By John Bolland
“Get aff that fuckin horse! Now! / It’s nae yours!”
The atomisation of all of our lives; by class-expectations, gender-expectations, mortality, the division of labour, the need for numbness – is explored in Jo Gilbert’s first collection, WTF is normal anyway?
This adventure is scaffolded by the leitmotif verses which punctuate it (WTF is normal anyway? #1-#8). Interleaved by these philosophical reflections is a brilliant sequence of poems which map a life-journey from childhood through love, loss & recovery to feisty self-definition.
The tension between expectation & aspiration sets the collection abuzz. Technically, she masters the hairpin-volta, the flattening push-out shot, leaving the reader flat on their arse on some unforeseen conclusion. And, crucially, not always a bleak or desolate one.
The warmth and generosity of Gilbert’s attention to detail glows through poem after poem:
[. . .] brither an sister dunce / unner a shooer o moolah confetti / courtesy o Last Suspect comin in at 50/1
A click of flame sways on its heels, igniting a firefly
Bouley bashers showin aff / the size o their motors
We swagger oan tae the waves / lauchin, trippin, / makkin up daft names / eens it wid stick / the hale o oor lives.”
Her poems own the intoxicating (and often intoxicated!) moment ‘before’; but there is always an after, sometimes immediate, sometimes eventual.
The wisdom of her journey beyond normal nails our addictions; to drugs, to people, to the idea of normal,and performs recovery, which is to say self-ownership.
Poems like, ‘This is how it is, If nithin changes, nithin changes’ and ‘Trinkets’ condense the hard won lessons of life, clear and direct, just as the exuberant firework memories of other poems exult in lost moments.
Gilbert excels in generous grief and wistful recollection on the page (and on the stage): the longing of ‘Hankering’ and, in ‘Every Morning’ (“I give you to God / so I can have my day.”)
For me, these poems invoke fankles of raw emotion:
Envy – wishing I had loved like that.
Gratitude – that I have not lost like that.
And perhaps – in both instances – awareness that I refuse to acknowledge that I have.
There is no sentimentality in Gilbert’s voice – these are not exaggerations for effect. 24 carat love/24 carat loss.
Clearly, an aspect of the individuality of Gilbert’s voice is in her commitment to writing in Doric. Gilbert is among the pre-eminent Doric poets working today, alongside others such as Lesley Benzie, Alastair Lawrie (winner of the McLellan Scots Poetry Competition 2023), Sheila Templeton and (Of course!), Sheena Blackhall.
Like these others, Gilbert’s Doric is direct, fluent and unmannered. It is not fantoosh, fashious or perjink, fine though those words may be. When she says ‘gypit’ she means ‘gypit’ – “Made wae a spoonful o lurve Momma.”
Although the collection is full of humour (often dark), this is writing and language that takes itself absolutely seriously. No antiquarian impulse to ‘preserve’; no Teuchter (or Toonser) cringe. Living language and, as Tom Leonard wrote: “all livin language is sacred / fuck thi lohta thim.”
It would be great to see original writing in Scots such as this recognised more widely as deserving acclaim and promotion, rather than translations of dead ‘English’ classics into ‘skuilroom’ Scots.
But, like all poets, Gilbert writes within an international and eclectic milieu, atomised, perhaps, but diverse and generous. She is not a ‘Doric poet’ despite her importance as one: she is a poet who sometimes writes in Doric.
Depending where you set the bar for ‘standard’ English (aka ‘normal’? Surely not!) over half of the poems in the collection are in standard English orthography, their mood and content blending seamlessly with the claik of their companion poems. Gilbert acknowledges the contribution of Linda Jackson of Seahorse Publications in putting the collection together.
Michael Symmons once advised “Never ask a question in a poem that you already know the answer to.” Gilbert’s iteration around the question of WTF is normal, anyway? zeroes in on the conclusion that we need to recover from the addiction to received ideas of normal – that not ‘being normal’ is her (and potentially our) salvation.
Her solution, summarised in the final iteration, is personal but a good place to start. But the journey to that starting point is guid, rauch, rich, fine flyting with life’s joys and griefs.
John Bolland is a poet, writer and artist based in the North East of Scotland. His poetry and short fiction have been widely published in journals and anthologies. He blends a lifelong commitment to writing with scientific training and first-hand experience of the international oil & gas industry. His latest poetry collection, Pibroch was published in 2022 by Red Squirrel Press (and reviewed in the GRB here.) Find out more about John’s writing and other work here – http://aviewfromthelonggrass.com/
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