Kate Miller, The Observances (Carcanet)In The Guardian recently, John Dugdale described this book as 'the oddball entry' on the Costa Prize poetry shortlist.
In a time in which poets are prized for their difference, individuality and 'personal voice', where pluralism has been realized and what poets have in common is that they have nothing in common, it's hard to say whether being identified as 'oddball' is a good thing or not and furthermore whether, as such, it places the book in question among the orthodox or the unorthodox. There are still plenty of self-styled renegades who regard themselves as 'against the grain', 'avant garde' and different but what are they different from if the centre has not been able to hold and there is no established hegemony to be contrary to. Those poets who aspire to maverick experimental status are more likely to be following a tradition now over a hundred years old with lots of arcane standards of its own that have been 'old hat' for longer than they realize. Along with so many other assumptions that were challenged years ago, perhaps the distinction between mainstream and avant garde has, inconveniently for them, also been erased and put them out of a job.
There's nothing remotely oddball about Kate Miller's poetry and I doubt if there was intended to be. She is identifiably herself, one of many, many different poets writing today and perfectly orthodox, or unorthodox, because it is doubtful if either term means anything at all.
It took me a little while to find my way into the poems. They are not inconsequential but I found them inconclusive. Eventually, I found the poems in the fourth and final section, Enter the Sea, a number of which concern Portsmouth and I cottoned on to the lines in House at Sea,
I watch the dark
green creature claw the bottom step
and mount. Eyes and 'o's of diesel,
winking, double on the swell.
and saw the water. The poetry is about seeing but one mustn't take poetry at face value and I began to look at the poems to see in what ways they were also 'observances' of ceremony, rites or rituals. And there we are, on page 33, a poem sub-titled 'a ritual observed'. So, similarly, without wanting to move into a masterclass on close reading or an undergraduate workshop, perhaps Enter the Sea is both a command and a stage direction and the title, House at Sea, can be read from opposite angles. But poetry is best left to have its way without too much such explication.
In From the Gods at Oz Adana, Pas de deux,
Insects hush
as bats begin to net the sky.
The poem has a quiet reverence and is one of many where one becomes aware of its music. For poetry ostensibly about visual effects and abstract ideas, it is written with subtle rhythm and the pleasure of the sound the words make together is as important as the pictures they make.
In The Sea is Midwife to the Shore,
the sea smoothes,
fondles chubby stones, croons over each
peculiar stone and treats it
as its own
newborn, immense and gleaming,
nursed on the stretched belly of the beach.
and then, in Nelson's Last Walk, both the students on and lecturers who taught the Stylistics and Criticism course at Lancaster circa 1979 would have been thrilled to count the 's' sounds in the last three lines to forensically make their case for assonance although, all these decades later, I'm now allowed to enjoy it for what it is and that it just happened like that.
The Observances repays some re-reading. It's not an instant hit but is poetry with subtle top notes and stays long in the appreciating. It has probably been worked on and crafted over time, it is deeply considered rather than spontaneous and thus requires some attention but time thus spent is likely to be re-paid. It certainly warrants more than being labelled 'oddball', which, even if some might take that as a compliment, doesn't sound like one to me. The Costa Poetry list also includes Don Paterson, Neil Rollinson and Andrew McMillan and I prefer my own list (elsewhere here recently) but it's possible that the virtues of Kate Miller's poems could persuade their judges to put it ahead of Paterson's entirely different knowing cool.