Scarred Canvas - Poetry Book Review

Scarred Canvas
by R C Edrington

Release Day Review

Amazon Link (USA) (UK)
Publisher Link

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R C Edrington has contributed many poems, including some in this collection, to past issues of Polluto magazine that I have edited. So when he asked if I would like to review his new book, I was very intrigued. (Quick disclaimer: I had no involvement in the production and publication of Scarred Canvas, and certainly was not required to give a positive review.)

Scarred Canvas is a collection of R C Edrington’s “gritty, urban poems” (Amazon description). They deal mainly with drug addiction and all the horrors and pain this leads to, both for the addict and the people around them. We are shown heroin use, cravings, violence, despair, desperation for the next hit, scrounging money, relationships shattering, prostitutes, broken homes and empty hotel rooms, the dark side of Hollywood, and all the collateral damage of addiction. These poems don’t hold back; they’re real, dark and vivid, often brutal and unpleasant, and always honest.

The poems are told with a powerful voice, in first person from the view of the addict. This is a risky choice, as there is a danger that the poems could become one long drug-confused or drunken babble, losing perspective and meaning. The author never allows this. Both the tone and reading-order of the poems is chosen carefully, slipping down further into the misery and pain surrounding the narrator and then diving back up again for air, seeing glimmers of hope or re-connection with life, only to fall back into the cycle of addiction again. The poems most closely connected to drug use are perhaps a little too similar in places, but this does emphasise the feeling of inevitability and hopelessness of the poet’s situation at this point: another empty room, another empty syringe, another empty life. This means that the poems that deal with something slightly different really stand out, such as noticing the pain in a stranger’s eyes. This gives the impression of a person who has almost, but not entirely, lost connection with the world. These are beautiful moments that open up the obsessions (including a deep self-obsession) of the drug user to show other kinds of people and other lives, all united by pain and loneliness, and a deep sense of searching for something that they can’t quite find.

It soon becomes clear that this collection is about so much more than drug use. As much as it is about despair and pain, it’s also about love and the need to connect. The poet’s search for love seems constantly mixed up with sex and drugs, with imagery that compares drugs to sex and sex to drugs, and love to addiction and pain and need. There are relationships in which everyone is using everyone else, or everyone is pretending as fiercely as possible that they have found something meaningful, or in which one side can only take, or where it seems like everyone involved is really too much in love (and in hate) with the drugs to be able to feel anything else. The narrator blames those who leave him, but cannot connect with or commit to those who actually do feel something deeper. There is a desperate need to connect with others’ pain, as if misery doesn’t just desire company; it feeds on it. At the same time, it is those moments of connecting with strangers through their own heartache that offer the moments of greatest clarity and beauty in the collection.

The greatest strength of the collection is the poet’s wonderful use of imagery, comparisons and descriptions that reveal deeper layers and conjure pictures that will stay with you for a long time. My particular favourite poem was the one that gave the collection its title, Scarred Canvas, in which a brief glimpse of a stranger’s pain is so perfectly captured. There are little points of haunting beauty in every poem, no matter how grim the subject, that show that life can be cruel and spectacular at once. I don’t think the poems, grim and hard-hitting as they are, would have meant quite as much without these moments.

Gritty, brutal and honest poems from a skilled poet, with some wonderful imagery that will stay with you long afterwards. Scarred Canvas is a strong collection.


Thank you to the author for providing a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Polluto - This issue's 'Editor's Choice'!

Congratulations to Gio Clairval and Erin Stocks for their mesmerising tale of witchcraft, witchtrials, demons, and the love of one rope for one woman...

‘Hempish Love’ is this issue’s ‘Editor’s Choice’ story! We were impressed and enchanted by this tale’s unique narrator and original idea, as well as the authors’ confident, rich and vivid storytelling. Here’s a sneak peek (full story can be read in Polluto #9 ¾: Witchfinders vs The Evil Red).

I never wanted to be an executioner. My maker twisted me with habile hands, and as though it weren't enough, he twisted me some more until I became the perfect tool for the cruellest tasks. Maybe, if a fair woman had caressed me, singing words of love, I would have grown into something peaceful, I would have held flowers or led white foals to the water. Instead, here I am, hanging from a hook in this windowless chamber, ready to imprison wrists and shake limbs until my victims confess imaginary deeds. After thirty years spent performing the strappado, I wish my body unravelled, but when I appear to be tired my master strokes me with beeswax to soothe me, and I am like new: the perfect rope to extort false confessions.

