Introduction
As well as being my most oddly titled work (from a comboination of the deliberately random phrase “Barracuda, Lemon, Toad” from the first part of the work and “Whale”, the title of the second part), this collection of poetry is also my most directly autobiographical. The first section of fifteen poems represents a set of aggressive attacks on our consumerist media-driven culture often plucked directly from my own experience of being immersed in it.
A Trip at the Dentist, for example, really is about a trip I took to the dentist, and When I Looked Upon a Car, is a description of an actual visit to a car showroom etc. So, notwithstanding all the punning and perhaps some hyperbole here and there, these poems represent a variety of attempts to portray the trials and tribulations of a self-described “alien with his head on wrong”.
The second section, a fifteen-part prose poem, Whale, similarly depicts my real life, being essentially a diary of my (mis)adventures over a couple of weeks of a period of three years working at the University of Nottingham (Ningbo, China campus) as an academic English instructor. Though my allusions to my environment, both outside and inside work, are cloaked in colourfully baroque language, they are probably more accurate than they appear on the surface. And, psychologically, they are, I’m confident enough to say, about as accurate as I could get.
I suppose what is primarily explored in Whale is a growing cynicism both concerning the institution of work, including the possibility of authentic relationships therein, and the wider institution of a culture (in this case that of China) that seemed environmentally and socially alienating to me. But then there is also in the work, I think, some of the poetic whimsy of The Soul Machine from my short story collection ‘“Lobe‘” that mollifies this negativity.
Given that I hope for both the first part of this book, the individual poems, and especially for Whale that there is a beauty to the form that elevates the content. And, of course, I hope simply the book is an enjoyable read, especially for fellow cynics.
Please find below an excerpt and a free pdf of the work, which I have published under the name Paul Buckle.
An Excerpt from Whale: Respite in the City’s Spread?
Below is the full part seven of the fifteen-part prose poem “Whale”, which forms the second half of the book. It’s one of the more hopeful moments in Whale’s adventures, though his alienation from his surroundings remains clear.
The coal of the cold air settles in the bones of the mist-blackened streets and the mill of crowd slows to their beat; as if everyone has the same secret, the unknown known that directs their steps, thok, thok, and somewhere a car honks, someone calls a name, everything speaks the same tone.
Whale watches the cloak of night descend over the park, pin-pricked night, inviting gloom—nothing worse than a half-hearted dusk, hardly a ray to drown and the sting of pollutants still on his tongue, poisoned cup of day, happy for it to swill away.
And take this heaviness of head with you, sighs he, into the smoke of his breath; in, out, smoke and dirt, too much becomes you—go on, go on, but it’s less of a weary plod than a determined one, no-one more determined than a pretender to the throne.
Black trees of new night, puddles of light on the path, nature deepened by the dark, a guard in a bright cage, neon joggers counting their steps, and further in the bench near the water, quiet cave. Shadows dapple over the lake’s skin, birds, night cruisers, lurk near the banks, playboats snore and creak; this pool of somnolence in the city’s spread, the place to float a busy mind, float out the buzzings of the day.
And yet the bones gone bad are wont to stink, fossil mistakes seek only the bed; a fight even in the cool quiet to make the surface and breathe in their weight. But Whale waits it out, the night on his side if he can see it through, shadowed swan his guide, sweep of rising moon his muse, every movement a glitter to set the dulled embers aglow, the coal of the cold air awakening a-slow.