Back to Essays page   Stolen Love Behaviour John Stammers Picador 2005  £8.99

Reviewed by Michael Murray

2001 was John Stammer’s debut year, his volume with Picador ‘Panoramic Lounge-Bar’ from the outset spoke: bold, new, fresh. The cover (as always with Picador very striking) an arresting modernist collage in reds, pale greens, black. And the poetry sparky, urban, urbane; image jostled image in their enthusiasm for expression.

A Poetry Book Society Recommendation that deserved everything, and more.

It has seemed a long wait for this following volume, Stolen Love Behaviour. (The title from a Rosemary Tonks poem: so good to see new poets acknowledging more senior writers). Odd poems in magazines, on the net, to whet our appetites. But then the pamphlet ‘Buffalo Bill’s…’. I think the publicity machine took over here: whip them up with this first. Only it didn’t, and it doesn’t. Big mistake was ‘Buffalo Bill’s…’.

Then the big day, and publication. Cover by Patrick Caulfield in bold pink, blue, black: snazzy, bright, post-modern. But hinting at shadows, depths.

The sureness of tone of the first book takes on a darker, more shadowed edge; the lively, engaging voice, at ease with abstraction, philo-factual, that lived the city life, here becomes more the raconteur’s tone. The verbal dazzle becomes more a sustained gaze, the emotional-damage dynamo, more to the fore.

In the earlier book I thrilled as much to:

                   ‘There are some places beyond the place we are,

                     places we have been together in other pasts

                     down other different possible differences…’

                                                  ‘There Are Some Places Beyond’

as the more flamboyant:

                      ‘Lavish rays of the flagrant sun cascade on the esplanade

                      or coruscate the way H₂SO₄ does, spilt on the lab floor…’

                                                     ‘?Que Pasa?’

 In the new book we have the wonderful ‘Rosegarden’:

                      ‘There’s bound to be rain after all this. The unholy heavens

                        are black bouquets laid out along the mantelpiece.’

 And:

                        ‘Furthermore the avenue recedes,

                         all the tables set out for le dejeuner,

                         tiny crabs are specks of cochineal on saffron rice,

                         their one pink day is going well so far.’

                                                  ‘Furthermore the afternoon…’

Elegiac? Initially, but John Stammers’ restlessness continually transmutes all, in turn.

His acknowledged influences are Frank O’Hara, Weldon Kees… ok, the mouthy Americans; but John Stammers is essentially English, or should I say London.

The problems with London-centrism tend to pool around an emotional coldness masquerading as sophisticated toughness.

John Stammers’ interviews present the book’s central focus as the extended meditation on emotional hurt, ‘Closure’. The poem questions our genetic as well as cultural emotional heritage. Quality counts in the emotional world; quantity quickly spoils what was there.

Is the book a journey through these gestalts? Where do we end up? The book closes with a number of short poems of individual isolation. ‘Flower Market Street’, witty and rhythmically exuberantly as it is, seems emotionally brittle.

It may be John Stammers has begun to believe his own myth, his own promotion. It may be he has some troughs to plough. Ploughed troughs rarely sprout with what was once recognisable.

But then we always want more of the same with a writer; writers’ always want to grow and develop; it’s called artistic survival.

Between the two, is the book. This is the writers’ footprint in the sand, and the reader’s image of the recognisable: adventurous, but safe.

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