Review - Paul Brookes - Wolf Eye / Wolf Eye Territory
This review covers Paul’s pamphlets Wolf Eye, published last year in A6 format, and Wolf Eye Territory, which has its launch event on June 7th in Doncaster.
Paul Brookes is a writer, local historian, genealogist, photographer, shop assistant and grandfather. He is editor of the Wombwell Rainbow interviews, reviews and poetic challenges, is the curator of webzine The Starbeck Orion, and has many published poems and several chapbooks. For more, go to www.thewombwellrainbow.com
In Wolf Eye, Paul Brookes gives us a set of imagistic poems pared to the bone. The natural themes and images are often turned towards the dark, the shadows, the uneasy. We are looking into the wolf’s eye, and we see these disturbing images reflected back.
From Wolf-Eye
Wolf eye howls, watches Meat
walk amongst high glittering cliffs
set with mirrors. This Meat avoided
at all costs. Wolf eye closes.
They certainly ask more questions than they answer - they challenge us to think about the world in a different, off-kilter way.
Gust Is Deaf, Hills Are Blind,
trees can’t walk properly,
Flowers twitch haphazardly.
Grass is mute, rivers are dumb.
Nature is differently abled.
The use of the title as the first line is a common device in this collection and in other Paul Brookes poems. It works very well in dragging us into the poem without any preconceptions of what is coming.
Often the images in each poem are linked, sometimes they appear to be disjointed, which adds to the overall sense of uneasiness and discomfort.
Words are repeated not just within the poems but across poems - eye, bone, gust, sky, clouds... this helps tie the collection together in a way that avoids us being lost in a bewildering array of images.
The Theme of Wolf Eye extends into Wolf Eye Territory. Paul Brookes’ collections just prior to Wolf Eye have been sonnet-heavy, and he continues to write unusual and carefully constructed sonnets (as can be seen in my webzine The Fig Tree issues 1 and 2). There are sonnets in Wolf Eye Territory but they fit seamlessly into a set of poems of similar length or shorter that have no formal structure.
The opening poem, Street Corner Eyes, repeats the words eye, bone, gust and cloud that run through the Wolf Eye collection. Nature is at the fore. In A Tree Is:
Conkers are droplets, a spiny splash
a castle, a dragon, a hand reaching,
shapes gust blown in the skies
of its branches.
I like this collection a lot and I will be reading A Rosary at the launch, which probably makes it my favourite.
A Rosary
of raindroplets down the window glass.
Contemplate the mystery within
each of these splattered dribbles.
…
Each holds a prayer for life,
a hymn to its origins, a curse
of flood, a blessing of light.
The final few poems are sonnets that track the River Dearne, including lots of nature references and referencing the heavy industry for which the river was once the heartbeat but that has largely vanished.
From Monk Bretton:
Kingfisher flash blue light,
green woodpecker tap, water vole paddle,
aquatic buttercup drawn by glide,
clear-felled forests for pit props when battle
stopped supplies woven into swirl and ply,
These poems seem to me a little softer, more rooted in the everyday (and with a touch of humour) than the ones in Wolf Eye - perhaps the sonnet form of many of them enable, or force, a litle more space. It’s a little easier to read and digest first or second time round than its predecessor. However there is still darkness in there, ribcages as aviaries, bones, skin and a skull around the house. The wolf may not be as visible, but it could be at your door.
Paul’s poems continue to challenge - they are inventive and carefully crafted and I look forward to his next collection in the autumn.
The wonderful cover art for both books was created by Jane Cornwell.
Wolf Eye was published in a limited edition of 40 copies by Red Ceilings Press. Wolf Eye Territory is published by Impspired and is available on Amazon.
Thankyou, Tim.