"The attitudes" by Katie Griffiths (Nine Arches Press, 2021)

Poems from Poetry Review (including a 2nd prizewinner in the National Poetry Competition - Do not indulge indigo).

The first poem, "And in our idleness we compare hands", makes me want to read on. 2 alternating voices each have 4 stanzas. "He says" begins the stanzas of the exorcist. The other voice responds obliquely to the previous stanza.

A footnote to "Nine sort-of-truths" says it's "an attempt at a unitet, favourite of Mariana Nesbitt who describes the form as "the fundamental opposition of cloudburst to roof ridge". Made up of disparate statements acting alone "with no coercion", the unitet provides a turn between each line, a constant mind-the-gap, an unexpected Götterdämmerung ... perfectly suited to discomfort in discovery" - an explanation (or poem) that might easily tempt me to dump the book already. Many of the other poems are rather like this one, looking too much like word salad for my liking. Here's the start and finish of a poem.

Scargazer (I keep saying) she must tell a different story Once upon a time, she says, Scar was a slow transfixing. Scar scattered trails, openings. Scanty Scar. Skilful Scar. Scary Scar. [...] (I keep asking) aren't Scar's dues paid, each penny a capitulation? No, no, no - she says. Can't you see the grace of Scar? Running a crack through the urn that wants your name.

I guess the title alludes to "stargazer". "a slow transfixing" makes little sense to me. Who is I? her? you? If I deleted some lines and replaced "Scar" by (say) "Susan", I'd like it more, though even then I'd replace the final line's "your" by "her". A sacrifice of disjointedness for the sake of the reader wouldn't really be a sacrifice at all.

"Relative Values - Me and Consciousness" begins by introducing the 2 voices (Me, an artist in naive ceramics, lives in a 1920s terrace and loves to play pontoon. Consciousness, controversially, has never had to survive on fixed wages. Their relationship can be described as off and on). Then each voice presents a loose sonnet that uses assonance.

"you are bible and not much thumbed" is more coherent. I hope it's not just for that reason that I like it. "Purgatory" (18 short centred lines) has an "xA" rhyme-scheme. But why is "exploratory" underlined? "Dough must not enter the body (vi)" is in rhyming couplets. "snow is mutiny" has one poem framed inside another. "Baddendum" has a footnote connected to the word "snow" saying "snow, as you know, is mutiny". "She holds her body to ransom" (p.43) works well as a line. Lines like "Or hardens at night, tough as dirt./ How it holds intent like extent/ and by that, how it holds hope,/ spread like a mat" (p.44) puzzle me without provoking curiosity. I think I understand "#PowerToPardonMyself 2". I like "Biography". "S'Index" is indeed an index to the poems with entries like "Oar, sticking in of 18, 57"

There are 2 pages of notes at the end - not very useful. Whimsical I suppose.

All in all, no lack of visual structure variety. The vocabulary is extensive, idiom-rich. The poems are mostly beyond me. Some poems are indeed unitets. Others, like "Biography", have a solid spine restraining the wandering imagery. Another restraining pattern is the cathechism.

Other reviews

• Alex Josephy (Almost every poem tangles with big topics – life, death, belief, bodies and souls; the book is full of ghosts, saints, angels, St Teresa’s tambourine, celebrants and versions of a (Christian) god. ... the poet’s use of wordplay, puns and word jokes [] often seem to have been the starting point for a poem.)
• Gloriana Orlando (A recurring theme in the collection, so much so that the author dedicates to it a series of six poems with the same title, ‘Dough must not not enter the body’, are eating disorders.)