Review: Cedars of Lebanon, Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington 25.4.10
Yesterday in Stoke Newington’s famous Abney Park cemetery a group of young sculptors, philosophers, artists and poets met to ‘cast an art spell.’ As I made my way in the sunshine towards the derelict chapel at the heart of the cemetery I looked out for black-magic clues, but all I found was a tree strewn with many banana skins, as if some monkey ritual had taken place in the night.
After finding the group, and a young girl in a yellow dress who was in search of the perfect leaf revived with me with carton of mango juice, we made our way to a clearing amongst the tombs, near the grave of someone called Edward Leach. Two old men sitting on a bench with a transistor radio and a plastic bag of beers stayed for a while but were mostly ignored, like a couple of ghosts. ‘A famous poet died this week,’ one of them suddenly said. No one knew who he meant. ‘I heard it on radio four.’ After this they got up, presumably to find a peaceful spot undisturbed by ignorant young poets.
Llew Watkins read from his collection China, pacing back and forth on the impromptu stage (poor old Edward Leach no doubt shuddering from the 18th century). Watkins, who hails from Hay-on-Wye, the tiny village on the English/Welsh border world famous for its summer book festival, writes about the desires and frustrations of a privileged youth. The search for purity (‘we can sleep in the same bed and it’s OK’), beauty and innocence – in European cities, English lakes and the houses of daughters evokes a time when love was as simple as I-haven’t-got-any-money-and-can’t-come-to-Paris-to-see-you. You get the sense that he is writing about a group of friends all in love with each other from their recent adoscelence.
A graveyard is probably a good choice to listen to this kind of thought. The inscriptions on the graves, reminders that youth is fleeting, emphasised Watkin’s poetry to me in a way that made me more forgiving than if I had read it alone. As a Buddhist, Watkins will know of the practice of visiting ‘charnel houses’ where the deceased are ritually burned, as an antidote to lust. There is darkness in his poetry, insight into the nature of desire. He write that ‘comfort is what I’m most afraid of,’ perhaps another Buddhist reference to the casting off of the home life and going forth. Watkins is to spend five months this summer alone, in a hermitage in Wales. With time away from the group, it will be interesting to see in his future work how he relates to himself.
