R J Dent

Rodney Matthews: Another Time, Another Place – by R J Dent

Palmistry by Christopher Ringrose - a review by R J Dent

Palmistry is the art of characterization and the foretelling of the future through the study of the palm of the hand. Christopher Ringrose’s 51-page volume of elegant poems named after this esoteric art is, like most enduring poetry, more concerned with the present and the past than it is with the future.

In Palmistry, Ringrose not only shows us his anthropological academic background, as is evident in his poems preoccupied with his personal mythology such as ‘To Jill’, ‘I Wanted You’ and ‘A Winter Sunday with the Children Aged Three and Five’, but also his gentler lyricism, as in ‘Modern Magi’. The collection also highlights his matter-of-fact, farmer-like bluntness, as in Ullswater in February’ and ‘A Farm in East Yorkshire, 1955’ and 'The September Hare’. The hare is a creature which is ‘Startled into leggy motion’ because ‘It knew we were coming/for some time’. Ringrose describes how the hare ‘waited for the right moment… then pushed those long brown limbs… and took off’. The poem is saturated with a palpable sense of the hare’s fear of man.

Sometimes a macabre and critical spirit haunts this latest collection of poems written by an Englishman who now lives in Australia. Australia has been a great source of inspiration for the poet, “I found it quite creative coming here,” he says. “Everything’s new.” The last point is particularly pertinent because Ringrose effortlessly adopts Australian English as the voice for some of the poems in Palmistry. One such poem is ‘Terra Nullius’:

    They’re wiping Bondi clean.

    The tractor hauls its silver rollers

    up and down at dawn

    from Icebergs to the rocks

    flipping cartons, cups and single

    thongs into its orange box.

    A daily scrub…

In ‘Terra Nullius’, the local, the specific and the particular all serve as metaphors for national and international historical, racial, political and cultural issues. To his credit, Ringrose handles these incendiary themes and this controversial subject delicately and carefully in a poem that is deceptively simple and unadorned.

Palmistry is Chris Ringrose’s first published poetry collection and beneath an appreciation of life’s variety and restless beauty there is a keen awareness of decay, fear and disintegration. Although it is never imitative, sometimes Ringrose’s poetic voice sounds like an amalgamation of Robert Frost, Les Murray and Ted Hughes. The poems in Palmistry are bleak, intense, but always beautiful.

The publisher’s blurb for Palmistry reads:

Christopher Ringrose’s elegant and sophisticated verse explores mysteries, joys, experiences as they unfurl over decades. These are gentle, explorative, contemplative, but always surprising poems which repay reading and re-reading. Palmistry is the record of life which no one ever predicts.

Product details:

Title: Palmistry

Author: Christopher Ringrose

Publisher: In Case of Emergency Press

Pages: 51

Publication Date: February 2019

Formats: Paperback and ebook (Kindle)

Available from:

https://www.amazon.in/Palmistry-ICOE-Press-Chapbooks-2018-ebook/dp/B07PCKWN9F

And for more of Chris Ringrose’s poetry, go to: www.cringrose.com

Palmistry by Christopher Ringrose

A review by R J Dent

Alcaeus goes home - copies of Alcaeus: Poems & Fragments (translated by R J Dent) are now in stock and on sale at the Pilot bookshop, the agora, Molyvos, Lesbos, Greece...

In the UK, the Poems & Fragments of Alcaeus can be purchased from the publisher, Circaidy Gregory Press:

FEAR #41 (February 2017)

Rodney Matthews - Another Time, Another Place, a cover feature article on the illustrator and artist Rodney Matthews, written by R J Dent.

Read the article here:

A review by Steve Atkinson

  In this outrageous collection of the weird and wonderful, R J Dent proves one thing beyond all possible doubt; ghosts do not just haunt the gloomy rooms and ancient buildings of old England, they also lurk menacingly among the dark cellars and corridors of the human mind. Contrary to myth, the spookiest places of all are to be found deep in our own brains.

Spectres here can ferment in a pile of compromising, disgusting photographs involving young boys – which a shocked yet loyal widow exorcises by the simple expedient of flushing them down the loo. Or in the deranged dreams of an egoist who watches so much daytime TV he lives the horror of becoming a quiz show host himself – with no audience but his own hyper-critical self. There's also the rather imperious, ex-military spectre who actually feels gratitude at finding his decapitated head!

  R J Dent knows that you don't have to delve very deeply into the human psyche before licentious sex crawls hungrily to the surface. My absolute favourite in this nightmare anthology is Mitzi and the Lion, chronicling a woman's clandestine, nightly visits to the safari park to lay down with her leonine lover. When she first disrobes for this improbable tryst it is both deeply disturbing and yet strangely moving.

