Heard, Unheard, Overheard, Bugged

Arcadian Rustbelt: The Second Generation of British Underground Poetry, edited by Andrew Duncan and John Goodby (Waterloo Press, 2024)

A wildcard who breaches its ‘self-set’ parameters, the poet at the heart of this anthology ‘died before it reached print’. Born in an arcadian rustbelt of abandoned, rat-infested war-time Nissen huts in the commandeered grounds of a disused rectory, Paul Green (1947–2023) is the alternative poets’ ‘alternative poet’. The village of Marholm, near Peterborough, is a few miles from Helpston, home of John Clare. Green’s affinity goes deeper than their ‘shared indigence’: his e-lipogrammatic text, Communicator, also shares Clare’s spiritual destitution and ability to distil the uncanny from next to nothing: ‘My writing is about a man who was, or is still dying’.

A collection of intellectual hymns entitled Songs for Speaking to the Sky takes up the theme:

Is it the
awe, or a
danger, of
dying that
fits its
intrusion
against a rich
esteem?

The second-letter acrostic and the subliminal pun (‘aurora’) are typical devices, but my favourite (© Green?) is the collapsing text. The extract here from A Thousand Dead Butterflies begins:

Eventually, darkness directs and removes into nature’s glistening emptiness. Veins of light; veined emptinesses are made into dark’s details, even as the high bird yaws, undeveloped, there, in life’s intimate states. Imitating nature, ghost’s twitch, hanging everywhere, in roofs, tree roots, and graves. Each deviant idol effects solitude, effects false faces, effects cold’s trap. If vipers evolve, nature everts, spilling snakes randomly.

Eve’s powers locate and create; everyone should feed, ...