Dissonances, Nigel McLoughlin
Bluechrome, 2007
An engaging read, Nigel McLoughlin’s fourth collection is
Dissonances. Throughout its four diverse parts, these poems reach the reader on a sensory level, examining their subjects in microscopic detail, rendering even the most seemingly uninteresting facets of human experience infinitely fascinating. They open the reader’s eyes to pockets of beauty in the mundane that are surprising to discover yet instantly familiar.
Though disparate in their forms and approaches, the thread that holds these poems together is a strong involvement in the study of nature, human nature and the forces that cause them to harmonise, clash in discord and intervolve.
Dedicated to his two sons,
Dissonances reads like a poetic photograph album for their benefit, showing in vivid colour and amazing clarity, pictures of the world today which are sometimes general but often touchingly personal. And then there’s the occasional sepia-toned photograph; an ancient family resemblance, familiar but unknown; a tie to the past that highlights similarities and differences between that time and this and shows the evolution of civilisation. Poems such as ‘A Hill Farmer Speaks’, ‘Crosses’ and ‘Cailleach’ ache with love born of habit juxtaposed with the necessary forward movement of life.
McLoughlin unabashedly celebrates his absolute love of nature and the hour before “petrol-stink / and the shrink of people diminishing into a rush” (‘Chorus’) and expresses regret for the modern world’s disregard for tradition. These sentiments send ripples throughout most of
Dissonances.
Poems such as ‘Hunger’ and ‘Fragment’ demonstrate the extreme end of McLoughlin’s apparent intention to make these poems really belong to the reader. Their open-to-interpretation approach makes them as accessible or as obscure as the reader wishes them to be. But what really makes this collection sparkle and come to life is Mcloughlin’s frequent switching of nouns and adjectives into verbs. Phrases such as “midwinter gnarls and mists / as the poet stares” (‘Crab Apples’) are bound to find a permanent home in the memory.
The third part of
Dissonances is Shrapnel. It is, both poetically and visually, a nightmare of fragmented images. Words and phrases are scattered like shrapnel so that the reader cannot tell which piece will strike next or how deeply it will cut.
At first, these poems seem randomly broken-up but closer inspection reveals a reliance upon assonance, consonance and rhyme which hang these poems together on a gossamer web. This edgy form makes for an uncomfortable journey justified in full by the equally uncomfortable subjects tackled here: war, time, loss, death. McLoughlin never intends for this to be an easy ride as the poems pendulum between blunt directness and terrifying subtlety.
‘Joke’ is an ironic title for a poem whose frivolous treatment echoes the disturbing nature of the general public’s dismissive ignorance about war, thus increasing its depth of meaning. The scattered lines are snippets that can be read alone or linked to their neighbours to produce new meanings:
a soldier drills
holes for oil
drills right across
an Arab’s middle
he’s well drilled
he drills well
he drills wells
pumps every man jack
full of lead(true formatting lost here, sorry)
‘Photograph’ seems to tell of the tragic and futile attempt of innocents to escape the effects of bombing. Explosion and death are never openly mentioned but the language is suggestive – a strong imitation of the way government and media ‘control’ information to their advantage. Cleverly, without the title, the end of the poem (“the flash / that followed / erased them / assumed them / shrouded them in white”) would have been too explicit. This is just one more example of McLoughlin’s dynamic sensitivity regarding the use of language.
McLoughlin ever has a commitment to celebrating and examining his roots and this is demonstrated in the translations that comprise section 4, Second Sight.
For the most part translated from the Irish, these beautiful poems round off the collection with a dignified sense of resignation, exuding the quiet calm of hard-earned experience. They bear a tender approach to subjects such as death and home through to a retrospective regretfullness when addressing love.
We are trees standing split on the mountain.
Our branches never got the chance to tangle.
You tell me we are better separated
but our roots have been caressing all along(‘Trees’)
All in all, the poems of
Dissonances demand careful and multiple readings in order to really enjoy the stratification within them. The complexity and deeply personal nature of these poems makes only a small proportion of them perhaps slightly inaccessible. For the most part, though, this connection to their creator makes them stronger in communication with the reader. They are real, honest, constructed from the bedrock issues of modern life and by experiencing this collection, the reader participates in a universal ownership of these pieces as they touch the very soul and identify with our lives and experiences.
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busy
loved
cheerful
tired
determined
okay
rejected
grumpy
