Online book launch, 24th May 2022, 7.00pm - with Adam Horovitz, Ben Ray & Angela France. Tickets via the Cheltenham Poetry Festival.
Don’t let the insouciant wit of Zoe Brooks’s title kid you. Fool’s Paradise is a dive into the uncanny: into that rich heritage of myth in which we find ourselves both far from home, and simultaneously at home. Brooks combines layers of folk cultural allusion with a clear and forceful language. The result is a dark parable, one of whose messages – like that of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage – is that life is perpetual journeying.
- Fiona Sampson
This is an extraordinary piece of writing: truly compelling.
I kept thinking that this poem's power did not quite belong to our own time. It reminded me of the most intense folk songs of the early 70s, or of Dorothy Sayers' religious plays for radio. I felt it was in a spiritual tradition, but not wholly of this country...
- Alison Brackenbury
The poem was written following a visit to Prague immediately after the Velvet Revolution. A time which Zoe describes in her blog Adventures in the Czech Republic:
"My friend was renewing old acquaintances and exploring business opportunities and so I just took the opportunity in her absence to explore and soak in the atmosphere, and what an atmosphere it was. It is now hard to explain what it felt like back in early 1990. I had no guidebook and instead just walked, following my instinct, often going over the same ground time and again. I was completely breathless with the beauty of the place and felt the city's history – both glorious and sad – reaching out to me from alleyways and courtyards, through the railings of the Jewish quarter and from the facades of once rich buildings. Now the visitor finds the route from Charles Bridge to Town Square lined with hawkers, shops crammed with souvenirs and frankly often tat; then it was quiet and powerful. The statues on Charles Bridge stood alone and silent, without the accompanying flash of cameras and chatter of posing tourists.
On a number of occasions and at a number of places I came across small shrines of candles and flowers, set up to those who had been murdered by the oppressors. In Wenceslas Square there was a large makeshift memorial to Jan Palach – the student who had burnt himself to death in 1968 as a protest against the Russian suppression of the Prague Spring. Here there was a constant stream of people bringing flowers and lighting candles. It all felt hugely personal. I felt a voyeur watching the people's bowed heads. How could I comprehend what I was seeing? How could I share anything of the emotion that hung like incense in the air? And I was angered by other non-Czech visitors who stood around and took photos of it all.
I regularly made my way back to the lights and warmth of Cafe Slavia either to meet up with my friend or to drink black Czech coffee and eat the Cafe's rich cakes. Energy and wits refreshed; I would then venture back on to the streets. I do not know whether it was the caffeine or the intensity of emotion in Prague at that time, but I increasingly found myself unable to sleep. In that heightened state I found angels everywhere – statues, in frescos, in pictures. I sensed too, a presence in the air: the angels of Prague were weeping and rejoicing."
The poem that followed may have been inspired by that visit. It is not however about Prague. The city is in some ways a fusion of Prague and Istanbul, where Zoe had had another inspiring experience.
The Czech friend who features in Zoe's blog and who introduced Zoe to the Czech Republic was Hannah Kodicek. Hannah, who died in April 2011, was a multi-talented writer, actor and artist. In the latter part of her life, she was a story editor – working on the Oscar-winning film The Counterfeiters and advising on Danny Scheinmann's Random Acts of Heroic Love. Her monoprint used on the cover of this book was created by drawing with acrylic paints on glass and was in response to the poem.
Biography
After many years working with disadvantaged communities in London and Oxford, Zoe Brooks returned to her first love – writing and performing poetry, dividing her time between the UK and the Czech Republic. Her first visit to that country, only months after the Velvet Revolution, was a major inspiration for Fool’s Paradise.
Zoe’s collection Owl Unbound was published in 2020 by Indigo Dreams Publishing. Her poetry has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Michael Horovitz’s Grandchildren of Albion, The Rialto, Pennine Platform, and Magpie - Roma Women’s Poetry Anthology.