It Runs Through You: Cataclysm by Natalie Perman

‘in tishri you will let your bones wash in honey and you will forget the / same mistakes’

-       Natalie Perman

What started with a Twitter conversation turned out to be a mesmerising and dizzying journey through the debut pamphlet of Natalie Perman. From the opening to the closing poem, I was greeted with a nostalgic familiarity with bursts of boldness and exploration. At the beginning of the pamphlet, we are presented with a dictionary definition of ‘cataclysm’. What I soon realised is that the very poetic experience of this collection is cataclysmic – that some flood or upheaval runs through every line on the page and a reader cannot help but be swept along with it. Even in this rush, there are moments of tenderness and intimacy that are treated so delicately; it feels as though the reader has found a momentary repose in this flow of life, only to be swept up again in the compelling rhythm of adolescence, family, and identity. 

The movement of water is a striking motif that runs throughout the collection. Be it life-giving, be it life-risking, it flows through the poetry effortlessly, guiding the reader from the mouth of the river to the poetic sea. At times you are gasping for air – ‘we drowned / where we should have donned a swimsuit / and floated’ – as you try to navigate the various landscapes of the collection. This poetry is a ‘bursting of the banks’ – a reminder of the fact that every cataclysm, every change in life, is inevitable and we must learn to swim through it. Water is placed in a position of religious importance – ‘water rumbling through the stomach, the divine / creation of seas’ – and is one of many reflections on Jewish identity. These reflections inhabit some of the most intimate and poignant moments of the collection. Indeed, it opens with the tender images of the Jewish baby naming ceremony; it is as though the poet’s natural beginning is to name herself within her Jewish identity. Later she muses on writing – ‘they do not know how a מ looks like a resting place, / like the entrance to a warm room’ – to create a touching link between writing and identity – one that is inseparable in Perman’s writing. Interwoven with religious identity is the theme of family. Perman skilfully embodies trauma and grief within items such as her great grandmother’s fur coat – ‘a whole body of fur to live in / still warm / and bleeding’ – or ‘peanut butter cups and kale chips’ in an elegiac reflection on a CVS store. The collection closes with the ‘ripples’ of her great grandmother ‘along the edge of a house at noon’. The final image of the poem is the settling of this flood of memory. We are left at a train station, a place for us to journey onward with the poems we have met. 

Perman’s worldbuilding vividly transports the reader to places beyond the page. Snapshots of ‘a balmy LA evening [when] adorno kissed a student a la francaise’ bring a dreamlike quality to the poems, foiled by more mundane depictions of ‘fake IDs in vats of street food’. Each of these images perfectly capture a moment of balance before it rushes over an edge. Her descriptions of a slumbering world, from ‘a woman / paints lipstick down / her thigh’ to ‘a man sucks on / a plastic yoghurt lid / so that it curls into / his mouth’ crystalise miniature moments so they become key parts of a cinematic cityscape. Perman’s use of language is powerful in this collection. From the masterfully articulated spelling bee to a timely reflection on ‘soft boys’ and how ‘family meant the smiths/and pulp fiction’ to them, it shapes how we perceive the characters. Whether that is the language of identity, the language of youth or the silent words of the observed or recollected, Perman’s writing flows like water – effortlessly and essentially – to pull the collection towards a new beginning. 

This collection propels you to the eye of the hurricane – the very moment of cataclysm. It reflects on changes past and present, and intertwines it delicately with memory and identity. The sense of the ‘unknown after’ is shared between poet and reader; as the poet muses on how ‘we swum out from a boat/into something nameless and sticky’, we – the reader – are still clambering towards the surface. For every great change and uncertainty that come with them, Perman’s words greet you like a familiar face, charged with an electric enthusiasm for a new beginning.