{"id":316,"date":"2010-06-19T16:56:07","date_gmt":"2010-06-19T16:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=316"},"modified":"2014-02-11T22:48:07","modified_gmt":"2014-02-11T22:48:07","slug":"clay-by-mandy-coe-shoestring-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=316","title":{"rendered":"Clay by Mandy Coe. Shoestring Press"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Clay<\/em> is Mandy Coe\u2019s third collection for adults. What I loved most about it was – to borrow a phrase from one of Coe\u2019s own poems – how \u201csharp with life\u201d it is. One thing this means is putting the body at the centre of her writing, which she does with wonderfully uninhibited gusto:<\/p>\n

Light shakes out sheets
\nin billows, a lover\u2019s breasts and hips,
\nripples of flesh on a smacked arse.<\/p>\n

Using simple, precisely targeted syntax and diction, Coe flashes vivid images in front of our eyes, crams them into our hands, and makes us see and feel particular things in ways we\u2019ve never seen or felt them before. One poem starts<\/p>\n

SUNFLOWER SEX<\/p>\n

is loud. Here they are!
\nBarely dressed in tiny frills
\nas hollow stalks thrust them
\nwhooping into the sky.<\/p>\n

The whole poem (twelve short lines) effortlessly discharges a multitude of impressions and imaginary scenarios on the sunflowers\u2019 reckless arc from wild young sex to age and death, fusing the human and vegetal worlds, taking in the visionary madness and creativity of Van Gogh on the way. You could write pages on it.<\/p>\n

Oddity is part of the pleasure of reading Coe. Any good poet presents things from unusual angles but Coe does so with extraordinary glee. Some poems are completely fantastical, like the monologues of the ants in \u201cAnts in Zero Gravity\u201d or a ghost in \u201cSometimes It Occurs to Me That I Am Dead\u201d; the story of fossils coming to life in the brilliant \u201cBirth of the Fossils\u201d or the description of how people reacted \u201cWhen we found flowers could speak\u201d (another of my favourites in the volume). Others take up and pretend to take literally the travellers\u2019 tale of the lamb plants of the steppes, or the eighteenth century hoax by a woman who successfully convinced surgeons that she had given birth to rabbits.<\/p>\n

Yet this is an intensely grounded poetry. Coe loves the every day, and even her most fantastical poems are not ways of escaping reality but of re-entering it with fresh eyes. \u201cWhen Mary Tofts Gave Birth to Rabbits\u201d, for example, imagines that Mary\u2019s giving birth to a litter of rabbits was not a hoax. The poem is spoken by their stunned father. The bizarre circumstances throw into relief the ordinariness of his response. There\u2019s poker-faced humour in the situation but it reminds one what an earth shaking shock it is to hold a newborn child in one\u2019s arms for the first time, to feel how utterly one\u2019s world has changed and how irrelevant words and even one\u2019s feelings are in that moment.<\/p>\n

Though the book is full of energy and delight, Coe\u2019s embrace of life is shot through with the awareness of pain. Several poems involve a child\u2019s ambiguous feelings about living with and losing a loved and terrifying father. Coe has a stunning image for the child\u2019s fear that also expresses the father\u2019s power and charisma:<\/p>\n

most of the time I ran from your voice
\nas it flooded rooms like a searchlight.<\/p>\n

(This is from a review I wrote for Acumen 66 and I am grateful for the opportunity to repost it here.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Clay is Mandy Coe\u2019s third collection for adults. What I loved most about it was – to borrow a phrase from one of Coe\u2019s own poems – how \u201csharp with life\u201d it is. One thing this means is putting the body at the centre of her writing, which she does with wonderfully uninhibited gusto: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mandy-coe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316"}],"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=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1425,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions\/1425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}