Wild Cherry

In his poem, ‘Where poems come from’, Nigel Jenkins describes his early boyhood perception of poetry: ‘[poems] came, I supposed, from London.’ They were ‘paper and they were words, books of them yellowed in the classroom cupboard – the place that poems truly came from.’ Not a million miles away from many people’s first sense of poetry: loaded with a sense of otherness, coming from a remote elsewhere, and delivered as part of a statutory education. As the poem goes on, however, he describes an awakening to words and the realisation that poetry was everywhere. ‘It was in the laughter of dogs… I could smell it in freshly painted rooms.’ He goes on, ‘I discovered its emptying joy and wanted, afraid, to share it.’ This openness and enthusiasm for sharing poetry is an approach that poet, novelist and friend of Jenkins, Patrick McGuinness, describes in his introduction to Wild Cherry, this newly published posthumous selection of Jenkins’s work. He quotes a speech made by Jenkins in which he says, ‘Poetry should be out and about, doing a job in the world, ambushing people, not hiding in classroom cupboards and magazines nobody reads.’ Jenkins’s poems do exactly that, and this is an excellent selection of poems, curated chronologically by McGuinness to great effect, creating a sense of a lifetime’s work and displaying the breadth of Jenkins’s talents. A sense of place seems ever-present in Jenkins’s work, and it starts early with the immediate locale of his birth and home. In extracts from his first selection of poems, 1990’s Acts of Union, Jenkins shares where he comes from and the realities of life on a rural farm. He doesn’t hold back from the visceral bloody reality of farm life. ‘Pig-Killing Day’ and ‘First Calving’ are graphic, with bones and blood, birth and death. ‘St Govan’s Chapel’ gives an early sense of wider Welsh pride, and the conflict of language and identity that recurs throughout the rest of this collection. ‘Cofen or Cobhan? Govan or Gawaine?’ he asks. In ‘Land of Song’, he begins to tease at frustrations of language and perceptions of Wales amongst outsiders: ‘England expects – my hen laid a haddock’, in reference to the phonetic English-sounding words of the national anthem of Wales, Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau. Jenkins’s sense of Welsh identity and frustration with the English are a constant throughout this collection, veering from frustration at pettiness to outright anger at injustice. It can, of course, be both, with Jenkins laughing at times (as in ‘The Creation’, with its pub-like joke punchline at the expense of the English) and raging at others (in ‘The Ballad of Cwm Tryweryn’ about the injustice of the damming of the Tryweryn). This is a brilliant collection for anyone looking to see how poetry – often an inward-looking and personal art form – can be political, social and challenging. As a proud Welsh poet, ‘The Gallo-Saxon Muse’ is another tongue-in-cheek/vicious jibe at the English. Jenkins explores the concept of being a ‘Wales-based writer’ when actually born in Purley, and the idea of adopting identities in order to make generic writers appear more exotic or niche. ‘So glide aboard the Taffy-train, become a Wales-based writer: Wales and Welsh writing belong to us, the future couldn’t look brighter.’ There is more to Jenkins’s work than his Welsh identity though. He is at his most powerful at times when he’s at his most personal. The ‘Wild Cherry’ that gives this collection its name is gorgeous. However, it is ‘Forty-Eight and a Half’ that pulls hardest on the heart strings. Named in relation to Jenkins reaching the age his father was when he died, this is a powerful reflection on family, aging, the cycle of life and grief. In the context of this collection – curated chronologically, and with this poem appearing way past the middle – the already powerful sense of the passing of time is heightened. Jenkins was just 64 when he died. Wild Cherry is a collection that does justice to a man respected, loved, and revered for his poetry, teaching, and friendship. With McGuinness’s introduction, editing and notes, the selection here serves to direct readers to Jenkins’s wider work. It is a collection destined to become a bookcase staple within the world of Welsh poetry. -- Liam Nolan @ www.gwales.com