Sing Me down from the Dark by Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana (2022: Salt Publishing, Cromer), available at https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/sing-me-down-from-the-dark-9781784632762
Reading poetry always triggers many kinds of reactions. The first reaction is usually primal: like or dislike. Only on the second glance, you find yourself exploring the reasons for your emotional response.
In Sing Me down from the Dark, we are enchanted by language: the language of love, the languages of different cultures, the language of pain and cultural clashes. Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana is the main protagonist of the story, the story of a gaijin, a white European woman in Japan, because all gaijins are blue-eyed blondes. “I have brown eyes but some of you/rendered them/and made me a blonde,” she writes in Portrait of a Gaijin (p. 11).
Alex finds it difficult to fit in. She is the Other, she is exotic and foreign. In A Personal Glossary (p. 6), we witness the poet’s personal struggle with the second language, Japanese, and the concepts it represents. Bride Face (p. 12) highlights otherness: “They loved my foreign/ bride face, my brown bob.” The charting of the relationship, the poet’s intimate confessions, evolve into something equally fascinating, yet more unsettling. The fascination with another culture begins to chime with bitter undertones. 10 Years; 10 Places conveys a clear message of displacement, albeit by choice.
As the collection progresses, the cross-cultural marriage becomes increasingly complex and unsettling. The novelty of the international relationship has worn off. The gaijin with “the heart of a Japanese” (p. 16) does not fulfil the unspoken and unwritten expectations of a good wife and mother. She does not wear outdoor slippers when she hangs the washing (My Darling Is a Foreigner, p. 26; and Cross-Cultural Communication in the Homeplace, p. 28).
The international love story takes another, more sinister turn as the couple, now living in Britain, go through the years of the pandemic and grow further and further apart. In Body Language (p. 35), the husband expresses his dissatisfaction that his wife has become plump and thus lost her beauty. In response, the protagonist says: “………………Once upon a time,/you were all I could see. I watched you sleep.” The alienation and downward trend continue in “Unpacking Our Relationship” where the husband plays golf, focuses on his achievements and is dismissive of his wife’s passion for poetry or her work.
In the final part of the collection, the marriage seems completely broken, two strangers in one home. The protagonist and narrator finds herself alone and between Spain and Scotland. Her travels take her to East Lothian and to El Puerto de Cotos near Madrid although it is not always clear whether we are transported literally or metaphorically (via social media). The motif of swans (Snapshots from Beck Hide, p.54; Don’t, p. 58) suggests a longing for an eternal romance that may not even exist.
Alex has now made a whole dramatic arc to the sad end of the once beautiful and exhilarating relationship. In Unbridled (p. 62) she talks about the loneliness in marriage mentioned in a TV talk show. Finally, in Home (p. 60) she expresses her wishes: “I want a place/where when I say the words/I’m home, I alter your state of mind.”
Without a doubt, Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana has created a collection that is unputdownable because it reads like a story, memoirs of a lost love, exotic corners; it even questions what is different and exotic. Alex strips herself naked in front of the audience, which is both brave and risky. It is deeply personal and relatable on many levels: the language and cross-cultural relationships; the sense of being uprooted and displaced, not belonging anywhere; and finally, the depiction of any relationship starting strong and ending with emptiness and many questions about what went wrong. Like all good poets, Alex finds the right words and images where others don’t even know how to verbalise their feelings.
