The Helen Kitson Report

Before I picked up this book, the nearest I’d come to a graphic novel were a couple of Shakespeare plays lavishly illustrated by Gerald Scarfe. I’m also the first to admit that I’m hazy about how the comic has moved on, and was not exactly prepared for what the medium can offer.

There are many things I like about this book. I think the overall concept – a series of ‘poetic short stories’, each one written by Sean Michael Wilson but illustrated by different artists – is a fabulous one. It’s fascinating to see how each illustrator approaches each piece and what their art brings to the text.

As a poet, I was particularly interested to see how well poetry and art could be fused. I must admit I was sceptical, but having read this book I am very excited at the idea of combining poetry with visual art. I do feel that I’ve perhaps been guilty of not thinking outside the box: if it’s poetry, it’s high art, right? Well, up to a point. Beautiful Things challenges how we read poetry. On one level I can imagine this book would appeal to people who wouldn’t otherwise read poetry. But it’s also a useful reminder to those of us who are a bit precious about poetry that a poem should be accessible to the reader. It should have something to say about the world we live in now. I’m all for mystery in poems, but some poets take this to a level where mystery becomes confusion and an almost deliberate opacity. For many readers (myself included, at times) this is often merely irritating. I don’t mean to suggest that poetry should ‘dumb down’, but I do think that poets should be more open to influences from other genres, other mediums.

Perhaps we also need to re-evaluate what constitutes ‘art’, and why. Traditionally there has been a divide (not always clear-cut) between craft and art, and between high art and commercial art. I don’t, ultimately, think these are useful labels. Above all else, what matters is whether or not something engages the viewer and gives him/her something to think about. What I personally object to is art that seems cynically corporate, which is why Damien Hirst leaves me unmoved. Whereas the work of Tracey Emin (who I think would make a wonderful comic-book artist, by the way) might be less slick, but seems to come from the heart and has – for me at least – far greater resonance. Her work speaks to me in a way that Hirst’s never will. Those who would write off comic book art had better also write off Roy Lichtenstein, Henri Rousseau, and Jackson Pollock.

There is a great deal of thinking, as well as emotion, evident in Beautiful Things. This is not just a bunch of words thrown together with some random illustrations.

The pictures complement the text beautifully. They range from the traditional ‘comic strip’ style of Pedro Belushi (‘Thick Description’) to the Japanese-inspired languorous flowing lines of Neil Cameron in the sensual ‘The Unveiling’; and the dark, smudgy, sinister drawings (which seem to me to have something in common with William Blake’s apocalyptic visions) of Ben Theil in ‘Michael Leaves Home’. I would also single out for special mention the piece entitled ‘A New Obsession’: artist Juan Chavarriga’s “more is less” style here is quite superb. This short piece is ‘Lolita’ encapsulated in two pages of text and graphics.

Inevitably, some pieces work better than others, and in a couple of cases I did feel as if I’d been coshed over the head with a blunt instrument. But personal taste comes into it, of course, and my preference is for the subtle. The best pieces in this book (and that’s most of them) have a slightly skewed, unsettling take on the world – on everyday events and feelings. Everyday life, as Wilson demonstrates throughout this book, is a battlefield. We look back, we dream, we lose ourselves in other people – but beneath it all is a sense that nothing is ever quite what it seems, and that we need to keep our wits about us and question the world around us, and our responses to it.

Wilson’s topics range from the personal to the political (as well as reminding us that the personal often is political). He shows us how love (and lust) can be redemptive, but behind it is the shadow of the outside world, with its traps and problems. The disturbing piece ‘Homecoming’ shows us in a disconcerting, almost hallucinatory way, how tempting nostalgia can be – that desire to return to a more innocent time. But of course it’s impossible, time can never be regained. Wilson shows this clearly but poetically in the last line, where the young man lies ‘numbly’ in front of a ‘mock flame fire’. Even the fire isn’t real.

Every piece had something to tell me, some observation or way of seeing that I hadn’t noticed before. There is depth, and poetry, and humanity in this collection of – yes, no other term will really do – poetic short stories. This book was a real eye-opener for me, and a beautifully-executed work of art.

Beautiful Things is available from the LiveWire shop for the special price of $10