"Take A Risk" by Mary Deville

Review by Neil Dalton January 2006

"Take A Risk" is a collection of twenty three poems by local Derbyshire poet Mary de Ville. She works a stage that few aspiring poets work nowadays - she likes to perform her work live; she writes poetry to be heard and listened to and not just poetry to be read and contemplated.

Phillip Larkin, perhaps the best poet in the English language in the ‘fifties and sixties’ warned against public performances. When he was persuaded to read The Whitsun Weddings for a radio broadcast he said: “this is the first time I’ve ever read a poem in public and if I have any say in the matter it’ll be the last.” He tried to dissuade people from purchasing the recording of The Whitsun Weddings by saying: “And what you gain on the sound you lose on the sense: think of all the mishearings, the ‘their;’ and ‘there’ confusions, the submergence of rhyme, the disappearance of stanza shape, even the comfort from knowing how far you are from the end!”

Larkin instinctively knew that performance requires a different skill, a different way of thinking. In the 1960’s there was a resurgence of poetry readings along with a folk and blues revival. But, apart from some well established literary festivals, poetry has returned to the solitary, to the individual in their arm chair, sipping a glass of whiskey or sherry. It’s for quiet contemplation now, the gentle meeting of the poet’s mind in poetry and the mind of the reader, for drinking alone and not enjoying in company. Mary is trying to change some of that, by taking her poetry to pubs and clubs, informal music sessions and ‘open mike’ evenings. She’s practising a difficult art, she’s prepared to risk an audience that sits right in front of her, that enjoys its beer in company and that can respond immediately. This is an audience where a poem, or a song, has to stand or fall on its first hearing. You can’t afford to wait for a reader to chew over or think things through over several readings – if Mary doesn’t make an immediate impact then no one will be bothering with second readings, she’ll be lost. At the same time, each poem has to reward those who are prepared to listen again, who are prepared to go back and think about her lines a second or third time, those who take her book home with them.

Sometimes Mary starts with a list to help her structure a poem and while this is fine in itself it runs an inherent risk. What you may end up with is just a list, just a series of connected or unconnected items or lines, but no development, no involvement and no significance. In “December Flight” Mary writes:

“We’ll be doing a little of what we please,

Savouring fruit and fish and rice and peas.”

This doesn’t really work, the rhyme doesn’t surprise or delight, it jars and disappoints; the overall effect is banal. Yet in the “Shortest Day”, Mary can write:

“Light ends when it’s barely begun,

Merest hint of diluted sun.”

This is simple, understated, accurately observed and memorable. Even when she describes lumps of earth as:

“Firm frozen lumps of chocolate cake,

Drizzling drops will eventually break.”

…… you forget about how appropriate or inappropriate it is to link earth with chocolate and enjoy the surprising image.

In “Paradise or What?” the list technique manages to build, to establish a feeling of luxury, an atmosphere of the sumptuous and the exotic and it is a more successful attempt at evoking a sense of place and mood because of it. “Two Seasons” is a fascinating poem. There are eight three line stanzas, each a mini poem - a linked series of Haikus. It is novel, unusual and striking and it is a real achievement.

“Past starkness softens” is a terrific line, it evokes what it describes and Basho couldn’t have done better.

Some of the poems don’t work as well as others; “Too Young”, for example. Rather than the language seeming child-like to evoke the innocence and youth of the narrator, the subject remains beyond the language. “Loss of My Youth” is a more ambitious attempt to write about the First World War, and, although I don’t think it succeeds, it is a more honourable failure. “William Barlow”, however, the third First World War poem in the collection does work much better. It’s about one man and gains from that but in its references to Kipling and the manner of the man’s death it manages to widen its scope.

Some parts of poems work better than others too. “Precious Bundle” is a nice idea about how quickly children grow up, from a parent’s point of view, but it is not always carried off throughout. Nonetheless, there’s nothing wrong with the lines:

“Blink for just a moment,

That bundle is all grown,

Flying from beside you,

To new worlds of its own.”

The ‘flying …. to new worlds’ expresses the distances children want to travel nowadays as well as the idea of chicks flying the nest and, at the same time, it also suggests the speed, from the parent’s perspective, at which their children have arrived at this point in time - terrific. And what’s more, Mary’s been able to do all that far more successfully, in a shorter space than I’ve been able to explain it.

I think “Just a Little Niche” works as well as any poem in the collection. It is seemingly naïve, it uses cliché images like the sun, the moon, silver and gold, it has an almost nursery rhyme feel:

“I didn’t ask for the sun,

I didn’t ask for the moon,

Never thought it possible,

We could dance the same tune.

Knew that all I could expect,

Was a very tiny part,

Just a little niche,

Somewhere in you heart.”

… yet, as the extract above shows, everything is told cleverly and wittily and the overall effect is charming and delightful.

You can’t help but like Mary, she stands up and reads her poems and then tells you how much it is to buy her latest collection. She says it like her poetry is worth something. Well, she’s right, it is!

Neil Dalton, Jan.2006