THIS IS NOT A STUNT by Cath Nichols, reviewed by Ren Powell

 

In the afterward of Cath Nichols’s collection This is Not a Stunt, the poet writes about her concern that the poems are not “sufficiently poem-y”, meaning that they are too descriptive and leave little room for the reader to insert their own life experience into the poems. But I don’t believe there was anything to fear. 

This is Not a Stunt, published by Valley Press was published in 2017, but is new to me. It also seemed like a good choice for my June reading, as central to the book is a series of poems about a transgender experience (that of the poet/speaker’s partner). The topics of disability and aging are also broached in the collection, which begins and ends with poems about sleep/dreams. 

Make no mistake, this collection is not a misery memoir in verse, or poems tinged with pity or self-pity. They are relatable, while still offering the potential for cis-gendered or able-bodied readers to gain new insights into the human condition. In a poem discussing Nathan’s request for surgery:

[…] Explaining why
such surgery would be wrong the doctor said

It would be like cutting of the legs of a cripple.

The last line is repeated and referenced in subsequent poems. And discussing possible reasons for cutting off legs in the poem “Life Support”: 

[…] Post-removal the patient 

might not run but they might become more agile.
Some become so heavy in their bodies they attempt

self-removal.

These poems are specific, but certainly touch on recognizable emotions that allow us to empathize without appropriating. A line the poet herself has managed to walk well.

Although Nichols is concerned about the poem-y-ness of the collection, her one formal verse – a pantoum entitled “Reading Would Save Me” – is beautifully written, singing so smoothly, I almost missed the pattern of the repetitions. The first stanza of which reads: 

I thought something would change, but it didn’t.
I thought reading would save me. It hasn’t.
I expected to grow up. I have grown inward.
There are circles and chasing and somebody’s tail. 

The poems about relationship difficulties, about physical disabilities, the poet’s own personal narrative, and her partner’s narrative seem in some ways disparate. For example, there is a poem that quotes a Facebook meme that circulated years ago among academics that was a posted notice with red circles around spelling mistakes, and then a comment making fun of the person with the red pen: a kind of reflection infinitely bouncing between mirrors and pointing fingers. In my mind, this was the most prosaic of the poems. And only made sense to me as a part of the collection on a second read, where I saw it not in dialogue with the other poems, but as a kind of meta commentary. 

The collection didn’t offer me a straightforward, cohesive series of poems. But then… what life is cohesive? As the poet herself mentions in the afterward, there is a challenge in telling a story that can rest comfortably in Keat’s “negative capability”, because we naturally desire clarity. She writes, “A poem may become slippery, and I am fine with that, but if it becomes too unmoored from meaning then I defeat my own purposes.”

These poems cannot be read as a kind of biography in verse. For example, the character of Nathan is referred to as “he” uniformly throughout – leaving the reader to wonder when a transition – if a transition takes place. In my case, this left me feeling somewhat uncomfortable, questioning the relationship of my own prurient curiosity with a genuine desire to become better informed on a very sensitive aspect of our culture. 

That said, I also believe that sitting with what is uncomfortable is probably one of the most valuable things we can do as a reader.

There are also a few poems entirely free of specific narrative but are tied to the subject matter, to nature, and to a conscious, internalized sense beauty in a way that is (dare I say) edifying.

From the final poem “Chiaroscuro”: 

March marigolds hold out their cups
shout, Look at me! Look at me, 

don’t I do yellow exceptionally well? 

Cath Nichols introduces herself in The Poetry Archive:

I've been a queer journalist in Manchester, a poetry events organiser in Liverpool, a life model, and a waitress, amongst other things. I taught creative writing at Leeds University for ten years. I've been chronically ill since 2017 after a genetic predisposition was triggered. This is Not a Stunt (Valley Press, 2017) is my second poetry collection and celebrates the humour and mundanity of disability and trans identities.