The 3wnie is arter one or "line'. Breakout by Pat Arrowsmith (Edinburgh University Student Publications Board, 30p) It would be a mistake to judge the poems in Breakout simply by their political As poetry, some are better than others; some are exciting, vivid and musical. But Pat Arrowsmith - nine times a political prisoner for her work against the bomb and the wars in Vietnam and Ireland - does manage in a short poem intitled 'Prison Reform to utter a contempt for British liberalism which surpasses anything that could be written in several pages of prose:
In the bad old days no watches were Dermitted We did out time not knowing what the time was.
Now watches are allowed we have the satisfaction of knowing how slowly he ume passes She marks the bitter gulf which exists between those outside prison and those inside, the prison visits by *foreigners... from a well-fed, civilised women s Duson lIves In DarE icular emerge in vivid form as a theme of this collection. A prisoner explains:
My real life is commonplace choose to conceal!
and outer to my renow inmates something more exciting.
For outside I am nobody, just a housewife who went shop-lifting.
Consequently the poems create a whole image of women - - lonely, waiting for letters and promising fidelity to their husbands/boyfriends, who when their women emerge will be two-timing them. Perhaps her most quoted poem, 'Steel Womb', describes both the toughness and fragility of its female inmates. Many women live on a constant knifeedge; this poem captures that nearUltra-cheerful voices, yet shrill, somehow, or hoarse.
Strain the pitch a note higher;
drag it a tone lower, and the voices would rasp, crack;
content became a splintered shell around a vacuum of unhappiness Her poem about her hunger strike in solidarity with tne rrice sisters Is on of the least powerful in the book both as poetry and as political statement Similarly another poem with an overtly political theme, "Sailing to Belfast to attack the War', does tend to fall on its face - the title alone saying more than the entire poem.
Her last poem, 'Escape", is more difficult - the individual witness is almost too strong, although the T does finally change to 'we' when she speaks of the prisoners' union. Rhythmically follows the phrase For freedom isn't in the heart of head;
its in me deed the choosing But not all her lines have that rhyth Some stanzas read merely like well-written prose. and again we are faced with the difficulty of separating the art-form from the clear, philosophica statements That is one problem; the other is to judge the poems according to one's estimation of the writer's polit Despite Diane Easy's generally sympathetic review in the Morning Star she had to end with a back-handed com pliment: "Impetuous and maybe even pontically inopportune though Pat Arrowsmith's actions may be some times, her sincerity is never in doubt." Which is more than can be said for the Communist Party's lip-service to the Irish revolution. (Currently much of Pat's time is devoted to building the "politically inopportune Troops Out Movement.)
Besides her pioneering work on Ireland, and her recent association comrade Arrowsmith has in this collection of poems and drawings made an important contribution to art and honest Anita Bennett