Gongoozler, Joshua Judson
Bad Betty Press, 2021 £6.00
Homage to family life and loss
The definition of ‘Gongoozler’ is given as ‘a watcher of canals, an idle spectator.’
Judson is a watcher in these carefully observed poems; he is no idle spectator. Instead, we see the narrator’s immersion amongst all he holds dear, both the people and the place. These are poems of deep affection, and provide a tender exploration of grief, sparingly told.
Urban life is rendered through concrete details, creating a backdrop for scenes of family interactions. ‘Tombstone’ begins:
I will come back
as junk at the bottom
of the canal —
bike, shopping trolley, microwave.
You will only be able to see me
on a cold day when the sun is shining
Several poems are titled ‘Gongoozler’. I was most moved by the third of these, which is about the narrator’s grandmother:
I try to remember my Grandma without the word dementia.
I try to walk with her out in the middle of the road, match her pace
[…]
But she turns left down the twitchel to the lock.
She steps out onto the canal and keeps walking.
Anyone who has seen a loved one changed by dementia knows this sense of their leaving while still living, the impotence of watching the person once known morph into a stranger. There is a moving straightforwardness of emotion in these poems, and it serves the material well.