Back in December 2022, I sang the praises, here, of Jackie Wills’ SmithǀDoorstop book, On Poetry*, and noted the excellence of her exegesis of Patience Agbabi’s superb ‘The Doll’s House’, a poem written in ‘rime royale’; 12 seven-line stanzas, each in an ABABBCC pattern, originated by Chaucer and used by Spenser, Yeats and Auden among others. The poem slowly but surely nails Britain’s terrible culpability for its colonial crimes and practice of slavery, the horrors and legacy of which it, as a sovereign state, is yet to acknowledge fully, let alone provide any restitution for.

So I thought, a month or two ago, that it was time to read some more of Agbabi’s poetry, and I bought her 2008 collection, Bloodshot Monochrome, published by Canongate and available here.

It has an arresting cover, in orange, red, black and white, but it’s let down by being printed on is the sort of low-quality paper which Puffin Books used in the Seventies. Thankfully, though, the poems don’t disappoint. As ‘The Doll’s House’ demonstrated, Agbabi is a brilliant, sometimes offbeat formalist poet, and there are, inter alia, many fine sonnets in the book, concluding with a 14-sonnet sequence, ‘Vicious Circle’ which unfolds a Noir-ish tale of dangerous desire; an unorthodox crown of sonnets of sorts. As much as her subject-matter and viewpoint, it’s Agbabi’s play with form which makes her poems stand out..

A series of seven dramatic monologues really grabs me, including ‘Skins’, chosen by Carol Rumens in 2016 as a Guardian ‘Poem of the Week’, here. As Rumens notes, it’s a sestina, but with short lines, meaning that it doesn’t drag on wearily and underwhelmingly like many sestinas do. Over the years, I’ve had the occasional tussle with myself about the ethics of dramatic monologues, and which voices it is acceptable to adopt and which not. Those Agbabi inhabits are fine and entirely believable. My favourite is ‘Heads’, in which Thomas Cromwell sardonically, and post-mortem, digresses from the appearance of Anne of Cleves to a discussion of beheading executioners:

My fate was set. For Anne Boleyn he hired
the best from France; for me a beardless boy.
Be not afraid, I said, pray, take this gift.
’Tis all I have. Both of our hands were shaking.
I prayed aloud. The crowd, an army shrieking
Traitor! Its face degenerate with hatred.

* I recently re-read On Poetry and found it as illuminating and helpful as I did the first time round.