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Blackwater Quartet by Estill Pollock,
Kittiwake Editions, 11 Garden Farm, West Mercia, Colchester, Essex CO5 8DU. ISBN 0-9548376-4-9, £42.50 for all four volumes, each priced at £9.

(Editor's note: a subsequent Kittiwake edition has the Blackwater Quartet in one volume. ISBN 0954837665. No rrp given)

The four volumes of the Blackwater Quartet are: Constructing the Human, Theories of Fugue, Tsunami Muses and Adventures in the Gothic, plus a separate Prologue pamphlet: Decorative Initials for a Book of Hours.

   This is a massive work of about 142 poems – I could never get to the same number on counting (like Oxfordshire’s Rollright Stones). So it presents problems for a reviewer, who ideally needs to devote several weeks to reading then rereading for a proper analysis, doing justice to the breadth of erudition and technique displayed.

   And this isn’t a negative criticism. Pollock’s formal ability as a writer is so assured that it’s easy to forget how impressive his control is. I can’t think of any recent poetry I’ve read with a better use of rhyme and meter than his Prologue: it is superbly readable, with a panoramic sweep over deserts and Essex squaddie towns, “civilisation” returning to the sands, with the irreconcilable clash between our valueless market driven society and its ability to suffer and inflict biblical savagery:

     The stars trade orbits with our satellites,
     obliging lens and data-streams new rights,
     new horoscopes and rising signs, and we
     survey this atlas of anxiety
     and are content in our detachment, made
     whole, supplicants to GM bud and blade…

     This place is anvil-struck with ordinance,
     a nation predicted, clairvoyance
     from desert wind sandblasting wrecks of tanks,
     ….
     The desert wind is law. A fine dust, south
     From Leptis Magna, settles in the mouth.

   There’s a slightly familiar tone and use of imagery, from Eliot and (especially) Pound, two other exiled Americans. But in the Prologue the pacing and energy is so exciting, this isn’t intrusive. My problems started (and mostly ended) with the first volume Constructing the Human, which seems much the weakest. It features the most personal reflection, and some of it I found very tedious (and almost self-satisfied) especially in the first section Versions of Sanctuary:

     without regard
     or expectation, yet
     arrive in knowledge all the journeys teach
     in time, each chance
     a true chance taken once,

This seems much too close to Eliot’s Four Quartets, and the effect is wearying when repeated. Displacement and estrangement are clearly essential to Pollock’s creativity, but the later volumes are much more convincing, in their fractured perspectives and numerous references and translations: particularly brilliant are versions of Brecht, Rilke, Rimbaud and the Anglo-Saxon Battle of Maldon in Theories of Fugue:

     In red combat    a sea-soldier
     Offa faced    slumped dead to earth
     before Offa too was hewn    remembering
     to his ring-giver    his sworn word
     that together    to their settlements
     fate    would see them home
     or else    by wound-waste
     on pitch of corpses    the day turn
     
   My uncle lived in Maldon for thirty years, and there are fine poems in these volumes influenced by the atmospheric but almost featureless Blackwater Estuary. It’s also a joy to find Roy Batty’s magnificent soliloquy from 'Blade Runner' referenced in Near the Tannhauser Gate, in Tsunami Muses: “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”

   The final volume Adventures in the Gothic seems to me the most imaginative, featuring fractured identities and some highly unsettling fictive and dream sequences. The technique is less formal, but it’s still very controlled, and not “experimental”. Given the extremity of the material (some of it sexual), this works extremely well:

     Away from the rowdy crowd, this corner
     of the bar is my own confessional. My heart
     is open to penetration.

     From the way I sit, sipping my scotch,
     I knew you’d find me…
     You’ll recognise it,
     wrenching upwards, a firework of blood, something
     living,
     the way some people give other people roses.

                                                from Twelve non-Barbie Episodes

   The last lines in the book (and the so the Quartet) seem beautifully apt, without being portentous:

     I know how the world is coming
     to an end. I write this, not as I was.

     Dance with me.

   It’s near impossible to summarise Blackwater Quartet. In terms of scope and ambition, it must be amongst the most impressive poetry I’ve encountered recently; especially in writing which isn’t trying to be experimental and often follows a fairly strict form (albeit without appearing to).

   There’s something humbling and admirable in the existence of this massive collection. I’m not sure how wide a readership it can expect, or whether we’re patient enough as readers (and reviewers) to allow it to achieve its potential, especially in the mainstream poetry world.

   And, to his great credit, Pollock’s work completely lacks that “wry”, simpering quality, by which any number of dreadful writers there (Kate Clanchy and Henry Shukman spring to mind) hedge their position – straining for profundity, while pretending false modesty by undercutting things with anecdotage or cheap laughs.

   Not to mention that it’s difficult to see Pollock involved in all the other nonsense, which sees these successful poets winning prizes, appearing in hagiographic broadsheet puffs and becoming resident
poets in Wordsworth’s Cottage (or Tesco’s). Unfortunately, as Nietzsche said: “It is not enough to possess a talent: one must also possess your permission to possess it – eh, my friends?”