'Ceasefire in Purgatory'
by Colin Carberry
(Luna Publications, Canada)
Reviewed by Longford poet, Kieran Furey
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, says the wise old maxim.
In the world of modern poetry, however, things are much worse, and the
blind man can be king, provided he has a brass neck. There are two
important reasons for this. The first is that, in these semi-literate
times, hardly anybody knows what poetry is. So anyone can claim to be a
poet. "I can see!" shouts the blind man, and all the other blind folk
acknowledge him as king. All that then remains for the self-styled poet to
complete his coup is to make expert use of the media, the media being the
second reason alluded to above.
And so the world of 21st-century poetry is full of one-trick ponies and
one-book wonders, and each one has his fifteen minutes of shameless fame and
moves on out of sight and out of mind, leaving art poorer than it was before
he wrote, and leaving the world no wiser for his passing through it.
Colin Carberry is not one of these chancers. Judging by the solid evidence
of this latest collection, he is here to stay. Even a superficial reading
of the forty-odd poems of Ceasefire in Purgatory is enough to show that he
is thoroughly familiar with a range of cultures: North America; Ireland,
North and South; Mexico. In other words, he has a foot in the pan-Atlantic
English-speaking world and a foot in the very different Spanish-speaking
milieu of Latin America. All this is fully demonstrated in his book.
What's it like to be a gringo in Mexico? Colin Carberry knows, and these
poems tell us. Not a gringo as tourist, however; an outsider who has become
an insider; an adopted son who has taken the trouble to live there
long-term, to learn the language. A man who has blood-ties south of the Rio
Grande.
And what's it like to be in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, at the
sharp end of things, when it's wise to watch your back, your step, and your
tongue? Again, the poems tell us. Carberry knows his geography, and his
history.
But for poetry, of course, one needs more than a sense of place and time.
The good poet must also be a reader and lover of literature. He must learn
from the masters: those of the here-and-now and those of the then-and-gone.
This poet knows his Dante and his Heaney and his Derek Walcott, and he's
familiar too with the work of great Latin American poets, and these
influences shine through this volume, flavouring it like exotic spices might
add to the taste of a strong native dish.
One of the results of learning, of reading and studying the greats, is
familiarity with poetic form. Carberry shows here that he's perfectly at
home with the sonnet in all its variations. Also with classical terza rima.
Indeed, in several of these accomplished poems he combines both forms.
As a middle-aged poet respectful of tradition, I tend to approach books by
poets twenty years younger than me with great caution; trepidation, even.
Experience has shown me that what I'll be getting, nine times out of ten, is
bad prose with the lines broken up: little form, and no substance.
Carberry's book was, therefore, a very pleasant surprise. If he keeps his
eye on the poetry rather than the publicity, he has, I think, every chance
of taking his place among that select minority of poets who are really worth
reading and rereading. He has demonstrated here that he intends to build on
solid foundations.
