In his latest collection Derek Sellen takes us on "a journey through darkness to reach the light". He adds in a short introduction that while this may be "a rather cliched pattern, it is also an ancient and sacred one". There are few, if any, cliches in this collection but there are many shades of darkness and light and numerous diversions.

Darker subject matter is apparent in the first two sections of eight, The Recalcitrance of War, and History's Gore, although this does not come without regular dashes of grim humour. In 'Putin and the Stewardesses', he writes about a blatant propaganda meeting in 2022:

 

      Like a second meticulous flower arrangement,

        the stewardesses edge along the long white table,

       attentive as they've been trained:

       one licks carmine lips, Aeroflot red,

       another treads carefully through the landmine 

                                                                words of a question.

 

The abiding theme in the war section is humanity's apparent inability to break the eternal cycle of conflict, as in the poem 'The Hoplite Shield':

 

       See our raddled planet

       reflected in the shield's surface -

       blue-green corrosion, 

       a maze of battle lines

       where ageing empires face off,

       as ready to destroy as when the shield was bright.

 

While the war section also includes poems about Alexander the Great, Chechnya, Ukraine and both world wars, History's Gore has an even greater timespan, from prehistory to "the thrust of a ship/that leaves for another planet/with technocrats and industrialists on board" in 'Rare Earth Metals'.

Throughout the collection, Sellen proves himself to be keenly attuned to the growing plague of social and moral injustices perpetrated on the innocent, whether it be Grenfell, the Post Office scandal in the UK, the unaccountable and despicable actions of ICE in the US or barbaric practices in Ukraine. Writing about Grenfell in 'Where Honour's Due' he employs a refrain that changes between stanzas, beginning with:

 

     Honour to the firefighters,

       Honour to the residents,

       No honour to the councillors,

       No honour to the cost-cutters.

 

Those to blame for these injustices - untrustworthy bureaucrats, lying politicians and media outlets that happily distort the truth - are given no quarter. It is no coincidence that Sellen uses the voice of Shakespeare's Puck to launch his darts. He writes in 'Else the Puck a Liar Call ...'

 

       I am never in one place, my voice echoes from websites

       and news channels, podiums and presidential lips.

       I hide behind masks, I reveal myself.

                                                                        I laugh, I vanish.

       You are living in the time of some of my greatest jests.

 

There is an overpowering sense throughout the collection that art, music, literature, and creativity in general act as a much-needed consolation, sometimes redemption, in face of the world's ills. These allusions do not have to be entirely solemn as we witness in 'The Bad-mannered Body':

 

       mellow mezzo farts

       singing under a winter duvet

       to a body's whimsical score

 

       asparagus-scented wee

       the phantom essence of 

       green succulence of spring

 

Sellen is always eager to peer behind the masks that people don to present a false image of themselves, not just politicians or celebrities but rather the people one meets through life who invariably leave an ineradicable stain, like Mr Mitchell in 'Four Memories':

 

     Mr Mitchell, the kindly decorator,

       one day said,

       as if it was taken that I agreed,

       We should have killed all the blacks in Africa

       while we had the chance

 

There are other masks in these poems, masks of resilience and pride that hide vulnerability and pain, as in 'A Photo of you in Ghent':

 

     The camera's at an angle, so the ground tilts,

       like the world of the partially sighted in which you live,

       braving the kerbs, the steps, the pavement cyclists,

       the unexpected pushchair or the trailing case on wheels.

       You wear a long skirt to hide the bruising,

       sleeves to the wrist and smile boldly for the lens.

 

Sellen's previous collection, The Other Guernica, was dedicated to poems inspired by Spanish art, so it is no surprise to find a section here on paintings that have inspired the poet. One of this reviewer's favourites is 'The Tailor' suggested by a painting by Giovanni Moroni, and also winner of the Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year in 2023: 

 

     Like lover or mortician, he tends the body - 

       fine silks, tough yarns,

                        a tingling oxymoron on your skin.

 

With this section on art, followed by The Gathered Air, which contains poems on jazz and classical music, we appear to be getting closer to the promised light, moving into a world of empathy and celebration of life. And it is not just any old light that approaches but poems embracing a kaleidoscope of colours, including 'Green' in which Puck makes another appearance:

 

       Flagrant, flirtatious, flourishing,

       green winds about the heart stem,

       binding us into each spring's profusion:

 

       cedar and pine minting new growth,

       leaf-spurt in Puck-wakened woods,

       a windy yaw of sky-tall poplars

 

The final destination is reached, after some 100 poems, with words of hope about the Greenham women's peace camp, 'Dancing at Greenham': " a dance beyond derision,/ against destruction - / of Life, of Love, of Being" followed by a celebration of new life in 'Spargelzeit' (asparagus season):

 

       But while we eat the fat pale sticks, soaked

       in sauces, rolled in ham, you are cradled open-eyed

       after a long sleep, aware of the world of sound

       and colour and touch and smell, unblurring

       as the time passes, and milk which for now

       will be flavoured with herbs and buttered spargel.

 

It's been quite a journey, through darkness and light, solemnity and humour, incorporating meetings with tyrants and artists, the caring and the contemptuous. Robert Louis Stevenson would almost certainly have enjoyed the ride:

Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

 

Derek Sellen, The Night Bus, Cinnamon Press, £12.99