IRENE CUNNINGHAM
-Writer-
Nothing wrong with chatting to your walls, postulating the present while praising the past. These poems have their fun moments, and bluntly communicate some health issues, sex politics and how Brighton brightens the poet’s life – even the complaints present interesting images. The human condition sits here spouting for all it’s worth. This collection of musings, observations and selected reportage lifts an eyebrow and a smirk at the passing of time, successful survival and wishful thinking. Many of the poems collected here have been published in literary magazines and anthologies; they are her view of her world, which in the poet’s mind, is going to hell in a plastic carrier bag. She is quite pleased that reaching the age of 70 means the worst or the worst may not happen in her lifetime… but she’s generally the happiest person anyone knows.
UP @ GROUND LEVEL: begins with that epiphany, then the wish-speculations and descriptions of the world at present, casting back and forward with comment and opinion. Also here are magical drifts of imagination and what-ifs. It’s partly a vision of life in Brighton, some from looking up out of her basement window (yes that cover with the butterflies) and loving the world around her. The poems range in time, motion & death… slip through change, moving, pushing energy and inspiration to go where and do what, when? Dream, question, demand; remember particulars, younger selves, places, people and men. Speculation/answers. Points, journeys, places, things & tales & imaginary friends. What-ifs, music, drinking, musing, searching for voodoo… dismissing, making statements, running with magic (not scissors) towards and through alcohol and sex. Some of the poems collected here have been published in literary magazines and anthologies; they are her view of her world.
Cartoon moments are evident in future dinner-table tales where our actions are reminiscent of Tom & Gerry, the Road Runner – Penelope Pitstop. We exist in a circus expanding in the small world where it’s difficult to decide truth from mad fiction and the artificial insemination aspect. This collection probably doesn’t show the funny side, although that depends on age and related cynicism. The mix of blatant and repeated images of how bad it is, inside and out of wild western madness is like a great pot of soup bubbling to spill whatever we do, or don’t do. All we can do is live until we don’t, blurt our stories and laugh at how we moved on and on and on.
Everything is normal right here and now… some hanging on from the 60s & 70s mostly because we’re still going, and the digital age won’t burgeon properly until we’ve left the planet. Inside my old head life is grand as long as it’s allowed to be itself. Normal now, here, is crazy. The obstacle course considers the trail we weave, shows its approval of fashionable upcycling and branded sportswear; in a wild world, people-watching is entertainment, gathering pensive comments from the aged. If this is the beginning of our end times, it must be captured.