Sarah-Clare Conlon – Marine Drive (Broken Sleep Books, 2022); cache-cache (Contraband Books 2022)
Sarah-Clare Conlon (SCC) is well known in the Manchester literary scene. I have heard her read several times and I have always enjoyed her presentation of words. These two pamphlets, Marine Drive (prose) and cache-cache (poetry) show SCC’s versatility and deft use of language. I have been looking forward to their release and it has been a pleasure to review them.
Marine Drive has no wasted words. It is exact in observation and needle sharp in style. Stories are told obliquely and as soon as I felt a sense emerging from the text, it would turn a sharp corner or go back on itself or turn itself inside out. I felt WOW when reading this. So perfect, so beautifully shaped, with clean black and white lines, maybe zigzagging at times. There was a high level of adept confidence in this pamphlet, with excesses of flair, flexibility and openness in the writing.
“It was hot up here, fuggy. The room she’d specified could probably use some modernising, but my granddad had taught me about roses so I didn’t mind the flock so much and it had been hung proper; no spaces and plumb straight.” (From ‘Surface Tension’)
This quotation gives an impression of the work. It represents a confusing yet compelling grasp towards meaning. I loved it and it certainly deserves more than one perusal, in fact, it needs this.
In cache-cache SCC watches people during the early days of covid lockdowns. Meticulously observed laughing wordplay is the output from her hiding place. SCC gives us her lens, her snippet, she watches us as she herself is being surveilled. I wonder who the plumpish woman in pink is and what is in her bag. I consider where the white-haired man with wraparound sunglasses is going. I start to believe I am the woman in the purple coat, but I have not worn it for years, so I am probably not her. The essentially disconcerting lone magpie frequents the scene regularly, adding to a humorous yet vaguely ominous emotion.
SCC’s gaze is relatable and I was interested to read two phrases that I have pondered on for years, and the different senses they make. The first was ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ (which I think is not true to be honest, as what doesn’t kill you can make you depressed), and the second was ‘Keep your enemies close’ (where I believe the threatening nature of friendship can create a fine line between friend / enemy). With both phrases, and their usage of them, SCC provides us with a wry, dry take on covid laws.
Notwithstanding the content and form, in more clean clear lines, and an index (!), SCC also writes in French, and mixes French and English. Even though I cannot speak French (I could never develop the accent so dropped it aged 14), I enjoyed hearing the words in my mind. However, these works need to be heard aloud, preferably at a reading from SCC.
These two pamphlets by SCC, I was pleased to note, have had pieces in them published by myself in the Mid-life crisis zine series. I flatter myself with good taste.
N.B. There is a Launch event for cache-cache: Wed 26 Oct, 6.30pm, Saul Hay Gallery, Manchester
– Sally Barrett
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