Good as the title is, I wasn’t entirely sure how it reflected the poetry – the word acid seems misplaced. In his summary at the back of the book, John talks of the corrosive nature of acid, and I’m not sure how this relates to his plainly descriptive depiction of nature. There is the more obvious drugs reference, and again this seems slightly at odds with the seemingly ordinary take on the world. Maybe John was taking acid while writing the poems (on a trip, as mentioned), and it was this that inspired him to take a fresh look at nature, although there is no mention of drugs until he talks of magic mushrooms near the end. Perhaps reading the book is better enhanced with mind-expanding drugs, but I didn’t get to find that out.
John also talks of politics in his summary, yet politics is not explored in the book. He also asks, “where are the seers, sages, prophets, madmen, architects of desire, and alchemists of the soul?” He’s another person posing a question, but not really answering it himself. Instead, this is a gently meditative, readable
book, and as he says in a poem towards the end, he definitely seems to have become at one with nature. NICK FISK
7/10 £5.99, Underground Press
Merthyr Writing A brilliant cover, though the parental advisory sticker, “This Book Contains Adult Material” will mislead any dirty old sods leafing through it. It did this one, anyway. Once over that disappointment there are a few more, and yet the wish to like the book (it is from Merthyr after all) will carry the sympathetic reader along. Voyages round my Father by Tony Fyler was the piece I enjoyed best, followed by Viv Prothero’s Laura and Des Barry’s Backgammon. J BROOKES
£4.99, Published by Merthyr Council
BlancheËs Last Fling by Ivor C Treby This is a genuinely peculiar book. A triptych, of which the first part is very uneven poems, the best being the eponymous Blanche’s Last Fling. The second section is an account of a truly epic Greyhound bus trip round the States which manages to avoid being interesting in a very interesting way. I get the impression that Mr Treby has a following, and maybe this book (his last we are told several times, for he has given up verse…) is in a gay code that I don’t understand. There are hints of steamy encounters in saunas and fumblings in bus station washrooms, but mainly it is an account of trips to McDonalds and the costs of motel rooms. The final section is quite another matter. Fifteen very well worked sonnets of a ritual, claustrophobic, clownish malevolence. Worth reading. J BROOKES
£7.50, De Blackland Press
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