The Big Unda: Memories and Imaginations, by Nolcha Fox
Review by Joe Haward
Published by Alien Buddha Press
3/5
“Enter my gallery,” — the opening words to Nolcha Fox’s chapbook, The Big Unda: Memories and Imaginations — “I crouch in the center, a living piece of art. . . Art isn’t supposed to look nice, it’s supposed to make you feel.” Every word, throughout Fox’s delightful collection, creates a moment of feeling, a sense of being drawn into a world that is not your own, but that in no way excludes you from the emotions contained. Indeed, it is easy to find your own life etched within the spaces of each sentence, memories reflected back through another person’s experiences.
But make no mistake, The Big Unda is not an exploration of nostalgic sentimentality; far from it. No, this collection Fox looks with searing honesty, and clarity, at her own life, at what has been, and what might come. This authenticity provides the reader with poetry that does not turn away from the good, the bad, or the mundane.
Dostoevsky wrote, in The Brothers Karamazov, “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The [person] who lies to [themselves] and listens to [their] own lie comes to a point that [they] cannot distinguish the truth within [them] or around [them], and so loses all respect for [themselves] and for others.”
The Big Unda operates like the poetry of truth, examining the past, seeing the world for how it really is, and having an eye on the future for how it might likely be. This is a difficult task, especially in today’s positivist culture. In fact, it is not just a difficult task, but a frowned upon activity to offer perspectives today that are not full of positivity and optimism. Certain areas of social media, such as TikTok and Instagram, have become an exercise in relentless positivity, exhausting in its algorithmic intensity. To maintain this ‘enthusiasm’ requires us to lie, not only to ourselves, but also to the world around us. Equally, the pessimist can fail to see anything worthwhile, the world lost in its own destruction. Fox navigates these challenges well, each poem recognising the complexities of life, both in its hope and its disappointments.
Opening with the excellent “A Piece of Art,” The Big Unda starts strong, taking the reader through a total collection of thirty poems, the majority previously unpublished.
There are powerful moments throughout, intimate details that describe love, loss, regret, and humor. It is here, in those sideway glances, and lines of laughter, where Fox is at her strongest, like with the dark humor of “Dig Deeper,” the light-heartedness of “I’m So Sexy,” or the laugh-out-loud delights of “The Big Unda,” from where the collection gets its name.
At each turn of the page the humanness of human experience flows freely. Fox clearly didn’t set out to simply write a chapbook of poetry, but a collection of reflections on life.
I’m looking forward to reading more of Fox’s work, but also seeing where her talent takes her next.
Follow Nolcha Fox on Twitter here.
Find Nolcha Fox’s website here.