Poetry review
By Jonathan Bay
Published by House of Three
Straight off the proverbial bat, I feel I ought to announce
my bias for Jonathan Bay’s work. We’re good friends, and we meet up almost
weekly to discuss poetry and drink expensive beer. That said, I don’t think
this is an over-exaggeration: Jonathan Bay is one of the finest poets writing
in Scotland today.
Let me unpack that a little before I get into the review of
this pamphlet. I have spend several years reading Jonathan’s poetry, and in one
sense it has a fatal flaw in terms of gaining public attention: it’s probably not immediately going to smack your
head against the concrete. It may not instantly appeal to poetry competition
judges, for that reason, too. Bay’s work is subtle and deceptively gentle, but
once you actually sit down and start to think it over, you realise you’ve
unearthed some truly outstanding, impactful and excellently-crafted poetry.
It’s bad science to start with the conclusion and then
follow up with the evidence, but that’s what I’m going to do. Bay’s work can
easily be overlooked, but that’s a big mistake, so I want you onboard before we
get going. Ready? Okay.
For me, this pamphlet is about re-examination and
transformation. Whether it’s through poems about travel, surgery, emotion or
family, Bay doesn’t shy away from the complexities of challenging topics. Nothing
is easy here, there are few “answers”, but there are explorations and questions.
It doesn’t ask you directly, it plants seeds in your head and waits for them to
grow. In that sense, this collection is outward looking but through an inward
lens. It’s overtly personal, but never to the degree that it feels
unapproachable. It’s alien without being alienating.
Jonathan is a Californian transman living in Scotland, so
links between travel and the body are particularly relevant to this collection.
In the opening poem, “Riding America”, we follow the narrator on a bike-rider
across the US:
Remember the feeling of straining metal
between your legs
Hopeless miles in sticky heat
my mind has forgotten who we were then
The body and mind, like the bike, has migrated. Taken as a
literal reading, we envisage a sweaty bike ride in the sun, but through another view of mind and body transformation, the poem takes on new potential: “straining
metal / between your legs” evokes surgical connotations. “Straining” and “hopeless
miles” also infer mental struggle and a feeling of futility, with the near-pleasure
(or perhaps the partial alleviation of psychological pressure) brought about by
a mind “[forgetting] who we were then”. Whilst the speaker suggests the mind “has
forgotten”, however, this truth is complicated by the plural address of “we” –
perhaps more than one rider, but perhaps more than one self. Is the old self
ever truly forgotten, even if we will the mind to forget them? This concept doesn’t
only apply to people who have undergone physical change, but to anyone who
feels they have changed (which is to say, everyone).
I could go on. In this briefest of sections, there are so
many layers to peel away. At times the poems are much more obviously visceral
and cause a near-physical reaction when reading them. In that way, Bay keeps us
on our toes. We predict a gentle complexity, only to be hit by something much sharper;
it cuts. In “Pap Smear” for example:
she couldn’t put the speculum
in and hold it
my degenerated vagina only
wanted to spit it out
We both felt badly
about the way my hole hurt
but I didn’t say a thing
how could you
To someone uninitiated to this world (and I expect to
others) this felt intrusive in many ways. I felt as though I was intruding on a
private procedure and reflection, and yet there are people (the nurse) present,
and the poem itself is a public document. The real kicker, however, is that
final line, isolated (which to me also implies something of the speaker). It
simultaneously evokes several questions, none of which is necessarily obvious or
absolute:
1) “how could you” say anything about the practical
problems faced by nurse and patient? That’s just how things are. There’s a
sense of acceptance here.
2) “how could you” do that to me? The patient might
ask of the nurse, or vice-versa.
3) “how could you” – a question potentially uttered
by those on the outside: how could you change your body? How could you go
through that? And so on, and so on…
There’s a sense of discomfort, intrusion, accusation,
acceptance, struggle, all in three short words. I bow to the master.
That’s not to say the pamphlet is always serious or always
so intense. There’s lightness, too, and though we might be swayed into reading
through a single lens, that shouldn’t be the case. The more you read these
poems, the more you take from them. They’re physical, emotionally poignant, asking
questions and forcing the reader to ask questions.
Poems such as “Support”, for example, in which the narrator
realises family support isn’t always the “big things” but also helping fill out
forms or helping to “do math / at the kitchen table / with the light dimming”
can, and perhaps should, be taken at face value.
This review could go on forever, so let’s draw to a close.
If you agree that poetry should challenge and affect us, I suggest
you check out Jonathan Bay’s work post-haste. His poetry is approachable but complex
and impactful, with layers which reveal themselves with time and patience. Whilst
the publication itself is a bit strange (three poets in one collection, but
none of the collections are titled) I whole-heartedly recommend the poems
therein.
Russell Jones
