Judy Brown, Loudness (Seren)I didn't even notice Judy Brown in the Identity Parade crowds last year and it took a while before her poem in Best British Poetry 2011 revealed itself as a favourite. This was not love at first sight.
But The Helicopter Visions in this year's anthology demands attention once it makes itself known. Judy Brown's effect is often through visual effects and
How the dawn breaks open, orange and fatal,
like a pomegranate landing on concrete.
is almost too good. You can imagine a creative writing group loving it like mad. But there's a deft use of phrase and cadence, an easy modulation between perspectives and a confident exploration of the strangeness highlighted in the book's epigram, 'a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost' (Thoreau, Walden).
As a debut volume, one can trace a bit of autobiography in the youthful readiness for booze, romantic encounter, travel and London. And there's a relationship or two that's done with, possibly acrimoniously. But, the other stand-out poem is from a similar but less elevated vantage point, not in a helicopter but cataloguing the detritus seen on top of bus shelters from the top deck of the bus.
As in The Helicopter Visions, Sky Burial brings her to the thought that she interpreting code in what she sees. But there only appears to be an enjoyment of gentle mystification, an appreciation of possible beauty when in fact, much of the book is set in ordinary places and times. She finds extraordinary things where others might find none.
In Dignity,
In the toilet you fall in love
with your own boozy sweetness.
I know. I know.
One day someone might get a degree for counting how many times the collection mentions 'water', whether as tears, a constituent part of the body, a drink or geographical feature. Then its significance might be set against the latent resentment that flickers under so many of the poems. It might or might not mean anything. Nothing, it seems, needs to mean anything these days but this is a memorable and telling collection that will keep many of us interested to see in which direction the difficult second album takes us.