A mesh of mess and neatness
This poet is a master of formal craft. She gifts us a sequence of twenty-five fine untitled sonnets all about this workaday area of North London — down at the bottom of the hill from the glamour of Highgate. The enclosure of the form almost mirrors the physicality of Archway — a geographical hub that holds the tube station for the surrounding areas and is somewhere Londoners often just pass through. This ‘hub’ nature is beautifully captured by the sonnet on page 9, about a spilt litre of paint at a bus stop:
and flattening out in every direction slowly
like a concrete dust sheet crossed with streaks,
a random sample of our many footsteps
The detail of the everyday is captured in close detail: it reminded me of a John Clare poem. The formal nature of the work contrasts pleasingly with its subjects and colloquial, accessible language. The poems cover everything from fly tipping to laundry, music practice to puddles. Even the London habit of leaving unwanted things out for others is captured beautifully, on page 18:
cheap willow-pattern rip-offs left to take
on someone’s mossy low front-garden wall
litter the pavement, now, in shards of blue.
The sound of her automatic bathroom fan captures the poet’s imagination enough to produce a sonnet that manages to travel — taking in, on its way, bad dreams and death. ‘A little motor drives the bathroom fan’, starts this poem on page 24; and it concludes:
From somewhere, dust that rises as it falls
like breath behind the plaster in the walls.
And the sound of a violin player doing her Brahms practice (on page 19) induces both recollection of family life with younger children, and a reminder of the diverse soundscape of London life:
impatient for her practice to begin,
fifths on open strings beside the window
then straight into it over a neighbour’s reggae,
Beethoven and Brahms all afternoon
This is a diverse collection of beautiful urban observations all perfectly packaged in sonnet form: an absorbing sequence.