Blog Review 7: Donald S. Murray Reviews Simon Barraclough’s ‘Neptune Blue’ and Isobel Dixon’s ‘The Tempest Prognosticator’

by Donald S. Murray

There was a moment during my reading when these two books merged. It occurred shortly after I set down my copy of The Tempest Prognosticator and picked up Neptune Blue. At one moment I was visiting the Motel in Fairvale through the eyes of Isobel Dixon, as she took on the viewpoint of Lila finding Bates’ mother sitting in her chair in the cellar with

the woven shawl, the grey hair
Gathered in a careful bun …

The next I was seeing Psycho through Simon Barraclough’s eyes in ‘Being a Woman You Will.’ He opts for a wide angle lens, taking a more detached view of Lila’s sister, Marion as she hires a car, driving through the rain in the direction of the Motel where she will meet Norman Bates. Using the second person, often a feature of Barraclough’s verse, we are informed that “Tiredness kills”. She waits, honking her horn for the arrival of the man who will eventually be responsible for her murder.

Though the two poets have much in common, especially a splendidly surreal sense of humour, it seems to me that it is this which distinguishes them: Simon Barraclough habitually takes a wider view of the worlds he occupies as a citizen of Plant Earth, owing a great debt, in particular, to Edwin Morgan. This can be seen especially when he whirls around the solar system, his destinations ranging from Mercury to his very short poem on that now officially non-planet, ‘Pluto’. (To recount it here would rob of its punch-line, if one could be said to exist!) On one occasion, he even directly references him in his poem to ‘Neptune’, declaring that this particular planet is the source of

Edwin Morgan’s ‘Little Blue Blue’
Inexhaustiblue.

On his travels, he makes some exceedingly good jokes. Mercury’s “unevolved ankles” are “tickled by feathers that never grew”. Uranus is knocked into a “cocked hat”. Earth is “God’s gobstopper”. He even continues this theme when he adopts the heart as a motif in his work. As well as a ‘Magpie heart’, a ‘Havisham heart’ and a ‘Pizza Heart’, he summons up school-days in the shape of ‘Wrigley’s Heart’, where the sheer adaptability of chewing gum is seen in the endless items to which it can be stuck – from desks to walls to hair.

In all this, Barraclough’s verse fizzes with the madcap energy of that world of gobstoppers and chewing gum. He is enormously inventive with an endless zeal for puns and in-jokes. Referring to the movie world that frequently inspires his verse, his narrator declares in ‘Flashbacks Of A Fool’;

I am but mad North by Northwest.

Describing certain planets, he draws upon the songs and lyrics of Joni Mitchell and Carly Simon. Accusing Neptune of vanity, he echoes Carly Simon in declaring its world is so blue,

you probably think that Jarman’s Blue
is about you.

There did, however, come a point in my reading when I was unable to suppress an involuntary groan. This occurred when I came across the line, “I am the Lord of the Dance Settee”, words that, as a young boy in a school hostel, we used to shout out a number of decades ago. (The Corries version was constantly on the record turntable.) It seemed to me, too, that for all Barraclough’s verse is largely inventive and exuberant, it can often be too much rooted in a world where people watch similar movies and listen to the same song and tell familiar corny jokes. I feel, if he is to grow and develop, he needs to step away from this. There is little doubt that he has the creativity and talent to undertake the nifty footwork required.

I have fewer reservations about Isobel Dixon’s work. It possesses great range and inventiveness, dipping into several distinct and different worlds. It is true that, like Simon Barraclough, some of these involve both cinema and modern rock. Like him, she writes about Hitchcock; on another occasion, she draws inspiration from the film, ‘Into The Wild’ and Paul Simon’s ‘Graceland’ when she writes – ironically – of ‘Days Of Miracles And Wonders’ when visiting a city Common.

She draws us, however, ‘Into the Wild’ in other ways too. No one who lived my existence could fail to recognise the truth of ‘The Parliament Of Gulls’ where seagulls gather around marooned baby sharks on the shoreline. The delicacy of ‘Vision’ is also appealing, where she describes how bats invade the garden during a summer evening. In ‘The Whiteness of the Whale’, it is the media who stand “gawping” at the intrusion of a whale into the modern world, noting how, a few years ago, one swam up the Thames,

searching for his Jonah, righteous bellyful.

It is mythic, too, in the way its presence recalls how there was at one time a whale “beached in Dagenham”, said by some to be predicting the death of Cromwell. In Isobel Dixon’s view, perhaps this arrival on the scene

spouted out his warning of the melting ice.

In particular, she writes well of her childhood world in South Africa. In writing that recalls the verse of D.H. Lawrence, she tells us of the ‘Toktokkie’, that country’s large black beetle. Dramatically, it conveys the insect’s

Ridiculous performance, till you realise –
Tap-tap, tap-tap – this suitor’s soundings out
Are spot on, as he homes in on his date.

She deals with that nation’s political legacy too in ‘The Only Brunette On The Beach’. She finds herself on Bloubergstrand, a place of great significance in the country’s history where the invading British forces defeated the Dutch before going onto colonise much of southern Africa. In the final verse, she recalls other tensions that exist in the landscape, referring to Nonqawuse, a Xhosa girl whose prophecies led many of her people to kill their cattle in a forlorn attempt to drive the British from their land.

Her political insights are not just confined to either that nation or the distant past. In ‘Mountain War Time’, she connects volcanic Mount St Helens with its nearby atomic energy plant which helped to develop the Fat Man Bomb that fell on Nagasaki, recalling how

molten kimono flowers singed to skin,
a city threshed and sewn with flowers, fissioning.

It seems to me that this is what makes Isobel Dixon an extraordinary talent. She may not veer and buzz around the solar system with quite the same gusto as Barraclough, but the entirety of this planet – from its animal life to politics, past to present – is found in close-up in her verse.

Donald S. Murray
Donald S. Murray is the author of the non-fiction books, ‘The Guga Hunters’ and ‘And On This Rock’ (Birlinn). His poetry and short-fiction works include ‘Small Expectations’ (Two Ravens Press) and ‘Weaving Songs’ (Acair). The latter, a collaboration with photographer Carol Ann Peacock, has been published to commemorate the centenary of the Harris Tweed trademark, the Orb, and celebrates the life of his father, employed as a weaver for many years.

Neptune Blue and The Tempest Prognosticator are both published by Salt, 2011, £9.95.