Review by Peter Raynard of "The Remaining Men" by Martin Figura

The word that kept coming to mind when reading The Remaining Men was generosity. Figura writes about many lives: his own, of course, which would make for an interesting film, not just because of the death of his mother by his father, and its impact on him and his siblings, but also the soldiers, workers, and NHS staff, who are contrasted with our leading Prime Ministers, and their many follies.

There can’t be many poets who were once soldiers, and there is a certain irony in Figura being a post-war child who joins the army; there’s always a conflict somewhere (Suez, Falklands, Iraq, etc.). Figura shows how the army is often the only avenue for working-class men and women to ‘see the world’ and are often ignored in the history books.

          After School came the coastal erosion of self
          as to what is on offer. His grandfather’s
          medal ribbons all lined up straight by the pull

          of the weight

He also writes about the impact on one’s identity of leaving a birthplace, travelling abroad, living elsewhere in the UK, but being still marked by the place you were born:

          Ask where I’m from, and I’ll say Liverpool
          in my woolly Northern accent, knowing we’d left
          for a better life when I was only two

          We were only ever visiting after that
          and I have no right to feel so proud

Personal and political history runs through the collection in a linear narrative form but is wide ranging in the characters it portrays. All of this is complemented by a series of black and white pictures. Figura is also a photographer and has a book This Man’s Army about his young life in the service.

The Remaining Men will make you cry, make you angry, and make you laugh in all the right places. ‘The Mower’ is a standout gem in this respect (think Burt Lancaster’s The Swimmer as an enraged man ripping through neighbours’ gardens on his motorised lawnmower). The generosity of this collection is most poignant in the poem ‘My Name is Mercy’ about an NHS nurse, 

          If you can hear me, squeeze my hand.
          today is the nineteenth of January, 
          it is difficult, I understand.

Figura understands the importance of these people very well, and how unvalued they are by politicians who are supposed to lead us, and for that we must thank his generosity and their service.

About the reviewer
Peter Raynard is a poet, who writes prose and edits Proletarian Poetry: Poems of Working-class Lives. His latest collection is Manland (Nine Arches Press, 2022). He has a poetry pamphlet, after William Hogarth, and academic essay on the poetry of Fred Voss and Martin Hayes, forthcoming in 2024.

Review by Kate Durban of "My Name is Mercy" by Martin Figura

Martin Figura’s new collection was created as a project at Salisbury NHS foundation trust. These powerful poems offer a unique insight and perspective into the life of a hospital, and its inhabitants, during the pandemic. They convey the impact of Covid-19 on patients, families and staff in telling detail, resonant metaphors and poetic eloquence. The poems give us a moving glimpse of personal perspectives with great honesty and poignancy.

The collection opens with a poem about the journey to work in "Morning," which describes the stark emptiness of streets against the menace of the hospital chimneys. This evocation of place amplifies the collection. There is a sense of different worlds: the pettiness of people fighting over toilet rolls against the daily sacrifice of those battling Covid, patients and staff alike.

The experience of the illness itself is devastatingly captured in "Mother’s Day": "each deep breath coughed, the retching blue lit trip," and the fear brought by hallucinations in "Fever." There is death, but recovery too, reflected in the return of appetite: "delicious want, a little mash and gravy."

We see the experience of the health workers caring for the sick. In "Protection," the hot claustrophobia of PPE is a tempest, which soaks uniforms and leaves "faces run with rain." In "Night Shift," someone’s reflection is like an astronaut adrift from the world, in a universe of flickering monitors, once again conveying a sense of other worldliness. There is the raw grief of an end-of-life nurse who cuts short her maternity leave to come back to work and copes with seven deaths in a day. Everywhere there seems to be profound sickness, isolation and grief.

And yet even at the heart of the conflict, hope shines through these poems. There is a great sense of optimism and strength in the theme of teamwork. The poem "Notes Left Behind for a Newbie" offers encouragement by a team bound together like a raft. The perspective of staff in a variety of roles is important because it reminds us that doctors and nurses are not the only people who work in hospitals. We hear about the chaplain who ministers where he can in "the emptying out of anger or bedpans." There is the voice of the unseen pathologist in the lab and there is the care for a member of staff who has succumbed to the infection - "one of us," who expresses gratitude for "this family, these friends, this work." We hear of kindnesses - the holding of hands and the talk of home and the joy of online connections. And at the end there is the hope of new life in the Christmas day birth of Ethan. 

Martin Figura’s collection is a mighty accomplishment and by reading it I have been educated, moved and inspired.

About the reviewer

Kate Durban is an MA Creative Writing graduate from the University of Leicester and a part-time Cancer Wellbeing Nurse at Peterborough City Hospital. She lives in rural Northamptonshire with her husband Philip and two dogs.