{"id":2239,"date":"2019-11-24T15:24:06","date_gmt":"2019-11-24T15:24:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2239"},"modified":"2019-11-24T15:24:06","modified_gmt":"2019-11-24T15:24:06","slug":"ian-humphreys-zebra-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2239","title":{"rendered":"Ian Humphrey’s Zebra – review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ian Humphreys\u2019 Zebra<\/em> has come out to a deluge of praise and it\u2019s easy to see why. Above all this book leaves you with the impression of his uninhibited zest for life, his high spirits, humour and resilience.\u00a0 Singing what it was to be gay and of mixed race in the eighties, he can briefly touch rueful, even bitter notes, but they\u2019re soon absorbed in the prevailing exuberance. This even applies to two elegies which I suspect may be for people who died of AIDs. The first of these \u2013 \u2018Clear-out\u2019 \u2013 is grim in its setting and prevailing imagery but celebrates the dead man\u2019s art in a way that makes it also a celebration of his courage and whole-heartedness \u2013<\/p>\n

……………………………………….<\/span>the removal man squelches<\/p>\n

…………………<\/span>down the path to the van face-hugging a huge red canvas.
\n…………………<\/span>Tommo\u2019s eyes burned with pride when he told me<\/p>\n

he\u2019d mixed in his own blood with the acrylic paint.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The poem ends with what strikes me as an implicit metaphor for independence and energetic self-affirmation in the face of adversity \u2013<\/p>\n

…………………………………………………………………<\/span>Under clay
\nskies, a child rumbles past, pulling his own pushchair.<\/p>\n

The other of these two elegies, the fine \u201cStickleback\u201d, expresses defiance in a more obvious way with its reference to a warrior\u2019s funeral, but makes it lyrically beautiful. After describing the pain of his subject\u2019s last two years Humphreys ends<\/p>\n

But today
\nI\u2019m with you on the beach
\nnear the old quarry. Sunrise<\/p>\n

\ntwists waves into flames, a warrior\u2019s pyre.
\nYou swim in light, dive
\ninto the salt-sting of morning.<\/p>\n

Admittedly death by AIDs and the shame it brought in the eighties form the theme of the book\u2019s last poem, \u2018Return of the discotheque dancers\u2019. Sadness at the sheer finality of death is sharpened by the thought that the people the poem addresses missed both the medical advances that would have saved their lives and the relative sexual enlightenment of our own times. My father used to say that \u2018too late\u2019 were the saddest words in the English language. It\u2019s fitting that such reflection should come at the end of the book. There, it counterpoints the prevailing exuberance without undermining it.<\/p>\n

Both the sadness and the celebration will have particular force for members of the gay community. However, we can all take pleasure in Humphreys\u2019 celebration of courage, meeting prejudice and adversity with glitter, humour and light, and can enjoy the exuberance of his language, the sharpness of his wit, his sensuous alertness, his gift for metaphor and the animation of his style. His writing seems to\u00a0 focus on verbs to an unusual degree and it\u2019s striking how often it\u2019s the verb that detonates the charge in his metaphors.<\/p>\n

Describing a woman in a train carriage:<\/p>\n

A woman in a striped a acrylic blouse
\n………….<\/span>Perfume-bombs me<\/p>\n

A man on the Rochdale Canal towpath carrying what at first seems to be an electric guitar:<\/p>\n

As he floats into focus, his guitar
\n………..<\/span>transmutes into a swan.<\/p>\n

A cow breaking out of her electric-fenced field (addressed as \u2018you\u2019):<\/p>\n

…….<\/span>the grass on the other side is emerald green
\nand you ease into the long grind of breakfast. Later,
\nslumped, restocked and flanked by horseflies, you wait
\nfor the gentle scratch of rain. Blink at a dry-stone wall.<\/p>\n

Here, description is mostly achieved by the past participles of verbs \u2013 \u201cslumped\u201d, \u201crestocked\u201d, \u201cflanked\u201d \u2013 and the nouns \u201cgrind\u201d and \u201cscratch\u201d are nouns referring to actions.<\/p>\n

Finally, a woman summoning a cab in New York:<\/p>\n

Outside P. J. Clarke\u2019s a woman\u2019s whistle
\nlassos a yellow cab, hoists it kerbside.<\/p>\n

Jean Sprackland, quoted on the back cover, says the material is often emotionally risky but that Humphreys\u2019 confidence with form enables him to control it. No doubt that comes into it, but I think the question of confidence goes deeper, that it reflects the poet\u2019s enviably strong and confident sense of who he is and what he thinks. This enables him to draw strength from the mixed heritage and sense of otherness that might have brought vulnerability and uncertainty to a different personality. I was struck by the deft humour and detachment with which he skewers the memory of a homophobic teacher:<\/p>\n

Mr Brigham assured us
\nhe had nothing against
\nhomosexuals except
\nthey stink of shit because
\nwhen you deal in shit
\nyou stink of shit. That
\nwas the first and only time
\na teacher at my school
\nacknowledged the existence
\nof gay people so I suppose
\nin that respect Mr Brigham
\nwas ahead of the curve.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to quote one other short poem, this time reflecting Humphreys\u2019 Chinese heritage, to illustrate his fine sense of comic timing and also what I think is a special gift of his position between cultures, the ability to shift adroitly between perspectives.<\/p>\n

Dim sum decorum<\/strong><\/p>\n

She who pours\u00a0 tea
\nfor her elders
\nwill see a thousand moons.<\/p>\n

He who takes
\nthe last prawn dumpling
\nwithout asking
\nthree times<\/em>
\nif anyone else wants it,
\nwill see stars.<\/p>\n

In short, I found Zebra<\/em> very easy to get into, moving, thought-provoking and at the same time full of sheer fun. It didn\u2019t seem to me that there were many lines in it that had been carved into the kind of memorable shape that makes them sing in the head, linger in the imagination and radiate\u00a0 a force beyond that of paraphrasable meaning but I thought most of its poems showed a fine sense of form and timing on the larger scale, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.<\/p>\n

Zebra<\/em>, by Ian Humphreys.\u00a39.99. Nine Arches Press. ISBN: 978-1911027706<\/p>\n

I would like to thank David Cooke for his permission to post this review, which appears in The High Window<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ian Humphreys\u2019 Zebra has come out to a deluge of praise and it\u2019s easy to see why. Above all this book leaves you with the impression of his uninhibited zest for life, his high spirits, humour and resilience.\u00a0 Singing what it was to be gay and of mixed race in the eighties, he can briefly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[146],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ian-humphreys"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2239"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2239"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2245,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2239\/revisions\/2245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}