Strange Bedfellows

Mark Edwards, Clearout Sale, (Andromache Books, 2009). ISBN: 9781409246954. £9.50

It is seldom that the various creative forms, some would say competing forms, slither between the same covers. Strict segregation always seems to be the order of the day, with prose and poetry apparently never destined to get on well enough to meet in a single collection. So Andromache Books and Mark Edwards should be congratulated in bringing out a collection that marries these strange bedfellows.

This gives Clearout Sale an interesting slant, and it has to be said that the combination of poetry and short stories sit together without conflict, and without recourse to endless conversations about what makes some poems poetry and not prose. It makes you wonder why there aren’t more collections of ‘writing’ in general, rather than collections that must be categorised as either one or the other. Many poets write short prose and vice-versa, and you wonder if there is a future in such grab-bag collections. So full marks to Andromache Books for being brave enough, probably against all ‘sound’ marketing advice, to put together such a potpourri or, if you like, a ‘clearout sale’ of Mark Edwards’ writing.

Publishing innovations aside, any book only earns its water-wings — with which to paddle the unrelenting swirl of the modern publishing pool — by what’s inside its covers. And while Clearout Sale is at times an enjoyable book, it’s also one whose unrelentingly dark passages are enlightened too rarely by revelation and sparkle. Ultimately, it is a flawed collection, riddled with unevenness.

First, you are left in no doubt through which area of the United Kingdom Edwards will be dragging you with his words, as this is a book so Scottish you can almost taste the Caledonian clichés. It basks in a skuzzy native light, mapping out roads that seemingly shuffle around with an inert energy and very often only lead from small council flat to dissolute local boozer. In this, it brings to mind the music of the untouchably brilliant Arab Strap, yet never quite comes out as well as Falkirk’s finest musical purveyors of disappointed sordidness.

The book gets off to a brisk start with ‘Midnight’ — one of the best poems in the book, if for no other reason than it contains the line “I hate Mongols”, which, I should say before anyone complains, is a piece of glimpsed graffiti rather than a statement on behalf of the poet. But this poem is more than a childish line of fading graffiti; it is a trip into an old bomb shelter, replete with full sensory guide to the reek of teenage piss and general decay within, that becomes a trap full of the flashing steel blade of an assailant and the slamming shut of any hope of an escape route.

And yet, while he frequently flirts with living up to the promise displayed in the first piece (as indeed he does in the poems ‘Kelly’, ‘Tooth’, and ‘CV’), Edwards never quite succeeds in pulling it off over the long-run of the book. Too many of the poems appear to have been splatted out during a long and legendary lunchtime session down the boozer. While I’m sure Edwards has done all the requisite edits and re-drafting required, and has worked very hard at his craft, a faint whiff of ‘Will this do?’ stalks the poems. This lends an immediacy and charm to the poems, but it soon palls.

Oddly, as if to show he is nothing but a contrary writer, the complete opposite rings true of the gathered short stories. They are perfectly controlled, studied and are presented with a sense of hard-won care that the poems don’t possess. Nor do they go wandering off into interesting yet ultimately futile cul-de-sacs of dilapidated tenements, as the poems often do. The problem for me with the stories is that they don’t wander very far at all; for all their technical excellence, they are, on the whole, a moribund lot waiting for a rush of excitement to propel them forwards. I should say this may be partly down to a failing on my part, having a general aversion to stories where nothing much happens but which are presented as vignettes of lives struggling to get going.

While the content doesn’t always appeal, you can’t fault the writing. Again, as the poems show, Edwards does occasionally step up a gear and let the world see what he is really capable of. And again, as in his poetry, what he is capable of as a prose writer is very good; it’s just a shame he doesn’t seem able to produce his very best with any sort of consistency. In particular, ‘Man in Black’, where nothing much happens beyond Colin knocking over Big Stevie in the pub car park and the aftermath, what does happen has a power lacking from much of the rest of the prose. ‘Overtime’ and ‘Holiday’ stand out also.

One thing I did find unsatisfactory in the short stories is that, amongst the myriad cast of down-at-heel and no-hopers that appear, there are multiple mentions of Colins, Stevies, Andys, Beckys and Sarahs. Presumably these are the same characters, the implication being that these short stories are interlinked. However, this is not made clear, and it could be after all that Edwards has a small pool of suitable names which he just recycles and assigns to different characters. The confusion may come from the limitations afforded by the writing style Edwards has chosen to apply, which means that, whoever they are, all the characters are poorly drawn and serve only as ciphers who come out with the occasionally heavily-brogued, perfectly parochially-syntaxed sentence, for the overall sense of nothing much happening.

In an interview to accompany this book, Edwards cites James Kelman and Tom Leonard as influences, among others. Frankly, he needn’t have bothered; both Kelman’s and Leonard’s DNA stalk the collection. While we all dip in the trough of personal influence, there is a feeling that Edwards has over-indulged to the point where he is so under the influence that he has almost obliterated his own writing. In essence, Edwards comes over as a good pasticher and writer of technical competence. His voice — which no doubt will be described elsewhere as highly original, challenging, unflinching, etc. — is actually too studied, too borrowed and frankly too recognisable as somebody else’s.

I also note with interest that Edwards is currently at work on a novel. Given that this collection is almost uniquely a mixed bag of poetry, albeit poetry rooted in prose, I wonder if the writer is still wrestling with what he wants to be. He is definitely a story-teller and not a bad one at that, but I suspect he is still looking for the right medium in which to propel his tales into the consciousness of his readers. There is nothing wrong with Edwards having his wrestle; we all try various forms before hitting upon the one that suits us best. But we rarely enjoy the luxury of doing this in print. At times that is the note struck within these pages — of an apprentice rather than an emerging master.

I would say, if pressed, that Edwards is more of a short story writer. Yet the poems collected here are memorable for the twitch of energy buzzing through them. While they don’t go very far, they do at least go somewhere, something which, despite their superior technical excellence, his short stories fail to do. The poems give the impression of being the best he can do poetically. There is an overpowering sense that there is more to come from Edwards as a prose writer, because if you strip the mechanics of the two forms as presented here down to their nuts and bolts then, as far as technique is concerned, the short stories have the edge. The poems, though controlled in places, do veer off wildly in others.

Would this book have worked better as a conventional poetry or short story collection? Does Edwards master one form over the other? The short answer is no. He is consistently inconsistent in both, so it can’t be said he’s wasted his poems by inviting the short stories to lodge within their space. Edwards is a good writer striving to be a better one, and for this alone I will follow his next move with interest. There’s enough here, just about, to suggest that he warrants future curiosity.