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Brian Wilson In Swansea Bus Station
Collection of poems.
100 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2015
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January 19, 2016
Prolific Scottish poet, Graham Fulton has written a book that is cunningly disguised. It looks like it should be funny—how about that title? And a number of the poem titles similarly reference someone famous—Mark Rothko, Sissy Spacek, and Bela Lugosi. But just as the poems reference the strange worlds of the famous, they twist that fame into something familiar as in the titular Brian Wilson in the bus station. They juxtapose the ephemeral sense of fame with place—solid, tangible, and foundational. But Fulton switches them around so that the ephemeral seems more grounded—Wilson is actually a bus driver with a penchant for whistling—and place seems more subject to change as the passengers sing Wouldn’t It Be Nice “menacingly in tune”.
Is he a prankster, this Graham Fulton fellow? Yes he is, but a Bertrand Russell prankster. He draws you in with his merry wit and slays you with two lines or less.
In “The Holy Goalie Saves Our Souls”, the “loon” goalie and shaman is dancing and singing very badly, “His singing is pish but very sincere/He means every dissonant/stone age note”. The loon dances, his friends dance with him. They are comic characters and we smile at their antics.
And then, “There’s so much that we don’t understand/When to attack and when to defend/and who is the bastard in the black”. Attacking and defending refer, of course, to footie/football—or soccer if you’re an American reader, and the “bastard in black” is the poor, unpopular ref. But the poet intends a broader scope of attacking and defending. And the bastard in black could be any predator or terrorist. It’s so lightly done that the reader is barely aware until the final three lines, “He holds his balls/but can’t hold a tune/The planet’s a safer place with loons”. We need our loons, our fools, our poets and singers to ward off the daily horrors.
Graham Fulton is deservedly respected and much loved in his home country of Scotland. He’s gaining a wider readership and it’s about time. God Only Knows we need his voice.
Is he a prankster, this Graham Fulton fellow? Yes he is, but a Bertrand Russell prankster. He draws you in with his merry wit and slays you with two lines or less.
In “The Holy Goalie Saves Our Souls”, the “loon” goalie and shaman is dancing and singing very badly, “His singing is pish but very sincere/He means every dissonant/stone age note”. The loon dances, his friends dance with him. They are comic characters and we smile at their antics.
And then, “There’s so much that we don’t understand/When to attack and when to defend/and who is the bastard in the black”. Attacking and defending refer, of course, to footie/football—or soccer if you’re an American reader, and the “bastard in black” is the poor, unpopular ref. But the poet intends a broader scope of attacking and defending. And the bastard in black could be any predator or terrorist. It’s so lightly done that the reader is barely aware until the final three lines, “He holds his balls/but can’t hold a tune/The planet’s a safer place with loons”. We need our loons, our fools, our poets and singers to ward off the daily horrors.
Graham Fulton is deservedly respected and much loved in his home country of Scotland. He’s gaining a wider readership and it’s about time. God Only Knows we need his voice.
Displaying 1 of 1 review