Purchase: Hidden River

Stephanie Norgate's first full-length collection of Poems, Hidden River, is an act of re-inflation. It seems to be of the past, in a mostly positive way; a form of assessment and careful reconnection. The tone and themes act to make present, or represent a desire to make present, past loves, events, tastes. This re-inflation of the past, or re-appraisal of a stalled path of development, manifests itself as important if unspecific realisations. In 'The Wheedling Man' Norgate without any fan-fare or explication connects a casual sexual relationship with forthright and demure beggars, and the ease of acquiescing to demands and the equal ease of ignoring requests and that reflecting on good intentions always missed is no substitute for actually doing the good deed.

These poems, which leave you unsettled and thoughtful, are interspersed by those which are more reverential, and perhaps cleansing. The first poem, 'Mud Bath', begins this process,

Sitting down in mud,
we pack it tight on skin...
             Now we are
wild women, wild men, the
first people of the early world...
- Mud Bath

Later poems, especially the series of Haiku translations of Lucretius, continue the process. The primordial and the classical inform and provide names and characters for many of the works; Narcissus and Echo arrive in 'Echo' as the archetypes for a psychoanalytic depiction of a child, a “late talker, haunting the garden, digging mud-ovens to cook weeds", learning to speak through imitation and self observation. It is a delicate piece written with tenderness and tact, the play with words as enjoyable as the mud toyed with,

…calling shun, shun,
reflect, shun, fleck, shun, reflection,
checking the mirror to see if she's still there.
- Echo

Many of the poems are concerned with personal relationships, the unfairnesses, injustices, violence and illogicisms of them. 'Don Giovanni's Puppeteer' and 'Mrs Rochester' deal with violence in sexuality in a manner which skilfully admits of the practical changes made from traditional ideals. It acts as an interlude in the Jane Eyre story, Norgate's own version of Wide Sargasso Sea. However the 'woman in the attic' is made into a strong boheme of the 20th Century, powerful, sexual, role-playing (indulging Rochester's calling out of “Jane, Jane” during sex), aware of the fetishisation of virginity, world-wise if hard-done-by and candid about masturbation, ending with a victory of sorts.

But in the waxy darkness,
when I bite him, or tear hair,
he calls out, 'again, again'.
- Mrs Rochester

It is an interesting addition to the ongoing mythopoeia surrounding Bertha Mason.

The cleansing process, emerging in different forms such as re-birth and baptism, is interrogated in different ways in a set of thematically connected works, 'The Bones', 'The Shirt', 'Pont Sant'Angelo, Rome', 'Irrigator in the Far Field', 'The Resurrection Plant' and 'Waggoners Wells',

                            ...no one
knows who widened the river
or why they made these pools...
- Waggoners Wells

The difficulty of this process and the infidelity, complexity and crudeness of language are well described and visible,

I try to write microcosms:
drops on slate like cool balls of mercury,
the pool in a lupin leaf.

But the faucet's jammed.
The irrigator twizzles, forcing its thin veils
up through a waste of English rain.
– Irrigator in the Far Field

Norgate shows memory as something to be re-discovered, mis-remembered and re-interpreted. The reader is presented with a junction-box of memory, life and environment, with the natural world giving rise to thoughts on humanity and nature which are enlightening and enlivening.

I cannot be completely gushing about Hidden River. There are some excellent moments and there are some confusing moments, a stand-out work in the second sense is 'Send and Receive'. The longest work in the volume it mixes the writing process of an email with internal thoughts, and narratives of everyday life with themes of communication and truthfulness.

Pixels are not enough, blurred shots too few.
You cannot tell her everything you should.
- Send and Receive

The subterfuge concerns choices made, self-preservation, a girl “flaunting herself”, macabre jokes about HIV, mysticisms surrounding the female position in society and the disconnections that are always found between individuals.

There is something emerging from this piece entirely different from the rest of the volume. As stated, it is disrupted and difficult, it has a broken narrative meaning and concept, but it is fresh and bold and has at the same sense of yearning and gradual, metered hope that informs the best of Norgate's work. A good read.

Bloodaxe Books, 80PP.,  £8.95,
978-1-85224-796-6