Identified Flying Objects
by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
Reviewed by Charles Rammelkamp

“Identified Flying Objects”
Poetry
Shoestring Press, 2024
£10.00, 62 pages
ISBN: 978-1-915553-47-8

Ingeniously organized around quotations from the Book of Ezekiel, proceeding sequentially from chapter one through chapter forty-eight of the prophet’s narrative, Michael Bartholomew-Biggs’ new collection ranges from reminiscence to ethical observation while nudging his reader to true moral engagement with the world. But he manages to do this without Ezekiel’s histrionics and soapboxing. Indeed, Bartholomew-Biggs is charming and witty throughout – as the very title indicates – lacing some verses and commentary with humor, as when he wryly notes in an understatement after the poem, “Caution to the Wind”: “Evidently Ezekiel was exceptionally unselfconscious about making a spectacle of himself.” The poem begins stirringly ( with a sly reference to William Carlos Williams?):

In the end so much depends on madmen.
Unconcerned with how their actions might be judged 
they’ll ride upon their wrath without a single doubt.
It’s fear of being singled out for disapproval 
that de-motivates accomplishers of nothing 
more than signing earnest letters and petitions.

Ezekiel was, along with Isaiah and Jeremiah, one of the major prophets in the Tanakh, the Hebrew bible. He lived and wrote during the Babylonian exile, roughly during the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, and he is revered by both Christians and Jews. Several memorable phrases – “wheels within wheels,” “standing in the gap,” “by the waters of Babylon” (a phrase from Psalm 138 but no less Ezekiel’s), “the undivided heart” among them – have their origin with Ezekiel, and he’s prominently featured in the New Testament Book of Revelation, his prophecies fulfilled there.

Alluding to exile in the second poem, “Physiotherapy Part 2 (Practice),” in which the protagonist has been forced to use a wheelchair and crutches, Bartholomew-Biggs writes, describing the plight of the disabled:

he was exiled from all public spaces
reached by steps and quite invisible 
on pavements till he got in someone’s way.

A van had run him over and without 
Ezekiel to tell him he deserved it
and no promise of rehabilitation 

he took it as bad luck.

Indeed, as the poet suggests, Ezekiel relentlessly hectored his people with their failures to obey the Lord, holding them responsible for their own exile (though he does reassure them of God’s love and protection). But in the very next poem, “Internal Exile,” about becoming a pariah in your own land, in a way that suggests politicians like Donald Trump (“They talk of building walls with towers, flagpoles, flags…”), Bartholomew-Biggs points out that Ezekiel himself clearly identifies with his exiled compatriots, mixing compassion with judgment.

In the title poem, various theories of the source of Ezekiel’s prophecies and visions are mentioned, including psychedelics – “Sceptics guess that magic mushrooms helped / to open Heaven” – clairvoyance and extra-terrestrial intervention. “Mild Zealot,” again alluding to Ezekiel’s style, focuses on a well-intentioned “influencer” trying to move his audience. 

You intended to be patient 
with their struggles as you stripped them 
of their well-worn certainties 
then once undressed they could put on your ready-made designs.

Sounding almost Dante-esque, Bartholomew-Biggs starts “Lumb Bank to London with a Travelling Companion,” a not-so-nostalgic memory of his time at a Yorkshire writers’ retreat, “I was in my mid-life crisis at the time / with plenty to forget.” The scriptural reference is Ezekiel 11:16, I will be to them a sanctuary for a little while in the countries where they have come. Like “Visiting My Past on Google Maps” and others (“Bitter Almonds” and the two “Physiotherapy” poems among them), it’s a memory poem he’d probably prefer to forget. As he writes in “Visiting My Past…”:

Nostalgia flourishes like weeds and shrubs 
in lockdown on an indistinguishable hillside 
when there’s too much unclaimed space-time handy.

The lonely isolation of Covid social distancing fostered so much navel-gazing and so many morbid memories.

“Dem Bones” is another semi-nostalgic reflection on the leg broken in a traffic accident, but the reference is to Ezekiel 37:7, often cited as an allusion to bodily resurrection.  The title is taken from James Weldon Johnson’s 1928 spiritual. “Cagliostro Street,” on the other hand, is a fond memory of his father.

In poems like “I, William Blake,” an indictment of British social services, “Profiling,” “Filling a Vacancy” (which introduces the phrase popular among a certain stripe of Christian fundamentalists, “standing in the gap”), “A Lack of Liminality” and “Migrants,” Bartholomew-Biggs channels his own inner Ezekiel, defending migrants and castigating the xenophobia that threatens them. “Migrants” refers to the verses in Ezekiel 47 about lifting up “the aliens who live among you, who will father children among you.”

In short, the conceit that holds the collection together is loose enough to embrace all of these threads, including “Heart Transplant—Side Effects & FAQS” (Ezekiel 36:26 - I will give you a fresh heart).

Rejection is a major issue
when a doctor takes a stone-still heart
and substitutes donated tissue.

But if physicians have dismissed you
as a hopeless case you’ll take the risk –
rejection’s not your biggest issue.

Not unexpectedly, given the subject, there’s also a potent political theme running throughout the collection. It’s not just in the previously mentioned poems about shortcomings in English society but also in poems like “Maiden Speech,” an MP’s first speech to Parliament, “Image Consultant” and “Confusing the Message,” poems about the doublespeak of government spokesmen, and “Is That Really How to Do It?” (“the way to do it is to batter down / all upstarts who disturb the status quo.”)

“Speak Wealth” is an Occupy Wall Street-style condemnation of the 1%.

We get by on smaller change –
the sort that fits in off-peak meters,
slot machines or gaps in the floorboards.
We must juggle obligations,
as we walk the fraying wire
stretched between each pair of paydays:
this makes us proficient
in precarious arithmetic.

“Speak Wealth and you’ll be listened to,” indeed. “Abundance and Authority  / both begin with A….” The reference is Ezekiel’s warning to the king of Tyre about the dangers of great wealth (Ezekiel 28:5), but oh so relevant today. 

Identified Flying Objects is a tour de force cleverly constructed and executed, both lyrical and thoughtful. Bartholomew-Biggs, editor of London Grip, is to Ezekiel as London is to Jerusalem. History is alive and – well, maybe not “well.”

This book may be purchased from Central Books:  https://www.centralbooks.com/identified-flying-objects.html