Collected Poems

John Berger is a poet, Art critic, playwright and general European polymath. Collected Poems brings together nearly 60 years of work in one English language volume. Enhancing the start of each discrete section are beautiful, understated monotypes by his son, Yves Berger. The volume examines history, emigration, place and love; collectively it contemplates the impact of war, and also of the passage of time and memory over a considerable period. Art and politics are especially important. Characterised by a strong sense of place, time and nature, the geographical range of the poems, with their particular focus on peasantry and on working the land, are located predominantly within Europe; yet they also makes occasional forays outside, for example to Santiago in Chile. The movement of peoples between countries underscores the fluidity of populations and also of the land itself.

The physical shapes of the poems are wide ranging and liquid, creating a variety of tempos both aurally and visually throughout. Some of the poems are written in short lines, each bearing an initial capitalisation, thus creating a series of short, pithy utterances that rely on an arresting image, concept or movement, as in “At Remaurian”:

Down from the mountain
The yellow of knife-handles
Past the olives
To the age of my mill …

In others, such as “Amsterdam”, long sentences are painted onto the page without punctuation or initial capitalisation, giving the impression of gentle brushstrokes and the free flow of nature:

high up
close to the bed of the sky
flounders are making
ash fall like snow

gulls wheeling in
smaller
and smaller
circles
lower their feet in flight
to walk upon the flakes .

Many of the poems leave the reader feeling the poet’s connection with humanity, and the sensation of the body melding with nature. This is particularly evocative in “At Remaurian VI” where the environmental descriptions are visceral and bring the landscape to a human life:

As I climb
The mountain sweats
The heart beats faster.
Stones drip
To trickle down the spine

The movement of the body is also integral to “Terrain” where the gentle rhythmic intonation and repetitions lend a musicality to the words. The waves of written words wrap around the page, as the sounds flow through the reader’s mind:

I’m going
going
To lie on the earth
the earth
will lay back both her ears
and with my forearm
forearm
between them
the fingers of my hand
will play…

Images of nature, grass and scythes are very striking, summoning the smells and sounds of the farming industry in Europe, such as in “Family Tree”:

   Which settles on the grass
When the car has passed
cows grass
grass of the neighbour’s horse
two sheeps grass
fowls grass
grass of four apple trees
Serbian grass
my ancestors scythed
I have unusually long arms
their length
would have made scything easier.

Art and colour infuse Berger’s poetry, creating vivid visual imagery from beginning to end. Some of the poems draw ekphrasically from the work of well-known artists – consider “Hendrickye by Rembrandt”, “On a Degas Bronze of a Dancer” and “Rembrandt Self Portrait”. Others take their artistic inspiration more directly from observation, such as in “Memory of a Village Church”: “a Madonna painted blue”. In “Their Railways”, two lines, “Flammes bleues/Fleurs jaunes, are repeated at the beginning and end of the main stanza, crafting an effective aural and visual picture of the moving train.

This is a beautifully collated collection and one to be savoured and absorbed through all the senses.

Louisa Cross