Reviews

Coin Opera & Obakarama

by Jon Stone & Kirsten Irving (eds.)

Sidekick Books, 2009

From the minds behind inventive journal Fuselit come two new micro anthologies:  Coin Opera, a thumb-bashing reflection on classic video games; and Obakarama, a chronicle of poems and illustrations of shape-shifting  monsters from Eastern folklore.

Now although video games are not typical literary material, it’s impossible to ignore the impact gaming has had on popular culture, when the video game industry itself has already overtaken Hollywood in terms of revenue.  Mario, Sonic, Grand Theft Auto and Halo are just a few of the franchises that have left their indelible print on society, and have caused sky-high volume of PR chatter, political debates, and disgruntled PTA members.  If the duty of art is to hold a mirror up to society, then Coin Opera does tradition justice.

The package is a finely tuned motherboard.  The pixilated portraits of poets are a 2D character select screen and the typeface and Fulminares signature receive the same digital makeover.  This pocket size collection is a poetic Game Boy.

Partner anthology, Obakarama takes a different approach.  Pairing poems about monsters submerged in bath water, winged wolves and tortoise frog hybrids with drawings of the beasts.  It makes you wonder what came first, the picture or the poem?  However, Obakarama’s poems go beyond description and instead, are stories of seduction and terror. Take for instance Aliya Whiteley’s Ushi-Oni:

no woman of the sea is innocent.  We are demons.
We were raised to the lapping of waves.
We know what we do when we fall for you.

This is a book of pseudo Japanese fairy tales, illustrated by abbreviated Manga and Chinese dragons, whilst filled with the omnipresent panic of a childhood persistence that there is a creature under the bed.  Aiko Harman tells of the Japanese bogeyman in Kappa, the creatures lurking in the water:

I believed you
the day you cried until the moon grew
out of the sea like a white bowl, and you told me
a kappa ate my father.

It’s a challenge to unravel the monster behind the picture and poem in Obakarama, which is something Coin Opera shares.  To guess the game in question, ranging from Ross Sutherland’s explorations of ‘Street Fighter’ character back-stories, to clever grammatical representations in Simon Barraclough’s Bonjour Tetris and Julia Bird’s take on ‘Space Invaders’.

Co-editor Jon Stone’s Aquatic Ruin Zone defines ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 2’ as poem even down to the structure, splitting the stanzas into ‘Acts,’ using Sonic iconography to describe the lush cartoon game visuals:

I dry myself, sun myself to a white-gold
as the spilt jam of day pools at my sneakers,
chinks blossom beyond the stone arch.

Elsewhere, Satan battles the disciples over a game of ‘Sensible Soccer’, a young girl transforms into the green dragon of ‘Bubble Bobble’, the power of the space bar is exploited in ‘Wolfenstein 3D,’ and Chrissy Williams learns the 1^st person shooter genre the hard way in Goldeneye 007:

I find his corner but he’s fled.
The barrel of my Magnum shines.
Dan shoots me in the back of the head.
I’ll get the jump on him next time.

In keeping with the innovative tradition editors Stone & Kirsten Irving have set with Fuselit, I did wonder if they had considered creating an actual game, or phone app so readers could ‘play’ the poems; jumping from platforms of moving stanzas to catch the umlaut power-up.

Both micro anthologies present a landscape of unexplored poetic territory, and if video games and mythical beasts are the first muses of Sidekick Books’ experimentations then I look forward to what Dr Fulminare has cooking in his trough of lyrical candy floss.

Rating:

Reviewed by John Challis

Comments (3)

3 Comments »

1. 

   Thanks for the mention!

   always,
   aiko

   Comment by aiko — June 8, 2010 @ 3:00 pm

2. 

   Thanks for the review John! Would that I had the elusive programming skills to make such a set of games! Ted Hughes’ Crow would make for a fantastic FPS protagonist.

   Comment by Kirsty — June 16, 2010 @ 12:10 am

3. 

   Indeed it would! There’s a though, games based on classic poems… ‘Howl’ the video game. I always think of the Final Fantasy series as somewhat ellusive poetical stories.

   Comment by John — August 23, 2010 @ 5:13 pm

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