Let it Bleed by Nicole I. Nesca (Screaming Skull Press) reviewed by Ivor Daniel.
Bleeding Authentic Writing Let it Bleed captures the feel of when you are young and need to run away from home But you still want to be found
Hemorrhaging in the shower The unwanted neon intimacy of medical examinations Morphine sleep Wake Hemingway saying writing is like bleeding
Swerving between prose & poetry The music of the times coming up on the radio then gone/past/static/interference
Interference Predators
Road map of America sticky separating from parents / founders
Sticky Fingers Sticky long – distance bus rides to look for America
Loving / Hating / Loving / Turning Into
Your Parents
Elusive living up to Papa’s (and Hemingway’s) expectations
It all goes by so fast/life/a crystal/blur/outside the windscreen
And soon we are at now ‘solving the world’s crisis one ‘like’ at a time’
A tale of love and survival (What else is there?)
We aspire to humanity Survive like emotional sardines
It’s like a film It’s like heroism
Not the masculine old ‘I may be gone for some time’ heroism
The other sort Writing that bleeds
Let it flow
Nicole Nesca – you may be here for some time
Ivor Daniel worked as a street-based youth worker, then as a manager of youth work teams.
He lives in Gloucestershire, uk.
His poems have appeared in A Spray of Hope (@litscihub), wildfire words (the ezine of CheltenhaPoetryFestival), Steel Jackdaw Magazine, Writeresque Magazine,
iamb ~ wave seven, and Fevers of the Mind.
@IvorDaniel
Ivor was sent a digital copy of Let it Bleed so he could write this review. Thanks, Screaming Skull..
Cop 26 has been and gone - and how are things looking in the Garden?
What were the choices for Eve & Adam?
What are our choices now?
Eden, Robert Frede Kenter’s new chapbook, presents a vital glimpse into the work of
an artist, photographer and poet who has been published and exhibited widely
during the last 3 decades. In my reviewer copy I only see or perceive partially. This is
ok, because i. we all know that art is best seen up close (or standing back) in a
gallery anyway, and ii. the selection here, which is engaging and challenging for
sure, is a glimpse through the hedge, or broken wall, of the garden. As Kenter writes
in his Acknowledgements, ‘many of these works also have colour versions and other
iterations’. This Eden makes you want to see them all. To wander through this
artist’s studio and archives.
The list of Contents is poetic. This excerpt gives a tang;
Slow Jam # 2
Notation
Two Barflies at a Bar, Next Day
In the opening piece, Poem for an Imaginary Landscape, Kenter sets the scene. We
hear of ‘exhibition dream flowers.......scattering landfill sites’ and ‘a ventriloquism of
dots, jagged leaves’. This is skillful and vivid writing. Like Kenter’s artworks it leaves
wide spaces for our own imaginings to run riot in cracks and corners.
Next comes Angry Eden. Perhaps God / Satan in profile. Eve & Adam behind, eyes
amok, the outlines of their faces curled as question marks.
One of my favourite works is Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
2 sidewalk signs announce
THE HERE AND THE NOW
ARRIVED
A series of mathematical numbers appear in the perhaps apocalyptic margin.
If we can only work out this equation. Just maybe. We might know what to do.
In Raw: Fetish I see anonymous block buildings and collage dislocation. Maybe I
am trying to drive out of town to escape some contemporary doom? Or, is it just the
Friday afternoon rush? How do I feel when I see these 2 road signs?
RAW
NORTH ON FETISH
Some of the works use the techniques of erasure poetry. Some words are harder to
make out. Some are wilfully defaced or obscured. Like a Banksy shredding itself, in a
way. Kenter’s techniques also remind us that some of these words are found text.
Found, random, powerful, poetic. And, as in gardening and poetry and art, the
question - what to leave in and what to leave out?
Smudge is one of these erasure works. A written passage entitled Mathematics
Educators is partly obscured by abstract swirling marks, and collaged part-words,
part-sentences. It is impossible to read the main written passage. This resonates
with me as I could never do the math anyway.
I am now looking at The Tree. I cannot tell what the medium is. I have a black and white image on a computer screen. Nevertheless, after some of the other, harder, images in Eden I can actually feel the almost iconic furred, woody, reassurance of putting my palms on the vast bark of a redwood tree. This is for well being. This is what we Need to Save. And need is an anagram of eden.
As Joni sang ‘ we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden ’. And then what do we do?
Who gets to go on the rocket ship up to space? What does our earthly paradise look like from up there? Will they do anything differently, more responsibly, more equitably, when they come back down to earth? And how long will they keep that up for?
If poets and artists had been in Power since Nixon, would the world be in a better state? Hard to think it would be worse, anyway.
Robert Frede Kenter’s work smudges and illuminates the air here on planet Dollarama. It is informed by his openness to collaboration and community, and his experiences of travelling and living abroad. Kenter is a survivor, and this is good. Eden leaves us wanting more.
On a road trip with Kerouac, or with Cormack McCarthy. Even on your daily commute. You might want this chapbook in your backpack.
Bio : Ivor Daniel lives in Gloucestershire, UK. His poems have appeared in A Spray of Hope, wildfire words, Steel Jackdaw, Writeresque, iamb~wave seven, Fevers of the Mind, The Trawler, Roi Fainéant, Ice Floe Press and The Dawntreader. He has poems forthcoming in After…, Re-Side, Alien Buddha, The Orchard Lea Anthology (Cancer) and The Crump’s Barn Anthology (Halloween). . @IvorDaniel
![Let It Bleed (1) by [Nicole Nesca, Screamin Skull Press]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41EFsqfyeQL.jpg)
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