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 Book
Title: The English Sweats
Author:
James
Brookes
Publisher: Pighog Press
Date: 17 December 2009
Reviewer: Katie Metcalfe
The English Sweats
by James Brookes
is a striking book. Beautifully presented and entirely
surprising. Each poem wraps the reader in cotton and bramble
bushes. It is immediately apparent by the title and the post
card correspondence decorated cover, as well as the
thought-provoking image of a young soldier in front of a
rickety garden fence, that Brookes is going to tackle large,
serious questions of life. His distinctive, well constructed
poems prompt the reader, repeatedly, to think and question
the idea of the self and belonging, in times gone by and in
today’s contemporary society.
Brookes is very much in
control of his subjects from which he has sourced his
inspiration; Roman Britain, Medieval Sussex and the WWII,
including fictionalized stories from his own family, which
had, according to the book’s notes, ‘been reported to me
first, second or third hand.’ Not once does he lose his
focus in this exceptional first collection, ensuring a
note-worthy depth of complexity, and a continual confidence
of tone, rhythm and voice. There is apprehension, drama and
human interaction, and Brookes knows just how to manipulate
these aspects to convey the emotive elements in his work. He
makes the most of the richness of the English language,
concentrating it to successfully create just the right
atmosphere. He has carefully considered the shape of each
poem, each line break and syllable. His interpretation of
historical events is convincing and utterly engaging.
Louis Simpson said: ‘The
aim of writing is to convey a feeling – by creating an
illusion...giving the reader the impression that he is
witnessing something real, that he is passing through an
experience.’ And this is precisely what Brookes has
achieved. He starts with a poem that tightens the throat,
and that grip isn’t loosened as you progress through the
34-page book. The reader is the bee, the poems the honey
that gradually immerse the lemon fizz coloured wings. These
poems picture, they question, they challenge.
The Guinea Pig Club
a poem about a drinking club formed by WWII patients, who
were in hospital receiving reconstructive plastic surgery,
stirs a whole manner of familiar and unfamiliar emotions;
That gaze, following days
as though each were a dream;
One eye’s bleary
watercolour cobalt.
Where
as the language in Two Seasons for the Trees-Exe
Line falls off the tongue like meat off the bone;
Growing mere graft,
myrrh,
more roads, grist and
rage
Imagery
in his exquisitely crafted and sinister poem Badger
leaves the reader swallowing with a dry throat.
Alive, gone tumour-mad,
fleeing the cull
of its own acute senses;
tight muzzle
knowing its own tagged
conservation zone
for every groped root and
whiff of fox-piss
and that last feral part
that must shunt
hard-shoulder for
tubercular lebensraum.
As does
the poem Mink, with just as much efficiency.
Down the flooded season,
down through swept
grasses to the puckered
banks, the mink slipped
and was gone, without so
much a splash.
The
shivers are plentiful throughout the compilation, where
every word has worked for its place. Brookes undoubtedly
creates a convincing historical vision, within this
collection, which is rich, warm and deeply intellectual. It
deserves time.
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