My Publications (Poetry)
Tesserae (Oversteps, 2003) by Helen Kitson
What the litmags said about Tesserae :-
"The worlds of art, history, music, science and theology are examined...The collection goes forward and backwards in universal time and also in personal time, from the womb to the afterlife...What I feel Tesserae does also exceptionally well is to examine the nature of a wide range of relationships...in particular, between our primal selves and our social selves - in a realistic and unsentimental way...Tesserae is a slim volume with gargantuan content inside." (Quality Women's Fiction)
"Helen Kitson's style and language are essentially modern. Female icons, whether from Hollywood, history, or the fictional world are a major source of subject matter...the most powerful poems here are the understated ones, such as 'Alice Grows Up' and 'Orange-Tips', whose images and insights linger in the reader's mind." (Raw Edge)
"I read it through at first almost casually and yet now, in the three weeks the book has been in my pocket, I have returned to it dozens of times and never been disappointed. But then, I like originality, finely crafted poetry, honesty, courage and integrity. If you do not, it is not for you." (Orbis)
"There is a power and vulnerability in her poems, where the victims' case is always closely observed and where they often emerge victorious in the readers' eyes. She understands and speaks for women, there's no question of that, but in such a way that she speaks for all...This collection is a mosaic that builds an intriguing picture. A collection to return to, travel with, and in some respects, learn from." (Reach)
At the
scrag end of the world,
It seems, this blasted heath
That falls to a dried riverbed.
Where water once flowed,
Now there are slabs of slate
And the skulls of sheep:
A reminder of the thin line
Between life and death; the slip
Of a once sure foot.
What bleached these old bones?
The living sheep are unimpressed
By death. They live with it.
They graze instead among the bracken
And heather bitten to the quick.
Lean and hardy, we call them stupid
As they skitter away.
The red brand on each flank
Looks like a patch of dried blood.
Seeing's Believing, (Scratch, 1992) by Helen Kitson
What the litmags said about Seeing's Believing :-
She deals perceptively and honestly with relationships and the human failings or misunderstandings which can sometimes wreck them…I like the way she makes the characters who people her poems seem like those we’ve met, known, tried to get away from. They feel real and she details them and their surroundings with honesty and without making too many judgements about them. The poems are vivid and face the harshness of lives, giving the reader something which sometimes disturbs. That’s no bad thing… (Paul Donnelly in Tears in the Fence)
…she manages to toughen her poems up, often with stunning, off-centre endings that really make you sit up and think. This…is real life in all its glory or otherwise, a world of known dismay, lust, love and guilt. Its toughness is its own answer though… (Rupert Loydell in Event)
Helen Kitson writes assured, tender, streetwise work…The poems look at familiar things in unfamiliar ways… (Ian McMillan in Dog)
An epigraph from Sylvia Plath and two references to Stevie Smith signpost a confessional poetry which explores tensions between vulnerability and toughness and intention to retain the rawness of experience in the making of poetry. (David Kennedy in The Wide Skirt)
Helen Kitson in Seeing’s Believing recreates a world of Catholic guilt, prostitution, failed mariages, masturbation to porn videos etc. You may not want to be in this world but some people are and Helen Kitson is very good on what it’s like. (Pennine Platform)
At best, echoing Plath and Carol Ann Duffy, this is a gloves-off, vulnerable and powerful debut, pulsing to disco-beat, radio sounds and video tapes - the Law prowling the kerbs - where snowflakes turn to acid-rain and where pain…is given dignity…(Phil Bowen in Odyssey)
The often grim and unflinching subject matter does not prevent these poems from being most enjoyable and satisfying in their exact pinpointing of situation and feeling, and interesting interplay of characters and conflicts, that makes many like beautifully compressed short stories. (Stella Stocker in Orbis)
HUSBAND, FISHING
It gave him an
interest
and a place to which he could escape
when he could cope no longer
with a cold wife and the three sons.
His wife said he was cruel,
his sons stole the maggots
and threw them at little girls.
He meant no harm: he caught the fish
cleanly and threw most of them back, mouths
intact. His wife suspected another woman.
Another cold fish, he said, feeling cruel;
pretending he had a monocle
and a Nazi glint in his eye.
But he thought the fish were beautiful,
he liked their scales which shimmered
like sequins. His wife owned a
sequinned dress, he liked the feel
of it; he liked to touch her
and feel her squirm:
with that look on her face,
as though he'd caught her mouth
with a stray silver fish-hook.
Love Among the Guilty, (Bloodaxe, 1995) by Helen Kitson
What the litmags said about Love Among the Guilty :-
Kitson seems to be very much a poet of the urban 90s, writing on sex, love, drugs and growing up, with a language that is at once unflinching and lyrical…It will be interesting and enlightening to see how Kitson’s work develops, whether the lyrical or the unflinching side of the coin lands face up. (Ian McMillan in Yorkshire Post)
The wry Kitson tone balances between sympathy and cynicism, with an understandable bias for the female view. (Bill Turner in Poetry Review)
They self-consciously suffer from being so close to their experience (a sort of sullen drabness of tone) but - more than occasionally - surprise with their ability to catch the almost accidental tenderness of some raw emotional moment. [...] Most of these direct but grainy poems would read aloud extremely well. Even on the page the voice pushes through with direct statement and a billboard-like punchiness. [...] At their best her poems have the odour of a late-night ashtray; the soiled sweet smell of stale talcum. I enjoyed their anxious physicality. (Peter Bland in London Magazine)
…she deals with her themes in a direct and economic manner with an unusual mixture of sympathy and cynicism…The issues raised are of interest to most teenagers and Kitson’s outspoken, unfussy style would make these poems accessible and appealing to them. (Audrey Baker in The School Librarian)
Each poem is dramatic, punchy, tightly focussed. Kitson enjoys her lyrical technique in the same way that PJ Harvey enjoys using guitar riffs: not as an end in itself, but as a source of pleasure in which might otherwise be a dour activity. [...] ...disillusionment is moderated by a fierce respect for people’s ability to survive. The toughness of these poems is not a selfish distance, but a guarded strategy for engagement. (Joel Lane in Scratch)
Individually, poems impress: contemporary, direct, unflinching; they look into the nooks and crannies of behaviour and record what they see. Judgements tend to be self-judgement - that uneasy guilt of the title. Each poem tells its story. And the stories, at their best…persaude by their accuracy and sensual appeal. [...] …Kitson is worth reading - like her work or not (and I certainly like her best work), there is a debate going on. (James Sale in Tears in the Fence)
Helen Kitson’s work…is uncomfortably and inspiringly real…But there is much courage and real, if equivocal, hope in these pages (Ailsa Holland in Subtext)
THE INNOCENCE OF THE CONDEMNED MAN
Lured by those eyes, led on the leading-string of his own passion and folly, utterly love-sick, he stole upon the footsteps of his unseemly hope - and at the end found himself cheated.
THOMAS MANN,
Death in Venice
There is a boy. He makes me wear
this crown of thorns. His parents
are elderly and devoted, like the
peasants of German fairy-tales.
He makes me dream of verandahs and dawns
and sickly children hanging in the Uffizi -
that mausoleum! That casket of dead
things, the boys who will never marry.
Let the boy flinch, let him blush:
let him bite holes into my hands.
I have plaited his blond hair,
that much belongs to me. I kiss
My fingers (they smell of washed hair).
I have fainted in the Uffizi but I know
the realities of the painted boundaries.
I am a cautious man; I observe the rules