Headlining at the Poetry after Chai, part of the Bangla Festival at the Midland Arts Centre, poetess Saida Chowdhury had such presence, and such a smile. Yet if the tough issues her poetry presents are fit for wry smiles only, the issues resolve themselves in the joy of recovery, of finding love and of deepening faith.

I read her first book Broken Minds over two days, anxious to know if the writing matched the performance. First impression was of lines ten syllable long, or five units of rhythm, called ‘feet’. Lines faired into rhyming couplets, a forthright statement followed in the next line by an attachment, always relevant, sometimes forcefully pushing forward the meaning.

The critical eye will always find poetic licence in use, justified by the need to find a rhyme. On the second reading I became conscious of the mental effort that shaped this verse. It has a finish and a polish to it. And if rhyme is an imperative, can that not drive a new direction in poetic thought? It may still be a poetic statement: who knows where poetry comes from.

My point is, verse like this requires a different sort of criticism. Three hundred years ago, Alexander Pope may have made himself master of the rhyming couplet, in English, for all time. He used it to deliver devasting verse critique of the newly-wealthy philistine class that he moved among. But he was removed from the daily pressures that use up our present-day time, could devote himself to his Classic forbears, and so perfect his art.

Jonathan Meades, twenty years ago, wrote a feature on ‘The Plots’ at Bewdley, small dwellings put up from scratch materials - though often with interesting aesthetic considerations – by post-war West Midlanders, drawn by cheap land rents and a desire to create something rural, where they could break from their factory work. They used any scrap they could find, and would convey it down on their motorcycle sidecars. Meades called it ‘folk architecture’. See Save this Severn heaven | Jonathan Meades | The Critic Magazine.

Saida’s poetry has much in common with the buildings at the Plots. It is sturdy in construction, pleasing on the eye (and ear), weatherproof and there for the long-term. It offers a view of landscapes. It is made from what comes to hand, in terms of rhyme and phrase. There is no expertise, but there is a sureness of touch. The language is that of everyday, but worked and wrought into rhyme.

So folk-verse it is, and readable and instructive at that. Made for the stage – Saida brings it to the fullest life there – it nonetheless flows on the page. And covers a range. She goes bravely into modern ills – betrayal, separation, drugs – of which the result is always the same: broken minds. It is the recovery of mind that she charts, through trust, community and self-belief. A poem that begins ‘The first time in decades that I no longer fear the weather’ continues to the source of the courage to resist ‘the rain, the wind, the frost…’ It is through a presence beyond the individual self.

The first time you said you saw me … the real me …
It was the first time the veil had ever been lifted,
It was the first time I ever saw myself whole.

First Time 14/1/25