Review by Peter Raynard of "After the Rites and Sandwiches" by Kathy Pimlott

 

Kathy Pimlott’s heart-breaking pamphlet, After the Rites and Sandwiches, portrays the impact of her husband’s sudden death from falling down the stairs of their home. In the aftermath, the reaction and readjustment is immediate and ever-present.

In an early poem, "No shock advised," short, punchy lines put you under no illusion as to the enormity of the event.

          It’s cruel work
         To kneel down
         and hunch over
         a so-familiar body at the foot of the stairs

But even then, when the defibrillator says, "no shock advised" and it’s apparent that there is nothing to be done, "still the sweet mad hopeful brain insists it will be okay."

The pamphlet is both a portrayal of grief and biography of a marriage. Tears become the episodic outpouring of emotion, almost carrying the weight of a seizure: "It’s impossible to foretell what will provoke tears, the sort that well up and tip over while you hold onto the kitchen sink waiting for them to subside."

Grief is also full of surprises, one of which is guilt: 

         Forgive me, I’ve laughed,
         glided lightly round garden centres, sipped fizzy wine
         with friends, sorted out edge pieces of puzzles.

Grief may not have feathers, but it does have a long tail; for although her husband is gone his presence remains, in objects, memories, as well as his ashes, and knowing what to do with them. In "Death Admin I," "Your demise constitutes a quarter off council tax, removal of a vote you seldom cast." Then in "Death Admin II," when collecting his ashes, 

        It shouldn’t be a surprise, the weight, the quantity.
        Not knowing what to expect, I take a pink rucksack, 
        carry you again, all down Holborn on my back.

Pimlott beautifully crafts the poems, with a matter-of-factness laced with incisive metaphors, which detract from the possibility of being overly maudlin. 

There is also dark humour as she almost parodies self-help, in titles such as "How to be A Widow," "Death Admin I & II," and in the final poem, "Coda: Tips on avoiding the offered consolations of Religion and Therapy": "If it’s Religion, it’ll spot you, even when you’re crouched low behind the credenza," or: "Therapy requires acuter acting skills. Better pretend you’re a dog (a Dalmatian, the least intellectual)." Also in the poem, "What I do with you now you’re dead," Pimlott writes: "in a laughing panic, [I] dumped a quarter of your ashes and ran away, the illicit thrill exactly what you would have wanted."

After the Rites and Sandwiches is a stunning biography of a marriage and its aftershock, that will stay in the reader’s memory long after the book is laid to rest.

About the reviewer

Peter Raynard is an independent researcher, poet and editor of Proletarian Poetry. His three books of poetry are: Precarious (Smokestack, 2018), The Combination: a poetic coupling of the Communist Manifesto (Culture Matters,2018), Manland (Nine Arches Press, 2022). A debut pamphlet (a heroic crown of sonnets), The Harlot and the Rake: poems after William Hogarth, was published by Culture Matters in September 2024.

You can read more about After the Rites and Sandwiches by Kathy Pimlott on Creative Writing at Leicester here.