(On Jeff Young’s WILD TWIN, Little Toller Books, 2024)
Jeff Young is all about odysseys, as his underworlds appear legion;
They occur in parks and side alleys, in the rooms where he writes
And in dreams, many of them, fever fed, due to his recent illness,
But each one curative also, as he journeys to find what love means.
As with all writers, he splits in search of That Other in full command
Of responses, the creative act, poetry, as a coping mechanism
For space, which Poseidons in, as minds sailing can start to sink
On life’s Crusiers, which even dry-docked claim the free.
This new book by Jeff Young completes the mythologies
He’s perfected; from tracing Billy Kaspar to his early plays
For the stage, and for radio and this page, and for the Reader’s
Theatre books fashion, as Young is casting enablers to assist
And flesh spirits to honour his name now in age. His Father’s
His guide as Jeff details his dying. For Jeff’s Dad was a dealer
Not of drugs for the brain, but for souls, bringing Jeff books
As a boy – which he had not read himself – to start fires,
The smoke of which crafted dreamships from which
His son could espy Art’s vast whole. And Jeff Young has read
All of the books that now matter and loved the music
That OST’d brave new worlds, from Eno, to Johns Cale
And Cage, Patti Smith, Television, the Marque Moon shining
On every dare, misstep, chance, and girl. As the 66 year old man
Reunites with his own younger spirit, escaping the Dole
And Liverpool City Council to go in search of the shadows
From pages that stain each finger transformed while we read.
For books become bells, calling to us, sounding echoes
When we read rhyming reminders of what we feel ourselves,
Then we feed, as you will, engorged by this Ur-Text from a writer
Whose achievements now glisten through legacies lit by loss.
From Liverpool 8, to Berlin, and Amsterdam and first Paris
As his dream-gate, his ‘Desire Paths’ Aigburth practiced,
Make this special rolling stone glow through moss.
Young dress rehearses his twin a number of times
In his journey, from Stan to Kristofferson, Baxter
And his own Genet the Thief, Robicheau, as he sleeps
Beneath stars in the company of his girlfriend Becks
And these drifters, in search of the self and the city,
Betrayed or left often as he considers the price he will owe,
For experience, a la Blake, as he loses bar jobs because
Bikers, or circumstance traps him in deficits unforeseen.
It is on his return trip avec Becks who can steal it seems
A la Bresson, that he begins to see that real writing
Cannot be started in garrets, but only when facing
Your parent made wall and homescreen. And yet
In looking back Jeff allows us all to look forward,
To deaths and trouble to come and hope’s phoenix,
Attempting its rise from damp wood, and this is achieved
With artefacts shared through mind mapping,
From his Mother’s collection of Angels, to his poetic
Impressions of the people he’s loved, great and good.
From Beckett and Beilles, to his father’s ‘pale blue eyes like winter’,
To Gregory Corso in chaos in an Amsterdam bar, to the sigh
Of Robert Wyatt’s sweet tone, as Jeff begins his descents
And ascent across urban mountains, moving from his own
Rock Bottom, to where he is now, head held high. Clouds cleave
For Young, his work lighting the way with scribed image,
From ‘an apple like a battery..starlight in his hand’ to
‘In the year my Dad started dying, I started building time
Machines’, his constructions would leave most writers weak.
Yet he weaves while only having one hand. As his left, depleted
Through illness was soothed by Val, his sister’s dying tear,
Kissing, warning, and still loving all they knew and lived
As she leaves. With his Mother’s passing before and Val’s
In 2019, his Dad’s emptied. ‘The ghost of a ghost’, these words
Haunt us, more than the idea they convey. As his Mum collected
Protections to come and his Dad laid the landscape, gifting
The act of expression as his pale blue eyes turn to grey,
And his own background is cleared, to be kept by God
At close quarters, stored away by Altzheimers just like those
Office files young Jeff loathed, spurring him down the road
To ‘that London’ and on, like Sandford’s inebriate Edna
And Orwell, to be down and out in Paris and Ostend,
Remains a simulacrum in which the lost wear Angel clothes
From Huskisson Street, and Bold Street too, Young breached
Borders. He broke through the boundaries of the 50s North
To drink absinthe with George Whitman in Paris
Keeping Shakespeare and Co. company; and prowled on,
Ruing Rues that have succumbed across time to clawed shadow
Which now blaze brightly within the eye’s private fire,
Fanned by the feelings filed inside memory. This book contains
Everything. It is a labyrinth leased by Borges. It is Jabes’
Book of Questions with its own Rabbinical dialogues
In which the bright English boy who now knows everyone
And has worked with Pete Townshend, Alan Moore,
And Jeff Nuttall, Daisy Campbell, Bill Drummond,
Makes his own house of meeting, makes his own Synagogue
Separate to all that, for this is not about being jewish,
But as his own diaspora, Jeff Young dovens, for these
Are sacred words writ in tears, and kisses and breath
And lungs full of weed and cheap whisky, and train
And tram tickets, and all that it takes to fight fears,
As time temples you and you make your own churches
From searching for the twin to take over and who
Is roaming wild down strange streets. At first you hitch-hike,
Then stride to follow this part of you that’s elusive
You turn the ghost corner and learn how each story
Remains incomplete. Jeff has charted these paths
In this beautiful book from Little Toller. The tales he is telling
See both sun and moon mirroring what you know can’t be there
And yet he and we see its imprint, on leaves, love and branches
To feel the chill of communion as we wake outside, shivering.
Young writes his book and writes the reader within it.
His path is particular, universal, and skillfully walks
The wide real under a sky singed by dreams, and scorched
By sun and starlight for desire, for bread dipped in milk
To ease his mouth ulcers to global renown and for Pearl,
Jeff and Amy’s daughter and for what she can achieve,
Free from siblings, until her own wild twin begins tapping
On that window and door to new worlds. Perhaps Jeff’s
Real twin was his Dad, dying with grace and love, soft
Before him. For it was he, the Book dealer, who like Sinclair
And Kops from their stalls bequeathed mysteries
That his mind could no longer solve, language stolen,
And yet perhaps in our passing we find another library
A starred hall, within which a new language grows,
And broadcasts its echo; a place where books are not needed
And like hunger’s apple simply become batteries to light
The next way. Books then, as stones or stairs for ascension.
At the top of which, if not angels, then essences burn calories
Which have been formed and fattened by guilt, ignorance,
Lack of loving. Young is lean and loved. Always has been.
So much so that even when he’s not working he has always
Received salary, from both magic and muse; from both
The dead and the living; from his books and their beauty.
His message then is a mirror, reflecting everyone. He is We.
David Erdos 9/9/24
.