This is a collection of
poetry and prose and drawings by unpublished authors with an introduction by
Ian Dury. Although there are no author's biographies, there are pictures of the
contributors on the inside cover. They all look to be in their late teens/early
twenties and this is reflected in many of the compiled pieces. They represent a
look at life from a young person’s perspective. There is a lot of interest in
sex and in relationships and less interest in wider society or in the macro-economic
environment or in the nuts and bolts of the day to day world, like what are
people’s jobs and how do the bills get paid.
Many of the pieces are
interesting in what they are not about rather than what they do describe.
Taking it as given that the authors could write about whatever they like in
whatever style they like, there is a uniformity of a somewhat downbeat tone to
the proceedings. There is not much of a whiff of a Jeeves and Wooster here, nor an Evelyn Waugh. The strain
is more that of George Orwell or George Gissing or Alan Sillitoe.
The settings, where these
are identified, for the pieces and pictures include the bedroom, the kitchen, the
canal, the dance hall. There is a focus on the humdrum and the mundane with no
room for grand sentiments.
Among the pieces that made
the strongest impression on me are “Teenage Poems Crumpled at the Back of My
Drawer”, the title of which gives the gist, and “Death at the Dog and Duck”
which is a nice arrangement of short phrases spread over the page in separate
columns.
I do not know what happened
to all of the contributors. Andrew Darlington, Anne Clark and Claire Dowie I
have heard of subsequently. I do know very well what happened to one of the
contributors because it is me. My piece closes the book, like “The Dead” closes
Dubliners. That is a flippant analogy but there is a very pronounced James
Joyce influence in my piece. I do not know if the other contributors got to
choose what could be included but mine was an extract from a longer set of
pieces and not one I would have chosen myself given the chance.
My wife pointed out to me
that this book is very much of its time (it was published in 1983, although my
piece dates from at least a couple of years earlier). Think Thatcher,
recession, unemployment, the music of Joy Division. That is the cultural
background to these pieces.
What this book also
represents is something that I feel is missing from today’s generations which
is a desire to actively engage in the culture. The contributors, I believe, did
not see themselves as passive consumers or as distant observers of the culture.
They had the desire and the means (usually in the form of photocopied fanzines)
to engage in the cultural conversation and this book is just the tip of the
iceberg. When you add in non-fiction fanzines and the creation of music, this
type of engagement was taking place on a massive scale.
It is as a reminder of times
when young people saw themselves as the creators and the curators of the
culture rather than its passive consumers that this book has (small)
significance. Young people wanted to be involved directly either through the
creation of the work or through a critique of the results rather than through a
“Wow. Cool” type post on Twitter or Facebook. This could mean that sometimes
the overall quality of the pieces created could be sacrificed for the sake of
immediacy of impact or for the power of verisimilitude. “I want poetry that is
real” writes Andrew Darlington in his poem Manifesto. Ultimately, this book is
too true to be good.
