"The Europeans" by David Clarke (Nine Arches Press, 2019)

Poems from Magma, Strix, etc. The source material's partly from the media and reference books.

I'm not that keen on themed collections especially on contemporary themes. But I was impressed by David Clarke's previous collection, my kids are bilingual (Italian - one of them now lives in Sweden), so this book interested me.

It starts well with "Invitation" which begins with "Meet me in the lobby of the Hotel Europa", with some recognisable characters, though there are some strange details and the ending is "And if we've ever cause to quit the Hotel Europa,/ let us not be consumed by recrimination/ and regret. Call it a dream,/ a happy accident. If you must, a lie.", which goes beyond observation. The next poem, "Letter in March", has an ababccdd rhyme scheme. It's more low key, more disappointing. There's more formalism later - "In the Snug" is a loose villanelle, "To a Mellotron" is abcdbefgh abcdbefgh, "To a stately home" uses terza rima, etc.

There are a few flat poems around p.30. I don't understand "Auden at Kirchstetten", though I know something of Auden's later years. "Sugar town" puzzles me.

Poems are addressed to pubs, stately homes, villages, TV, and phoneboxes ("I inhaled your reek of ash and piss ... untwisted your tarnished flex, flicked the squeaky flap for change". We see England at its most distinctive. I wasn't especially taken by any poem as a whole, though there are many appealing fragments. Here are a few -

• In blank verse "An Exchange" recounts an exchange visit - "The final BBQ was underdone,/ of course, but then some rebel spiked those beers/ that left us gassy on the coach and queasy/ lurching from Zeebrugge's quay. And England/ loomed, a salty headache in the dawn"
• "When the winter came, the Europeans were retreated/ into forests. People were wolves or wolves/ were people. These matters were increasingly unclear." ("The Europeans")
• "You could still put your finger// into the bullet holes in the masonry, just as a violin started/ up in that apartment over the café. The Europeans/ had much to say of poetry and much silence to say it into." ("The Europeans")
• "You knew that glamorous angst/ of sin-soaked quays and modernist salons, those anti-/ heroes tracing sweat-pricked lips with a brush of thumb" (p.15)
• "No doubt, I'm not the first to search the city/ for some sign, to scan its past in celluloid/ for that café where I may meet the guide// who's dodged me all my waking life -/ even while a surgeon elsewhere rubs/ his weary eyes, holds my x-rays to the light" (p.16)
• "the spinning punctuation of/ your fruit machines that trilled, mesmeric in the gloom/ between a first necked pint and each man's lonesome trudge// for home " (p.18)
• "At night/ their spires are styluses/ that scratch a dirge from heaven's/ whirling acetate" (p.25)

Typo on p.46 - "I am a solider"

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Other reviews

• Ed Garvey-Long (If the Hotel is the poet’s metaphor for the European community, efficient, interesting and liberal, the Pub is poet’s metaphor for Englishness, isolated, bigoted, intoxicated and divorced from reality. Alongside Pubs, the rain is a consistent theme and an easy shorthand for a lot of English experience. ... in exploring this big ideas and the anger surrounding them, I felt the poems themselves lacked an emotional engagement, outside of the anger that runs through the collection. There were a handful of personal moments, but overall the book was about exploring these large questions about Englishness and Europeanness, ultimately though enjoyable, I feel the collection could have done more to explore the poet’s personal connection with the subject matter.)
• Neil Fulwood (‘Letter to George Gordon Byron’ is a showstopper, ... ‘The Vision of Albion' [] is the poem that actually does close The Europeans and Clarke foregoes the earlier howl of furious protest for something quieter, deeper, more insistent; a perfect conclusion to a collection that doesn’t put a foot wrong.)
• Carol Rumens (The final station of the cross, Leeds Central, has a particularly brilliant opening line, with its hard-punching Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: “Saw that bloke from that band you liked” and that almost physically cruel rhyme, “liked” and “spiked”. The quatrain ends with a gentler cadence, and a repetition of sounds (“eternal return”) that is like a fading spell. The return ticket expires. Places are seen for the last time. Relationships end. As ever, the poet chooses candour over consolation.)
• Anna Lewis (For all its sharp observations, the poetry is warm and playful in tone, its ambition to understand rather than accuse)