Review: Where are the Rebels?

A talented sonovabitch.



Life is all just fucking contingencies, we may try to place some order on things, but there isn't any; life is a senseless procession of disjointed events and Joseph Ridgwell's chapbook encapsulates this. The publishing industry is a filthy place, full of cannibalistic bastards signposting 'talented' writers, popularising and polarizing those whose work they deem as marketable, with publicity bulldogs stapling moronic buzzwords like 'edgy' to whomever happens to be timely or topical on that particular Monday.

The publisher of Ridgwell's new chapbook Geraint Hughes is a poet himself and here is a sample lifted from Poems for the Retired Nihilist, Vol. 2, an anthology that features Leonard Cohen, Viggo Mortensen and Charlie Manson (well, everyone loves a psychotic darling): "Poetry is in you / like shit is in you / you just need an arsehole / to get it out."

Arsehole? Where are the Rebels is one thing; a raw, brutal repository of Ridgwell's personal peccadilloes and obsessions - "taking toilet breaks to go for a wank / out of sheer boredom while the young die screaming in the land of broken dreams". Regret, stargazing, the malaise of a sometimes arrogant beer boy permeate this chapbook. 'The Corpse' was one of my favourite poems - a murdered woman's body gradually disintegrating while life continues unabated outside her flat, "politicians lied / armies clashed / all of it / all of it oblivious to the life and death of one woman" - while 'The Plants Dead and Yellow' gave me a chuckle: "The yellowed stalks hanging crisp and yellow / I grabbed a cold beer from the fridge."

Ridgwell's poetry oscillates violently. He can be so base, especially here in the piece of urban savagery, King's Cross at 6:AM: "They return home to fix-up, rest their aching cunts, count their dollars". This dirty vernacular would have PJ Harvey reaching for her knickers. I have to confess 'Lifers'' cynicism left me cold while 'Ode to a Beer' is an on-your-knees-hands-tight-together prayer to the sublimation of excess. "Even know after all these years / she's still the girl I dream about" ('Death Anniversary') is a beautiful poignant epitaph. I didn't enjoy 'The Nearest Loaded AK47' which reads like a delayed adolescent rant, although I have to admit such thoughts have crossed my skull more than once (Sarah Palin in a shooting gallery with a Glock pistol).

Ridgwell joins Brutalist's Adelle Stripe (Some Things are Better Left Unsaid) and Ben Myers (Spam: Email Inspired Poetry) in Blackheath Books' catalogue of devil-may-give-a-flying-fuck offbeat writers. I would enjoy seeing more of him (although perhaps not in the biblical sense). Give it a few years and this chapbook may well enjoy a reception akin to Trocchi's Young Adam.

[Alan Kelly]

Buy this book>>

Where are the Rebels? by Joseph Ridgwell
Blackheath Books
40 Pages