  Gothiques & Fantastiques is a fascinating insight into the most sinister of all ghouls... the ones that lie hidden deep within us all, just waiting for a dark, stormy night when they can come screaming to the surface. Gothiques & Fantastiques is available at:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/GOTHIQUES-FANTASTIQUES-horror-fantasy-tales-ebook/dp/B00IKVOFGQ/ref=la_B0034Q3RD4_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409139302&sr=1-3

R J Dent is a poet, novelist, essayist and translator. His translations of key literary works include Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil, Lautréamont's The Songs of Maldoror and Alcaeus’ Poems & Fragments. His poetry collection, Moonstone Silhouettes, was published in 2009 and his dark fantasy/horror novel Myth was published in 2006. His non-fiction book is Sade: Sex and Death, a study of the Marquis de Sade and he has written essays and articles for FEAR, Philosophy Now, Acumen, amongst others.

Gothiques & Fantastiques is available at:

  https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gothiques-Fantastiques-horror-fantasy-tales-ebook/dp/B00IKVOFGQ/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

    Follow R J Dent at:

  Website: http://www.rjdent.com/

Wordpress: https://rjdent.wordpress.com/

tumblr: https://r-j-dent.tumblr.com/archive

twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/RJDent

facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rjdentwriter

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/rjdent69?feature=mhum#p/a/u/0/CmnYHWJqQK4

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/R.-J.-Dent/e/B0034Q3RD4/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_nty_author_2gf4mb19VD5NN

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._J._Dent

      Steve Atkinson is a former journalist and the author of Ghosts Who Google and Reflections in a Hubcap.

    Steve Atkinson’s original online review can be read at:

http://hobohackhaven.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/

Alcaeus in Zakynthos: Copies of my translation of Alcaeus' Poems & Fragments are on sale in the Plaisio bookstore, 34 Roma Alexandrou Street, Zante Town, 291 00, Zakynthos, Greece.

Alcaeus: Poems and Fragments is available at:

http://www.circaidygregory.co.uk/alcaeus.htm

and at:

REVIEW:

On the back cover of R J Dent’s book, Peter Levi is quoted as saying of Alcaeus

“His poetry smells of vine-leaves and the sea.”

It made me wonder what my own poetry smells of, wet dogs in a dry room maybe. The folk singer Ray Hearne once told me that poetry may be read out in ballet shoes or pit boots. I quoted this to poet Peter Sansom who said he always tried for tennis shoes. I mention this because the poems and fragments in this book are of the ballet shoes variety. This is not to say that they are slight and have no resonance, for example the poem that begins:

Let us drink! Why do we wait for the lamps? There is only a fraction of day left. Friends, take down the large decorated cups.

Reminds me of the Yorkshire ditty:

Beer! Beer! We want more Beer! Everyone is cheerin’ Get the chuffin’ beer in!

Alcaeus is under no illusions about drink

Wine, dear boy, and truth, for wine is a peep-hole into a man.

And later

…and if wine shackles his wits…

Ever wondered why imbibers become so loud?

It is almost a custom here on the mountain in the deep silence to make a huge din, a great noise.

Very Arthur Schopenhauer, who insisted that silence worries most people.

Alcaeus was born into an aristocratic family circa 625 BCE, and lived in Mytilene, the largest city on the Greek island of Lesbos. Mention Lesbos and one’s mind immediately turns to the “Violet-haired, pure, honey-smiling Sappho” as Alcaeus described her (according to Wikipedia). R J Dent remarks that Alcaeus’s poetry is often overshadowed by the literary reputation of Sappho, his fellow poet and compatriot.

The appendix thankfully has a glossary of people and places, essential for the reader’s attempt to understand the poems and fragments. It includes Onomacles, a Lesbian hermit. These were rum times indeed.

One of the great delights to be had in reading this book is that it harks back to a past world of gods and heroes, set in a typically Hellenic fact-value continuum, which we may contrast with the modern commonly held fact-value distinction that influences some modern poetry. Alcaeus writes

The cold wave carries Sisyphus along to the river bend.

Zeus and the blessed gods watch as you toil, calling down curses

while making yourself a ship which you will drag down to the sea.

It is my guess from the tone of the poem that Alcaeus might have written

“…and the other gods…” alluding to their callousness, if not for sounding disrespectful; gods of course are guiltless.

It is important to understand what this little gem of a book is about. It would be silly to read it in order to see how to write poetry. For that you would be better off subscribing to a modern poetry magazine listed on http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/

Alcaeus’s poems and fragments are lyrical songs, most of which are monodies; lyric poetry sung by a single performer, written in this case to be accompanied by the music of a lyre. Many of these poems and fragments are concerned with the politics and personal tenure of the times. He also writes about contemporary personalities, as well as love songs, drinking songs and hymns to various gods.

R J Dent’s book is quite a find. There is no other published translation of Alcaeus’s poems and fragments in existence. In many ways it reminds me of ‘The Blue and Brown Books’ compiled from notes made by the students of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Both contain fragments and aphorisms that continue to illuminate and delight.