I was glad to receive this collection for review, and it more than lives up to the promise of Burn's first collection, Be Feared, her magnificent debut in 2021. While the first gave the impression of a poet fiercely fighting her corner and stating her poetic vision, the second shows her heading into a richly pastured garden of Eden where the fruits of practice and observation are hers to gather and enjoy. Best of all, do it loud: "You must not whisper or mutter or skein but stand / With your poem loud and like a beacon in your hand." "Say it strong …"
These lines from the title poem pretty much outline the poet’s position and set up what the reader should expect over the next eighty pages or so, because Jane Burn does not exactly hold back with the talent and the fireworks. When you want language to be glorious, this is how it is - although the poems are difficult to quote from, because the effect depends on a cumulative build and the poets’ extreme ability to become other states. She climbs inside an eighteenth-century jar, observes her horse, identifies with a bear, sees everyday miracles, wonders about clouds: she goes to the Laing Art Gallery and concludes "the sun goes down alone / and doesn’t seem to mind," with the visit becoming a reflection on loneliness and belonging. In many ways, it is the act of poetry which brings her into belonging: time and again comes the reminder that poetry has "saved" her, including a personal account of the time when "that" teacher (the Miss Moss we all needed) opened the door into verse.
Sometimes, poems which are an expression of Language veer towards word-factory fallout and the kind of experimentation which other poets have to leave in their notebooks - for example, "metapoem / iteration (Dickinson, 568)," where a few more clues would have been helpful for the reader. But JB is a daring writer, and this is what we need in the poetry universe, even though the reader has to catch up fast. And I am not sure that the "Ocular Map" is different from other poets’ definitions of visual and concrete poems, although the Note on pp.94-96 would suggest it is so. Plenty of us out here are used to reading poems in alternative ways, Jane!
My main concern would be for the person who stands behind the poetry. I would hope that people are mindful of her development as she pours herself into the work. Why? Because the arts world is profligate in its disposal of artists who are genuinely different and/or original in some way, and she has already foregrounded her neurodiversity / class-based position from the word go. At what point does the appearance of neurodiversity in poetry travel beyond the reader and into the hall of mirrors where only the poet can find her way out? When will we concentrate on poets and poetry instead of the "class" they come from? Does it matter, as a way of pinning "work" onto a "person"? Burn writes the kind of poetry which excites critical debate, and I would hope it is for the right reasons.
I am sure The Apothecary will be on many peoples’ Books of the Year list already, and the titles alone are enough to sell it to readers - "Pantoum to Maud’s Absolutely Brilliant Door" being just one of the titles which make me want to read it; meanwhile the lines sometimes have the shock of cold water as the poet exhorts us to "Raise your voice Speak the clarity of ice." If your book budget is limited and you can’t buy many collections per year, make room for a Jane Burn.
Rennie Parker's latest collection is Balloons and Stripey Trousers (Shoestring, 2023). She was born in Leeds but lives in south Lincolnshire, and currently works for an FE college. Blogs here, daily nonsense on Twitter @rennieparker.
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