Review by Jonathan Taylor of "Wish: New & Selected Poems" by Maggie Brookes-Butt

In his ‘Ode on Melancholy,’ John Keats famously suggests that ‘Ay, in the very temple of Delight / Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine.’ And perhaps it works the other way round too: in the temple of Melancholy, there’s a shrine to Delight. 

Maggie Brookes-Butt’s life-affirming collection, Wish: New & Selected Poems, encompasses both alternatives: her poems are sometimes temples of Delight which house shrines to ‘Veil’d Melancholy,’ sometimes temples of political Melancholy, which open up to reveal Delight, Joy, Beauty. As many have pointed out, contemporary poetry is – as far as it’s possible to generalise – not always on home ground when it comes to delight or happiness or joy. Joy is all-too-often left to birthday card rhymes, seen as naïve in an age of end-game capitalism, political polarisation and climate disaster. 

The poems in Wish, though, are far from naïve: this is a grown-up, fierce, brave joy that can thrive in the teeth of political realism. In the opening sequence, Brookes-Butt stages imaginary conversations with her infant granddaughter, which are both celebrations of shared love, and honest appraisals of the future the latter has been born into. In the poem ‘Realities,’ for instance, she writes:

                    The whine of chainsaws
          plagues the forests, while glaciers silently drip. Missiles
          land on another hospital, another school. And the people 
          we love go away and we never see them again …

          But let us not go there today. Better by far to hold my hand
          and look for bears in the woods, mermaids diving
          from the rocks, Father Christmas landing on the roof, 
          dance the hokey-cokey and sing “that’s what it’s all about.”

This is what Brookes-Butt’s poems do so beautifully: they dance the hokey-cokey, find the bears in the woods and mermaids on the rocks, while still facing up to the ‘realities’ of the modern world. A dawn chorus, for example, is ‘a technicolour / torrent-of-sound, reminding, insisting, in spite / of everything – there is joy in the world, / there is so much joy.’ Even in a Second World War prison camp, the downtrodden inmates find ‘unexpected peace’ in an allotment, where they ‘grow gifts / of vegetables or flowers to give on visit day.’

Like the inmates, Brookes-Butt's poems often find 'unexpected peace,' miniature utopias, in a wider context of turbulence and degeneration. Hers is not an escapist joy, though, that turns away from horror. Rather, it’s the kind of visionary and radical joy that Friedrich Schiller and Ludwig van Beethoven might have understood – a joy that challenges present and future ‘Realities.’ Even if, in that particular poem, the poet ultimately declares ‘let us not go there today’ to her grandchild, the implication is that such realities will have to be faced in the future. And the collection as a whole holds onto a radical and joyful optimism for that future, in spite of fear, in spite of melancholy, ‘in spite of everything’:

For now leave
fear about the drowning and scorching of your world
to me. I have enough for both of us. When I’m too
voiceless to protest, too old to carry a placard, 
I’ll hand it to you like a baton or perhaps a fiery
sword, and you can run in my stead. We will defy
the politicians with lies for hair, shout down
fearfulness itself with tongues of flame. 

About the reviewer
Jonathan Taylor is director of Everybody's Reviewing. His most recent book is the memoir A Physical Education: On Bullying, Discipline & Other Lessons (Goldsmiths, 2024). He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. His website is here. 

Review by Sara Read of "The Prisoner's Wife" by Maggie Brookes

If this fascinating story was not based on a true account given to the author by a survivor of a Second World War workcamp, it would be scarcely believable. The tale is that of the intelligent and resourceful Izabela, a twenty-year-old Czech woman, who falls for an English prisoner and arranges, at great risk, a clandestine marriage for them. Instead of honeymoon, the couple barely have time to consummate their match before heading off on the run from the Nazis. 

Before leaving her mother’s farm, Lizzy disguises herself as a boy soldier, cropping her hair and taking some of her brother’s clothes. This decision ultimately saves her life, for when she is arrested with husband Bill, the Nazis accept without question that Izzy is a young soldier named Algernon Cousins, who is now mute through shellshock. Brookes ably conveys the terror that Izzy feels at every moment, expecting her secret to be uncovered at the mandatory delousing and showers, or when her period arrives. The consequence of this would be certain death. Yet, instead of being unmasked, the story shows how the men of Izzy and Bill’s hut rally round to protect her, forming a shield while she washes out her bloodied rags, and reminding her to feign shaving when the guards are around.  

One of the reasons the story is so compelling is the sophisticated narrative techniques Brookes employs. Izzy’s story is told through personal narration, which encourages the reader to invest in her character, inviting our sympathy. The chapters in which Izzy speaks are alternated with third person narration of the story from the point of view of husband Bill, or from the external narrator’s perspective. The way Izzy copes with her forced silence, her lice-infestations and extreme malnourishment, the latter leading to amenorrhoea within a couple of months, and yet somehow holds her own with the men she is incarcerated alongside is one of hope. Maggie Brookes’ meticulously researched narrative offers a real and vivid insight into life in a prisoner of war workcamp, where death is an almost mundane fact of life. What it reveals is the power of having a reason to go on, to find the strength to persevere when the odds are stacked so very highly against you.  

About the reviewer
Sara Read's debut novel, a work of historical fiction called The Gossips' Choice was published in 2020. She is a lecturer in English at Loughborough University, and her personal website is sararead.co.uk or tweet her @saralread.