This is Ian Seed’s eighth collection with Shearsman Books, a distinctive writing journey of mainly prose poems. Forgetfulness is, importantly, an eclectic offering reflecting a varied crafting arc in his overall poetic framing of familiar themes like alienation, uncertainty and surprise, sustaining the genuine joy in reading these signature explorations.
This book presents its variables across four sections. In the title prose poem, we encounter the ghost of Seed’s mother who has already visited in poems preceding this in the opening section.
Although it finishes with the line
Deep down we both know she’s no longer alive, but neither of us can bring ourselves to say so
we already know of her death which has been brought palpably back to life/our notice – not being flippant – in the first of eight sequences from ‘Scattering My Mother’s Ashes’*, this through the conversations she has with her son or other narrator observations like
‘What’s the point of writing in that silly way?’ my mother wants to know (1)
At the next stop, the door at the back opened, and stayed open even when we set off. The driver mut have forgotten to close it. I had to hold my mother tight when we went around a corner (2)
and in the surreal convolution (in its context) of the following, referring to his father
I though he’d died, though I’d heard more recently that he hadn’t, just been very ill and was now recovered. In fact, he looked quite young, being much slimmer than when I’d last seen him. Perhaps we could be friends again now that my mother was no longer alive (8)
Other poems in this section create further moments of encounter/alienation for Seed, for example in (3), when arriving in Milan, a poet who is supposed to be meeting him doesn’t turn up, but a mysterious former student may have appeared; and in (7), seeking assurances about the meaning of his life a year on from my mother’s death, and turning to a Christian helpline, there seems to be a positive conclusion to his yearning, though doubt is still suggested in the line
I felt that within the granted minutes I had infinite time, because love was infinite, and all I had to do was accept it
The second section begins with a poem ‘The Jugglers’, perhaps a metaphor for the storytelling that will follow in other poems, but also more broadly (predictably, as interpretation?) for the lives we think we lead and think we have led: from dreams to hopeful/desperate imagining of having happened. It is both lyrical and philosophical, from
5
Fingertips reach the tender side
beyond mere greeting and passing away.
This breath on my face, on my trembling
shoulder blades, the small part of me
which is still open, left open from the wound,
the only place you can enter
to
10
The road is made of stones and stories. It merges
with the light ahead. It has mapped
our dreams. How long shall we linger
on its verge, nursing our cut feet, gazing
with affection at old scars?
The narratives of following poems is in the searching of self, strangers, other people in their stories and stories observing them. There are also explicit references to this focus
In the unwrinkled pages of the story
(‘Transfigure’)
…where every piece
of the story would fit
(‘Tenants’)
…the story
told just for the darkness
(‘Wakening’)
The third section is predominantly a collection of prose poems, wonderfully familiar in their sifting through uncertainty and the surreal manifestations of this.
The fourth and final section is work mainly from a previous list poem collection ‘I Remember’ (Red Ceilings Press). My review of this can be found here: https://gravyfromthegazebo.blog/2021/06/10/i-remember-by-ian-seed-the-red-ceilings-press/
The reminiscence in the first list poem is an affecting and candid addition to those recalls and reconstructions that open this fine collection.
For further details and to purchase, go here: https://www.shearsman.com/store/Ian-Seed-Forgetfulness-p767454180
* (a Red Ceilings limited-edition pamphlet)
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