John Darwin, whose show, Happy Hour, won the Best Spoken Word Performance Award at the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival a year ago, and who played at the Bury New Road Festival earlier this year, launches his second collection of poems, Ultrasilence…
Review…
Ultrasilence by John Darwin
This collection of fifty verses from John Darwin captures the mundane, the melancholy and the mellifluous, via word magic that springs from everyday, everyman life in North Manchester, Manc Central and beyond…
In ‘hipster influx’ Prestwich, the verse gently erupts with social commentary, from the ‘expensive lentils for displaced BBC hopefuls’, to the charity shops and ‘bad council sculptures/the infamous water feature/another shattered shelter’…while ‘Avoiding Simon’ who’s ‘lost his head’…
But Cuckoo should go down as the Prestwich poem of the age…‘In estate agents’ bluster it isn’t made clear/they jump from bridges round here…’
Over in Manc-land it doesn’t get much brighter, with the homeless sleeping on ‘dog-shit stained pavements’ – yet this is no downbeat anthology. There’s loads of sardonic, wry humour in there, even when ditched by short-term lovers. And there’s a trip out to Turkey, via homages to Garip Movement poet, Orhan Veli Kanık.
Darwin makes the epic out of the humble; total observation of the ordinary and, at times, self-depreciating notes on relationships. This is proper recognisable poetry of the highest calibre. Get it and see behind the virtual hype machine of life…
Stephen Kingston
Ultrasilence by John Darwin is published by Flapjack Press (£8)
For more details see www.flapjackpress.co.uk
John Darwin and Dominic Berry Book Launch
Tuesday 1st November 6pm-7:30pm free
Manchester Central Library
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John Darwin Hosts Crooked Poets
Tuesday 8th November 8pm-10pm
With guest Rob Steventon
The Crooked Man Bar Prestwich
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See also John Darwin’s performance at the Bury New Road Festival on YouTube – click here
