery.

The next poem, a long piece in eleven parts called ‘Postcards From Auschwitz’, expertly twists our expectations of the collection, taking us into the concentration camps of the Second World War thick with human bodies and experiences. Reading this piece from our perspective, knowing the true nature of the events, we can see that behind these seemingly innocent ‘postcards’ there is an insidious presence lurking, one which taints the naiveté of such statements as ‘Here is the table / for our postcards. All may be well.’ written by the hand of an optimistic prisoner.

   

The shorter, more autobiographical pieces under the section ‘Looking Myself Up’ are a kind of breather, though not in the sense of the poet’s inventiveness and style, which never slacken, but in terms of their understatement and ease of exploration. It is as though the poet has taken an audible breath, and where the opening two pieces are taut and intensely crafted, these take on an air of the wistful musings one afternoon of a man coming to terms, as we all are, with himself and with other people (usually weird and wonderful people, such as in ‘The Tattoed Man’, ‘At the Cleaners’, and ‘Martin’).

Thickly bracketing these poems on the other side of the book are two more long pieces. ‘The Gap’, based on the reminiscences of a Mr Tom Solomon of the deadly floods in Sea Palling, Norfolk in 1953, is an intensely descriptive piece which once again attests to the narrative energy Chandler infuses into his poetry. It is an immensely climactic poem, the best and most absorbing of the collection, followed, fittingly, by ‘And Now For My Final Trick’,  a clever, self-reflexive trick of a poem about Harry Houdini’s wish to expose spiritualism by failing his final trick – to escape from death.

A book suitable for both readers and non-readers of poetry, because of its fascinating subject matter and the accessible expression of the poet’s ideas.