Out Of Darkness – selected poems by Barrie Singleton reviewed | Books | Entertainment

The Headmaster – “terrified that one free mind would bring the edifice to nought” – forces him to eat his congealed semolina, which he does, “unblinking, jam-eyed, quizzical.” Then, remembers Barrie, writing some seventy years later, “The Head departs – threat repulsed,/but I saw truths, invisible.”

The first of these invisible truths, and one that pervades the forty-two poems of this selection, is that respect for authority and the establishment should not be a conditioned response: it should be rational and informed. Any institution that hasn’t earned this poet’s respect – Westminster being the prime example – is a valid target for his vitriol, and Out Of Darkness delivers vitriol aplenty, leavened with lashings of sly humour.

In 2005 Barrie stood for parliament, not to enter that “vile pile” but to highlight its absurdities: his slogan – “Spoil Party Games.”

Now, in Out Of Darkness, he tilts at Westminster from without like a latter-day Don Quixote. Three poems in particular exemplify his singular blend of vitriol and humour. The Day They Dismantled Westminster imagines the populace arriving to tear down that perfidious edifice – “The crowds drew nigh with sledge and bar; a ‘bag for life’ each held.”

The second, Iffy, plays on Rudyard Kipling to excoriate the “Westminster Creatures” within – “if you can fawn and not be galled by fawning or, being out-fawned, plot [the PM’s] demise…”

And the third, Film Noir, dismantles Tony Blair’s legacy smile by damned smile, zeroing in on Blair’s recalcitrant dark tooth: “In some mystical way his dentition revealed / the root of his being with nothing concealed.”

Having tilted at faux philosophers in part one and perfidious politicians in part two, Barrie spends part three aping other poets, some in reverent homage, others with disdain.

Eliot, Betjeman (twice), Hughes, Shelley, Armitage, Pope and Heaney all come in for the Singleton treatment.

Particular gems are: Despond (Come comely comet, clobber Earth / She hasn’t anything of worth); Workshopping Seamus (Non sequiturs stacked neatly / Drying in a metaphoric sun); and Rage of Innocence, an homage to Dylan Thomas in which this poet rages against the injustice of being born without consent: “Do not go easy into that cruel plight. / Rage! Rage against the prying of the light!”. Sylvia Plath fans will enjoy Singleton’s treatment of Ted Hughes in Wrath Bourne (Sleeping bore / Intermittently waking / With a bad head / You break out / Raging and coursing / In elemental abandon / Careless of offence / Or fence / In your wrathy effervescence…”

Out Of Darkness ends, as it began, on an autobiographical note.

Where Semolina explains the root of the poet’s rage, New Rage Poet chronicles how rage was channelled.

One night, Barrie chances on the “unctuous spleen” of Pope, who, he discovers, was given the gift of words “through which to lash and serially lambaste / friend, foe, and fig – a true iconoclast.” Barrie finds himself inspired: “at seventy, and sometime thrice his age / with proxy pedigree I find new rage… in Nihilist Nirvana Pope and I / bestow a negacy that shall not die.”

Copies can be bought by sending a cheque made payable to IJH Books at 8 Cliff Road, Cowes, PO31 8BN. UK only.