There are journeys undertaken in these poems – external and interior – but they offer no clear impression of destination or completion. That is not the purpose. What matters is the context and setting – the earth and all its essential elements and facets, a sense of place created by the river, the woods – always the woods which ‘hide as much as cover’ – the land with all its produce, smells, sounds, sights and history – so much history. There is a slight sense of narrative but it is fragmentary, non-linear and piecemeal with the observations and perceptions of one who is a bystander, an outsider.
The poems begin on a path in a wood with a linguistic game – the points of a path, the play of a path – and then there is a sequence ‘Six consecutive walks to the sluices’ where each poem is concerned with light and its effect on the environment. The sequence begins with a slanted January light where the grass is ‘bereft of colour’ except for the verge close to the Stour. The skies are grey and ‘light thins and peters/sideways’ bringing a sense of the solitary. In this set of poems we have the first glimpse of the ‘twin world’, a parallel world, that is ‘beneath the surface’ and which flickers throughout the collection. Bodies here are deprived of ‘minerals and sunlight’, there is a mood of disruption and a horizon edged ‘with digger and saw’. Soon there are ‘shrivelled berries, lost woods’ and rooks that scavenge ‘in grit and gravel’. Tarmac is ’like a bruise’. This is a mysterious, atmospheric environment with its ‘faded whiteness’ and ‘cold sufferance’, a setting where the ‘invisible and unknown drives/the force onwards through essential links/in and out of focus’ – all this against a disturbing backround of a track marked with potholes and incessant sounds of diesel, the smell of urine and oil.
An important aspect of Interiors is a sense of the past – the continuous past – an impression of ‘going back in time’.(‘And Added Sunlight Bursts’). This is perfectly realised in ‘Notes from the Minutes’ based on an account of the meeting of the Sturminster Newton Heritage Trust held in September 2019. Here the truth of history, written by the winners,‘becomes slippery’, accounts of slaughter and bloodshed take on a tone of indifference – was it eleven or twelve men killed in the river meadow in 1650? It’s of little matter for they are only numbers. Likewise, 4,000-5,000 men could not have been present in Sturminster Newton on 3 July 1645 because there would not have been sufficient space. This in spite of the fact there seem to have been ‘divers slain and wounded’ and much suffering and a childrens’ rhyme was never going to be enough to ‘ward off despair’.
A similar sequence is ‘The Art of Memory’. This, with its undercurrent of irony and bitter contempt, is one of my favourite pieces in Interiors. The reader is taken on a tour of a wealthy and grand Stately Home and the sequence is written in language appropriate to that of a tour guide who directs visitors to the architectural features and artefacts that should be observed and admired. ‘Please look up’ directs the voice. No matter that ‘underfoot’ are the skeletons ‘of those who fought for apple rights,’ or that the Colonnade Room is haunted by ‘the cries of a distraught woman.’ This whole colonial edifice is constructed on the profits of the slave trade and ‘the discernible whiff of foundry.’ Hard-hitting and brilliant writing.
There are many more poems in the first three sections of this masterly collection but I wanted to leave space to enjoy and discuss the title sequence called ‘Interiors’. It is written in a series of vignettes and poems and the style is fragmentary, elusive and tantalisingly surreal as the reader tries to vain to clutch at any ‘meaning’ or narrative. There is an enigmatic ‘he’ who wanders through many of the pieces but his appearances are inconsistent. There is mention of a wife, of a girl friend, several women – they are faceless and nameless. At times the setting appears realistic – a cricket pitch, a railway track, a blackbird – the world is that of lockdown and there are references to political figures such as Matt Hancock, Dominic Cummings, Michael Gove. There is humour but also murder and menace.
David Caddy has produced a superb collection in ‘Interiors and Other Poems’, one that poets have been waiting and hoping for. There is so much more to say than is possible in a short review – any review. Best if you read and take time pondering it all for yourself. I promise you, it will be worth it.
Mandy Pannett. 8th June 2023
Reblogged this on The Wombwell Rainbow.