 |
Martin Malone
Mr. Willett's Summertime
February 2018. 34 pp. ISBN-13 978-3-901993-65-7
£6.00 (+ 1.50 p&p), €6.00 (+ 1.50 p&p), US$8.50 (+ 2.50 p&p)
“Martin Malone’s powerful First World War pamphlet begins with an invitation to ‘let us sit and reconstruct’ the soldiers’ experience,
‘the glass on the table / historian enough / to catch their words / and stop this rain.’ The poems which follow show themselves to be more
than up to the task. Wide-ranging and ambitious, the sequence shifts from lyric elegy to grounded monologue, as well-chosen details – a tin
of kippers, galoshes from Knightsbridge – conjure a world, allowing us to rub shoulders with these soldiers, this past. These are poems of
drama and discovery. Here is the Russian Women’s Battalion going over the top and ‘pushing on to the German trench.’ Here is a Wilfred Owen
away from the front line, his mind ‘cobbled with skulls of the lads you left behind.’ These fresh and vivid poems allow us to see anew, to
really share the reality of an experience which often seems simply unimaginable, and re-affirm the sense that this is a writer with a thrilling
commitment to seeing just what it is that poetry can do.”
Jonathan Edwards
“Martin Malone’s pamphlet is a timely, haunting look at war and remembrance, violence and moments of peace. Here is that good poetry –
both finely crafted and with something to say.”
Niall Campbell
“Mr. Willett’s Summertime is a poetic séance conjuring culture and personality during ‘the suicide of nations’. At once sardonic and elegiac,
Martin Malone moves the wheels of history with the blood of his empathy and craft.””
Dan O’Brien
|
Order copies of Mr. Willett’s Summertime via PayPal
Table of Contents
Excerpts from Mr. Willett’s Summertime
Trench Requisites
In my old soldier’s manner, I told him he’d soon
change his style, but he’d shrug and not listen.
So we share out the hamper left behind,
while another makes good his transition
from man to riven thing. On our minds,
the memory of a Christmas that waxed forever
over eighteen months of deadlock and shellfire,
as King & Country turns to Quand sera-ce fini?
and Intha Pink, once in-the-line, is growing old.
Yes, how we hate you, you cheerful young men
with your tinned kippers and today’s Daily Mail;
the periscope from Harrods, the warm new boots;
galoshes bought yesterday in Knightsbridge;
your wire-cutters and quail eggs from Aunt Grace,
and Father’s gift of an Aquascutum.
You’ll get used to the smell of blood and rum,
soon learn to see, beyond the metaphors of dawn,
the blue smoke from his bacon frying and know,
here at the suicide of nations, not to chance a look.
Learn fast and perhaps you might live to out-ghost
the silence of your name hallooed twice at roll call.
Mallory
Yours a fate of inescapable context:
that last climb and its slow ascent of lore
to our shared guess at the outcome.
Strachey’s ‘unimaginable English boy’
wasted as a teacher, whose friendliness
offends those Charterhouse lads bound
for Passchendaele. Here ahead of them,
you stand beside your howitzer, look out
across Picardy and long for mountains
where time is other, and eight years
pass like low cloud skimming you to
apotheosis. You glance at your watch
awaiting the hour. Back in England now
young Irvine’s still abed at Shrewsbury,
dreaming of the Second Step, Ruth is
home with Frances Clare and all’s fair
in Godalming. In the face of a westerly,
the pilot zone calls back today’s target.
A tug on the rope, the screaming glissade
and wire-cutting begins on the Somme.
Reviews of Mr. Willett’s Summertime
"Malone’s research has undoubtedly yielded a wealth of fascinating insights. The success of this pamphlet
is that he has managed to bring colour and heat to this material; to take, in places, what might be regarded
as the archaic language of ancestors and make it speak to our time. As a response, or series of responses, to
events of a century ago and to their continuing relevance, this is an affecting collection that stands as
testament to one poet’s commitment to, as far as possible, bring the past vividly to the present"
Roy Marshall, "Reviews for Spring 2018". The High Window (Spring 2018)
Click here to read the full review.
"Malone’s research has undoubtedly yielded a wealth of fascinating insights. The success of this pamphlet
is that he has managed to bring colour and heat to this material; to take, in places, what might be regarded
as the archaic language of ancestors and make it speak to our time. As a response, or series of responses, to
events of a century ago and to their continuing relevance, this is an affecting collection that stands as
testament to one poet’s commitment to, as far as possible, bring the past vividly to the present"
Wendy Klein, "Review". londongrip.co.uk (January 2018)
Click here to read the full review.
"This is a themed pamphlet, of 25 poems about and around the Great War. It opens with what might be construed as a disclaimer
and a warning, a poem called "Séance" which implies that at this distance, "occluded by one century/and the paradigms of myth",
professional historical methods have little more chance of getting at the truth of those times than does the tawdry sham that is a séance.
[...] The poems are more like torches, pointed into odd and sometimes unexpected corners to highlight whatever was going on
there at the time. [...] But for my money the poems in the voices of the less famous bring the physicality of the war most
vividly to life. [...] A lot of research has clearly gone into these poems, and despite the disclaimer in the first poem it
seems to me that the result is to shine a genuinely convincing and vivid light on those aspects of the time that he has chosen."
Sheenagh Pugh, "Review". sheenaghpugh.livejournal.com (12 May 2018)
Click here to read the full review.
"Martin Malone’s new sequence of poems is a reminder of what poetry can do in accomplished hands when it dissects national myth-making
(and all within 34 pages). In doing so, he’s achieved something that has eluded most other poets – he has taken that most ritualised and
appropriated of anniversaries, the 1914-18 war, and restored to it a critical bite. [...] Malone’s achievement is all the more vital in
that most other poets – confronted by the gravity of this anniversary – have deserted the field. He’s attacked it here authoritatively,
relishing the fight."
Neil Young, "Goodbye to all that". The Poets' Republic (26 May 2018)
Read more about Martin Malone
Send an e-mail to order this book