This is the latest Holy & Intoxicated publication by UK poet John D Robinson. It combines his poetry with that of the London writer Joe Ridgwell. The title derives from Ridgwell’s poem The Lost Future In A Pair Of Blue Eyes in which he describes in mythic terms the arrival of a son.
The chapbook opens with a series of twenty interlocking vignettes by Joseph Ridgwell in which he poetically documents the rise and fall and the aftermath of a relationship with “Anais”. Asked recently as to whether his work was based on real events, Joe candidly replied, “As always, all my stuff is based on real events. I’m just not good at making shit up, ahahhah. Yeah Anais is an alias. Those poems focus on my relationship with the poet and novelist J, who is the mother of my child. We split a few years back, and some years needed to pass before I could write about that period of my life. The poems came as and when, some are new, some written a few years back.”
For the record, some earlier versions of Ridgwell’s poems originally appeared in Load the Guns: Blackheath Books 2009; A Child of the Jago: Kilog Press 2010 and Fire Island Pig Ear Press 2012.
In his contribution to The Lost Future In A Pair Of Blue Eyes, Ridgwell explores love in its many guises including; love at first sight (“When I Saw Her”), the exhilaration of young love (“On Waterloo Bridge” and “Angel Visions”), the stirrings of romance (“More Beautiful than the Night” and “Looking out over the Harbour of San Vicente”), desire (“Anais”), sexual love (“The Canal”), raging jealousy (“End of the Affair”), the birth of a child (“Miracle on Lordship Lane”), the attempts at reconciliation (“Scotland or No”), the disillusionment that comes with the collapse of love (“Days of Wine and Roses”), and interestingly, the will of the poet to pick himself up from the wreckage of his relationship and to start contemplating a new beginning (“Fare Thee Well”).
The writing is first person free verse, sensuous, layered and full of strikingly original images. Interestingly, Ridgwell often uses pathetic fallacy, favoured by the Romanic poets, in drawing parallels between how he feels and occurrences in the cosmos.
Here are two of Ridgwell’s poems from the chapbook. They will give you a clearer idea of his writing style and choice of subject matter:
Angel Visions
That damned night in old Soho
The French House, the Wheatsheaf and the Coach
Boozy underground poetry and Ouija
Which we escaped from
And fled across London Bridge
To Peckham’s nocturnal delights
South o the river
There we stopped in the Vale
For more drinks
And possessing a devil attitude
In the devil town
On the swayed walk home
We held each other tight to ward off demons and Ju-Ju
Until I pushed you inside the open gate of St John the Evangelist
Up against a thorny bush
Unsteady footing
And there under the gleam of a streetlamp
William Blake’s vision of angels
Shining down, down, down
And everything spun madly
And in the trees above, a heavenly host
Not seen round those sides
Or in Rye Lane
Since 1757.
Strange Day
Walking to Black Rocks from Crow Island
Thinking about the future
Or what remains of a life
Lived weirdly
On a crystal day
With the tide at its ebb
Is an otherworldly experience
Like walking on the surface of the moon
The sunlight so bright
Glaring
Burning away the remains of a sea haar
Distant people appear as if walking on air
The rocks themselves floating and swirling
Levitating above earth
Endless sands
Riddled by everylasting tides
No life here
As I climb to the top
And contemplate
A relationship in tatters
A confused bairn
A future alone
Away from Crow Island
Whose streets I’ll never walk again.
In the end, Ridgwell is resilient and reflective in describing the break down of a relationship which appeared at first full of promise: “Basically, I just wrote about that period of my life and the relationship. The relationship was complex, for many reasons, and it was tempestuous. One day I’ll meet a women, who is quiet, stable, and we’ll just get along fine with no dramas and live happily ever after. But hey, that would be boring, right?”
In John D Robinson’s contribution, he includes 14 of his latest poems, including 4 haiku. His poetry is usually first person, narrative in form and in this joint-chapbook, he continues to mine the depth of his working & underclass experiences and recollections. The writing is clear, honest and often brutally revealing. Robinson’s relationship with women (“The Scent”,“ A Key Moment” & “The Question”), his conversations with friends & relatives (“Neil And The Kitty Cat Scratch” and “The Pork Pie”), his view of himself as a poet (“Lit Talk” and especially “Lost Or Fucked-Over”) and as a man (“The Tough Guy” & “Dangerous”)- everything is spilt on the page without regret, or for any yearnings for sympathy, acceptance or success.
In his poem No Return, Robinson is characteristically playfully ironic:
NO RETURN
Crackling from the Sunday
radio came
“Now let us pray for the
broken hearted and the lost
souls of our world,
the alcoholics and the drug
addicts, the ghosts of our
towns and cities that have
wandered far from the
path of righteousness and
now walk the roads of
sin; let us pray that the
gates of heaven open up
for our brothers and
sisters, for these wretched
spirits let us pray”
after I had finished
rolling a joint of powerful
weed I felt thankful
and good that somebody
was sparring a little time
and a prayer for me
without expecting a return.
In Lost Or Fucked-Over, perhaps Robinson’s most powerful poem to date, he moves from his feelings as an artist to how he perceives how he & most of us are fucked over by the system. Robinson’s anger is genuine, how us ordinary folk, whether we want it or not, are “caught-up in a/ fucked-up way of/ living, the bullshit of/ ambition, money,/ property and power”:
LOST OR FUCKED-OVER
I don’t feel like a poet,
I’ve never felt like a poet,
I don’t know how that must
feel like,
most of the time I feel lost
or fucked-over, I feel
cheated and robbed,
maybe that’s how a poet
should feel,
I’m guessing most people
feel this way,
I don’t feel like a poet,
mostly I feel like an
asshole caught-up in a
fucked-up way of
living, the bullshit of
ambition, money,
property and power,
no one mentions
freedom these days;
I don’t feel like a poet
but an old man who still,
every morning,
awakes in temporary
awe that I’ve made it and
will have
another chance of
kicking the faces of the
faceless as they take
another day from me.
The Lost Future In A Pair Of Blue Eyes is a highly engaging and worthwhile book to read and written by two of the best writers in the alternative small press in the UK. The front cover is designed by the indefatigable efforts of the genius that is the Swedish artist Janne Karlsson.
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