the Pop-Up Book of Invasions, Fiona Farrell, (Auckland University Press, 2007) ISBN 978-1-86940-388-1

Bernard Gadd

This collection was written while Farrell held the 2006 Rathcoola Writers' Residency in Ireland, from which her forebears had migrated. Farrell tells us that "The Book of Invasions" - Lebor Gábala Érenn -, collated in the 16th century, is a mythic history of "the discovery of Ireland following the creation" by its successive ‘invaders'. The best of these poems in her book - nearly half of the 51 - capture what Farrell indicates are the qualities of the "Book ...": fantasy, the mythic, the surreal mingled with exactness of fact. It makes for an enticing and fascinating kind of poetry with something of the vigour and imaginativeness of early Modernist poets. But fundamentally, as Farrell observes, the collection as a whole is a response to being in ancestral Ireland and, at times, looking over the landscape with the ancient Irish version of the Aboriginal Dreamtime in mind

This is actually a 75 page (of 94) book of poems ... the rest are notes. Farrell sensibly comments that "Poems should stand by themselves" but can't resist passing on information about the inspiration or setting of individual poems. I ignored these except for the poem subtitled a translation of "The Lament of the Nun of Beare" to learn that it is based on a literal English version of the ancient Irish and suggests something of the original's form. Farrell in this poem portrays woman lamenting not only old age but finding herself, after a youth of being powerful in the pagan world, just another old woman imprisoned in a nunnery of a misogynistic church:

"My body is fearful
of this Son of God
and the judgement
he'll make when I'm
under the sod."

'The Hag of Beare' offers a creation myth from those pagan days of the landscape of one locality:

"Squat in a rocky field
Each wrinkle laced with
gold coin begging favours.

Old rock, blown in
molten from this air

Old woman from whose
apron these mountains
tumbled like fresh eggs."

Who could resist the depiction of ancient Celtic splendour and squalor in "Gold"?

"How they must have shone,
barefoot on stone, their ear
lobes pierced to hold these
golden boxes with their rattle
of golden peas"

It's by no means all ancient history which Farrell sparkles into life. "Crop" with its lists of the magnificent names of kinds of potatoes deals with the famine:

"On the last day
they swell. They
seem plump and
well. Then the
belly splits. They
burst. Then they
are tossed out."

as are the people who depended on them. There are one or two sharp jabs at the people and economics which have allowed the famine and other appalling things to happen. I think 'Politics and economics' is worth quoting in full as a model to all us poets of poetically disciplined rage:

"It's all politics, isn't
it? This patch of rough
ground where 9000
lie buried like spuds.

That's politics.

And this: the act of
writing. A hundred
years ago, these
fingers held a sacking
needle. My lungs
choked on jute.
Dead at 50. And a
needle in my hand,
not this sharp pen.

That's economics."

Farrell's' stanzas may appear a little strange on the page to readers new to them ... lines often end in unimportant words: the, of, a. It's not that she's trying to create lines of a particular size or quantity of syllables, it's the strong cadence which is important, and short lines are often important to that ... the anger in the poem above could be smothered by the words of longer lines. She quite often employs repetitions of words or thoughts or phrases and I think these are a reminder of the ancient prose and poems of Farrell's sources, and in the nature of such devices, they may work well or less so.

There is a sense in some poems and some lines of a sense of obligation to produce enough poems for a collection, and one or poems are very slight. Occasionally the metaphors and personifications are over-used or even cliché: "tussocks tossed/their tangled hair", "cows sing/their canticles". and at times the artifice is a shade obvious.

But when all is said and done this is another strong contribution to our kiwi body of poetry which speaks to us of our past with bravura, skill and passion.

I just couldn't resist adding to this review my own bumbling effort inspired by this collection with the observation that it's the sign of good collection if it can fertilize poetry in other minds:

an Irish stroll

you step off the path and you're among them ...
five tons of earth won't hold a one of them in,
or rock slabs, corbel walls, ash sealed in a pot

they pace the length of their burial:
heroines, half gods, rulers of kingdoms small
as dairy farms, saints, judges, singers,
and they're talking soon as you're spotted -
though you can't make a syllable out

             you pass by or through them wondering
            if you miss something could re-
            jig the you in your mind

 

 

 

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