Oh, yes, I wanted to die, my dear Polletto, until I saw the female of my dreams. I spied her first this morning as I hung from my ring fixed to the ceiling: a Dominican friar called Guido burst into the forensic vicar's adjacent office, towing Gostanza behind him.

He said, "Vicar, this woman slaughtered a new-born babe!"

The magistrate looked up from his codex. "Do you have proof of this, Fra' Guido?"

The good Dominican bowed. "Early this morning, I was walking across the Piazzetta Del Casseto when Gostanza came out of a house, her hands overflowing with rue and vervain, baskets dangling from her forearms. The incense of moscata walnut and pumpkin clung to her hair unbound and flowing like a young girl's mane despite grey streaks. I offered aid, and she allowed me to relieve her of two baskets.

"'Was that Mona Astrea's abode?' I asked. As I balanced the baskets, bottles clinked together with ill-fated chimes. 'How went the birth?'

"'It went well.' But a frown creased Gostanza's features. At the moment, I did not understand why, but a suspicion gnawed at my heart. I yanked a bottle out and unstoppered it. I was right, vicar! Concoctions smelling like oil of bartram, crushed cloves, madreselva and betonica herbs . . . all ingredients used for unholy spells!

"Then the devilish woman flipped open the lid of the third basket. 'Accept this offer to quench your hunger,' she said in a sly tone. 'Duck baked with prunes in tuber oil.'

"The aroma of roast bird tickled my nostrils. No sooner had she placed a palatable morsel between my lips than my senses fled. When I regained consciousness, I was alone in a mossy alley, slumped against a wall. I stumbled back to Mona Astrea's house, following a worrisome inspiration.

"Astrea lounged upstairs, her belly slack with recent birth. The maga Gostanza, lips and hands stained red, leaned over a cradle. Inside it, a babe, pale and still. She had killed it!

"I suffered kicks and scratches," the friar concluded, "as I dragged Gostanza out of Astrea's abode and up the hill to this Palazzo."

The accused's eyes shone like little suns. Dried blood marred the corners of her mouth.

Upon hearing the friar's words, the soldiers who stood in the audience hall grimaced, whereas I died to taste such a woman—one of the evilest suspects ever. You see, Polletto, I've always wanted to torment an accused that had actually done something bad.

Guido bowed again, and from my vantage I noticed sweat beading on the friar's forehead. Now, the sweating could have been caused by the unseasonable heat, couldn't it?

The forensic vicar then sent for the inquisitor of Florence, Dionigi da Costacciaro. When the brown-robed Franciscan arrived, my master the executioner brought the accused before him, in this same chamber, my home. I was yanked from my perch, and laced twice around the witch's delicate wrist bones. My braided cords shivered in ecstasy. I wondered whether Guido's accusations were grounded indeed, for her skin had the texture of guilt.

Read more in this issue of Polluto.

Polluto - Blood, Sex and Witchcraft, and The Evil Red

Polluto issue 9 ¾: Witchfinders vs The Evil Red is now out! This was a particularly fun theme that has inspired all kinds of stories, with some completely unexpected interpretations. There is, of course, the Evil Red as communism, socialism, authoritarianism, secret police, and the welfare state. And, as usual, no Polluto author ever deals with a subject in familiar ways. A socialist paradise fuelled by severed pinkies? An alien drug that will end all war by instigating mass colour-blindness? There is guaranteed to be something new here to surprise any reader. There is witchcraft and magic, not to mention monsters and the undead. There is evil, fear, scapegoating, and denial. The Evil Red lurks in the darkest corners as well as boldly taking over the world.

Interestingly, one of the unifying ideas that connects many of these stories is the idea of powerful, and in particular sexually dominant, women. This is appropriate on several levels, as this is the ‘witchfinders’ issue (and what has scared men throughout the ages more than dominant women?) as well as the evil red (blood, sex, desire, passion). And our ‘witchy’ women are joined by a whole host of unexpected companions. Professor Dingleberry and his walking house, topped with its red coxcomb; vampiric ‘colour-eaters’ that feed on red; a man slowly disintegrating into numbers, thoughts and digital streams; a clay man rising from a river of blood; a libido-zapped librarian contemplating drawings found on Mars; and a bloodthirsty priestess controlled by her malevolent red chainsaw. And many more wait inside Polluto’s red-streaked pages.

Beginning with Cris O’Connor’s unique spin on the Wizard of Oz story, complete with Dorothy’s blood-soaked ruby slippers, and ending on Richard Thomas’ captivating and heartbreaking story of a haunted man in a broken world, Polluto issue 9 ¾ bewitches the reader from start to finish.

Next post... this issue’s ‘Editor’s Choice’ story!