Jordie Albiston

The M in these poems is not from Fritz Lang (‘When out of grace in Peter Lorre’s eyes’?) or the James Bond franchise (‘If gin and vermouth stirred not shaken are’?), but is, as the back cover blurb tells us in a manner ominously reminiscent of the labels in contemporary art exhibitions, ‘emblematic of recurrence and precipitousness’.

There are at least three Ms: ‘me’, Marsi and em. Marsi, the acknowledgements page informs us, was the poet’s maternal grandmother, whose diary, kept for a month in 1959, provides the basis for 12 of the book’s 54 sonnets. Em is Emily Skinner, Jordie’s paternal great-great-grandmother, whose memoir lies behind another four of them. I found the use of these sources fascinating. Perhaps this kind of familial translation is a common poetic practice. It’s certainly an interesting one, and here the Marsi sonnets in particular provide a kind of rootedness. They tend to observe metrical and rhyming conventions, not strictly, but more so than the ‘me’ poems, and the quiet intelligence they bring to the concerns of a 50s housewife demonstrate Albiston’s range marvellously.
There’s a huge variety in the other poems, includings quite a bit that seems to be just for fun as in ‘methinx (i)’: ’2moro 2moro & 2moro / goes slo frm day 2 day’. Katherine Mansfield scores a sonnet. There are a number entitled ‘mural’ that mourn the passing of verbal graffiti. Some seem to embody a very contemporary feeling of derangement. And so on.

I ended up being completely won over.… (meer)