'The aspirations of poverty' (Red Voices) - Jones's latest book of poetry
This review has been a long time coming, but now's the best moment to thoroughly recommend the latest in our Red Voices series by poet, playwright and inspirational workshop-conductor Patrick Jones from Blackwood.
The best reading at the Imp in Merthyr for ages was Patrick's launch of this volume : funny, original (spraying us with a smell at one stage) and totally passionate as ever.
What makes this book so important is the way he draws from his family, upbringing and also people encountered while doing workshops.
If his poetry was politically charged and angry before this, then he's added other dimensions to make it more intense.
At present, he's working on his third CD of spoken word and music alongside Julian Gardner and calling themselves Black Triangle. This promises to be fascinating.
His wife Jane did the photo on the cover of this chapbook which, with ring-binders, gives the book a hand-made feel that Patrick wanted.
The image could have graced an early Manics' album.
The book opens with a typically honest and topical poem 'letterboxviewworld', the title itself suggesting what it describes. It gives a feminist/ humanist perspective on the subjugation of Muslim women and perfectly illustrates how he can combine Dylan Thomas' soundscapes with Beat beboppery -
' sky diminished to the next step
a stapled page from a xeroxed atlas
a tonguetied topography'
'My Garden, My Teacher' imagines four contrasting gardens, each representing a different aspect of humanity , from the 'Religious' which is full of constraints, to the 'Gay' which celebrates fertility and joy.
'It will take more than a grave to bury you' is a song-like poem and the idea was to release the song which James Dean Bradfield ( of the Manic Street Preachers) created from it alongside the book. Pity it never happened.
It is an ode to the mining community of Senghenydd and the callous response of pit-owners, who disclaimed responsibility for the appalling disaster there in October 1913 -
' like candles burning alone
their voices are what brings us home'
'Geronimo in Tonypandy' is a prime example of Jones's highly sensitive work which led directly to his very successful National Theatre of Wales production 'Before I Leave' (based on a Merthyr choir who all suffer from Alzheimer's).
It directly addresses an old man , Dennis, in a Residential Home and effectively takes his own words as well, making it like a poem-documentary -
' do you remember the spinning top
the miners' strike
the shining marble
the penny dab'
Poems about his father and mother are equally touching, full of affection with memories intertwining.
In 'Still life 1 : shoes beneath hospital bed' there's a sad sense of a strong man brought down. We begin with memories of his father actively polishing shoes and end with the poet having to tie his dad's laces. The poem is filmic in its movement from past to present, but not entirely pessimistic as father and son still 'talk joke laugh'.
In 'demonise or die' Jones shows he's lost none of his powerful rage for a system which punishes the poor just because they happen to have an extra room in their Council houses ( the notorious bedroom tax).
He doesn't hold back, yet we know that the weakest are under attack, even though they sometimes fight back -
' AS STARBUCKS AND AMAZON FIND NEW WAYS TO FALL BENEATH THE RADAR
THE MOST VULNERABLE, THE SICK, THE POOR
ARE TARGETED BY IDS, THE MORAL CRUSADER
ALSO KNOWN AS THE SOCIETAL RAPER'
I love the succession of rhymes used in 'For sale', his diatribe on the House of Lords. His weapon, his barbed pen -
' bloated
ermine coated
velvet moated
under worked
not voted '
All the urgency of rap!
In an era when so much literature ignores the struggles of working-class people, Jones is their champion, yet also a highly individual voice whose atheist socialist republicanism is never confined by party political ideology.
There's much music in his work and a commitment to causes which many in the literary establishment would dismiss as crude.
That is because in Cymru, too much of our poetry has shifted away from communities and into the rather rarified world of creative writing departments.
Patrick is a poet of cause, community and Coed Duon and, in this book especially, one of character and concern.
TO SING
for Patrick Jones
Everyone needs to sing some time,
maybe not from the roof-tops
or the perch of a fence.
Especially the trodden down
so low there seems
no way to rise and breathe.
A single song from bush or trees
unseen by the crowds,
yet carried far to attentive ears.
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