Char March: The Thousand Natural Shocks

Published by Indigo Dreams, 2011.

The Thousand Natural Shocks is the fourth collection from multi-award winning poet and playwright Char March. It has already won The Purple Patch Award and The PoetryKit Award.

Visit her site

Her poems have enormous strength and force, her wordplay is intelligent; she often surprises by finishing with a wry twist.

In I never forget my toothbrush, for example, the poem begins:

“She squeezes the tube/but I do the rest myself”

and ends

“I champ and froth, and imagine myself rising/over the last fence at the Grand National/ahead by three lengths/and no need for a bloody jockey.”

I found a number of the poems in this collection quite astonishing and at the same time tender. March’s opening poem Another box of nipples arrived today tells of a woman in “the bloat of chemo”, but the poet doesn’t see “hacked-at womanhood,/that you’ve sobbed salt-herring barrels for”; she sees the woman who’s mending pullovers as “Darning her way to normality”. It reminds me of Clare Best at her finest (her poem Stitch was in TNW Autumn issue).

It is quite startling then to discover within the collection not just Oor Wullie, The Broons and Rab C Nesbitt in the poem 97 ways to be Scots but also illegal aliens with two IMAX ticket stubs and a Postman Pat hummer.

It’s a first rate collection that gets under your skin, makes it prickle as the hairs stand on end. My favourite lines are from Learning the ropes:

“Today I sit huddled/and sobbing/on the hearth rug in/The Quiet Room”… “Last week I caught myself rocking/backwards and forwards/in my chair,/moaning/ – just like a real nutter.”

All I want for Chrismas is…..

…time and space, and the dexterity to make extra days happen when the Calendar won’t budge.                 Helen Ivory

….good health and happiness for my family, and some sales of my just published (Shoestring Press) collection of short stories; ‘Sing to Me’. As my eightieth birthday is nigh, it may well be my final offering!                 Derrick Buttress

….a kinder and less divided world in 2012.                    Catherine Smith

… a new government.                 Vicky Wilson

… to have the idea for a perfect poem on every one of the twelve days! Is this going to be like the joke where everyone asks for world peace except me?                 Jo Hemmant

…. some glowing winter days, to spot the dark fur of the roe deer and the blush on the undersides of squawky redwings and, in the long darkness, to see the glittering of stars and then to come inside to a log-fire burning in the grate with my far-flung family sitting safely beside me.                Rebecca Gethin

… is an end to violence against women (and a decent bottle of fino                              wouldn’t go amiss).              Katrina Naomi

… is the pleasure of once more believing that a new start will solve everything, next time round. Or if you’d accept a sentence that doesn’t begin that way:

In Częstochowa, Poland, the home of the Black Madonna, a donkey that lives in a creche in the monastery grounds, year-round, is always really happy when he’s joined at Christmastime by companiable cows and sheep.                     Caroline Carver

…. a merry Christmas for everyone – may we marvel in as many ways as we can, and find as many ways as possible to share our marveling with each other.               Elly Nobbs

…is a season ticket for the Group of Seven - autumn, winter, spring and summer.                Stephen Boyce

… peace effervescent as pink champagne; tolerance wrapped in tender-hearted tissue and time to slow down.                Tina Cole

… silence and great music to play into the silence… and a Christmas Eve that slows right down, so I can go on and on anticipating…      Clare Best

… a new mayor in Toronto. And some snow; a white Christmas would be nice for a change.                Ayesha Chatterjee

… FOR ‘GIRL POWER’ TO MEAN MORE THAN THE CHANCE TO SELL EXPENSIVE CLOTHES. Oh, and world peace and a new Ipad.                  Sarah Salway

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS….

you,
all of you,
less now than
we were, maybe soon less again,
a day will come when other calls than
coming home to here will be important – there
will be others with whom you’ll share this day and
this home too, may not be here, further on who knows? for now
I raise my glass, pause, remember, enjoy, look forward with all of you,
you

Emer Gillespie

… Grace by Esther Morgan, inspiration for some wintery poems and a large measure of sanity.                Melissa Lee-Houghton

              

Katrina Naomi: Featured Poet

September

This is unknown;
my bright, berry blood comes late,
follows a new calendar.

Soon, I’ll say goodbye
to this belching red,
this faint anaemia, goodbye

to the children
I never wanted. Last night,
walking back from the village,

I saw them in the waning moon,
holding hands, running
away from me.

(Commended in the Poetry Society’s 2011 Stanza Competition)

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Katrina Naomi’s first full collection The Girl with the Cactus Handshake was shortlisted for the 2010 London New Poetry Award and received an Arts Council England writer’s award. Her pamphlet Lunch at the Elephant & Castle  won the 2008 Templar Poetry Competition. In 2009-10, Katrina was the first writer-in-residence at the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, W Yorks. A collection of her Bronte-themed poems Charlotte Bronte’s Corset was published in 2010 by the Bronte Society. Katrina is working towards a new collection while studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths. She is originally from Margate and lives in south London. Visit Katrina’s site.

Helen Mort: Featured Poet

After Tarkovsky

A karner butterfly,
climbing the stairwell
of late evening,

through the shadows
cast by larches, up
into the last colour

this sun can give; how
it holds the pages
of its black-edged wings,

unreadable. At night,
I take a leather book,
switch off the lamp

and open it. So dark,
I barely even see
the white. It’s then

I settle on the bed.
It’s then I read
just what I like.

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Helen Mort was born in Sheffield in 1985 and grew up in nearby Chesterfield. She has published two pamphlets with tall-lighthouse press, ‘the shape of every box’ and ‘a pint for the ghost’ (a PBS Choice). Her first full collection is forthcoming from Chatto & Windus. Helen received an Eric Gregory Award in 2007 and won the Manchester Young Writer prize in 2008. From 2010-2011 she was Poet in Residence at The Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere where she published ‘Lie of the Land’, a pamphlet of poems written during her residency. She is currently working towards a PhD at Sheffield University.