Performance poet, Ann Wilson, is a regular on the north-west literature circuit and her collection, Synesthetic (2008) includes poems which will be well known to those who have followed her work. Divided in five parts, the book is, in Wilson’s own words, “a collection of poetry inspired by the colours of emotions and sounds.”
The first section, ‘Deep Blue’, starts off at pace, with Pull You In and Different Platforms expressing the hectic, bewildering intensity of love and longing. These are contrasted with shorter, quieter pieces such as Implicit, which deals with the contradictory hopes and fears of someone in love – “with you I reached out further / or I kept my distance / I held too tightly / or I let go too easily”, and the mysterious Smoking – “each night an apparition / she spirals grey, sighs mellow haze”.
The much more succinct, controlled poems of ‘Red’, the second section, are a deft switch in mood and tone. Here, love is not only chaotic but dangerous and painful, as the first few lines of The Natural Disaster suggest – “My lover is a forest fire / I pine for burning skin, / Blisters scream / ‘Come back to me’” A much darker tone is set up, with everyday objects and habits suddenly heavy with meaning, as in the opening of Drying Up – “Now it hangs on the back of the kitchen door / colours almost washed out / representations of scenic holiday hot spots faded / like those vivid dreams.” In Betrayal, also, bitter emotions are conveyed through seemingly trivial acts – “I’ve started taking sugar in my tea…My car careers / I forget who is steering.”
These pieces rooted in a recognisably ‘real’ world, are, for me at least, much stronger than the more surreal, speculative, esoteric poems, though that’s not to say such poems are without merit; Perspective in the second section and Intrinsic in the fifth beautifully crystallise relationships, the participants of which are ironically vague. Who the ‘she’, the ‘they’ and even the ‘I’ are in Perspective is anyone’s guess, though a childlike fondness is evident – “She thinks I’m her mermaid / we swim to Neverland…I give her my hand / she draws circles in my palm…” The intrigue of reading this poem is that we can almost, but not quite, see.
I agree with Raymond Carver when he said that “a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing- a sunset or an old shoe- in absolute and simple amazement.” In other words, the trick is to make the mundane meaningful. Wilson does this very well, for example in Vinyl, which is not only comic nostalgia about the mid-80s, with its references to ‘Jive Bunny’, ‘chunky stereo headphones’, and ‘Marsh’s Sass and hedgehog crisps’, but a rather sad tale of lost love. Similarly, The Resting Bench becomes a symbol of loneliness and regret perhaps, the ‘old haunt’ of a ‘throwing lady’ who, despite her “smiles at children / words with familiar neighbours” is clearly only “drifting through the days.”
The final section, Green, begins with one of the best poems in the collection, Intrinsic. Its simplicity and sharp description are both very powerful. Like Perspective, the details of the relationship being examined are indistinct, but the feelings are not: “An alphabet game in my bath / I pick out words / spell your name on the tiles / study it like a map.” In a complete contrast in tone, the poem which ends section five and thus the whole collection, It’s All A Ride, is well- placed, acting as a kind of summary of Wilson’s thoughts about life, love and writing. What could so easily topple into cliché – “Let there be fairgrounds…” – manages to shift from startling image to startling image, the narrator asking that in this imagined utopia “dealers cut candy floss”, that “wonder waltzers spin away censorship” and that “there always be a thank you sign / in the light at the end of each tunnel.”. It is an excellent ending to the collection: vibrant, original and uplifting.
There is a difference, I think, between poetry written for the page and poetry written for the voice, (though of course there is often a crossover between the two) and as such it is always going to be difficult to confine poems written for live performance to paper, reliant as they are on the poet’s unique voice for their meaning and power. So it’s a shame that a few – and only a few – in the collection don’t quite have the same resonance or dynamism out of the context of a live reading. Though, this should by no means dissuade you from reading Wilson’s eclectic, inventive and surprising collection. On the contrary, you should buy the book and see her read. This is a poet versatile enough to write for both forms with equal expertise.
Synesthetic is published by Hamlet on Crusade and recordings of live performances can be found at www.annthepoet.com and www.myspace.com/annthepoet2