New British Poetry: 16 Heaven Sent

A departure and a return characterize this month's selection of titles. Over a year ago, in New British Poetry 5 I reviewed John Stevenson's collection COWBOYS IN WINTER, and his new volume, THE CHERRY TREE (Belfast: Lapwing, 2003) is in every way an interesting and stylish successor.

But I must be careful saying 'stylish', because I wouldn't like to mislead you into believing that the book is conceived or executed with an emphasis upon surfaces or first impressions. Quite the opposite; what is impressive here is the depths, sometimes very dark depths, into which Stevenson will wander in order to come back with a little light. The book's title poem is emblematic of the feelings from which so many of the pieces seem to emerge, a mixture of regret and belated rejuvenation that is never wholly nostalgic:

I missed the springtime's short/ Good-natured blossom -/

On giro-days I'd catch its aftermath,/ ... Post Office to wine-mart zigzagging/ Back to the stillborn, season-less/ Box room I couldn't bear to call home./ ... One day I noticed The Cherry Tree,/ ... The beginnings of all things -/

It took root.

Many of the poems in THE CHERRY TREE are memorial verses, written to celebrate and not mourn people now lost to the author. Most are very finely-made, with a balance of appreciation, honesty and wit that never allows them to drift into sentimentality. My own favourite among them is one entitled 'A Keen Edge', which seems to be addressed to the poet's father:

Smelling of linseed oil/ And wood shavings -/ Da spits on the rough cast/ Scarbo stone doorstep,/ I mix my spit with his./

A weighted line is cast / And recast between Father and Son./

... Now Da, man to man/ I've tried to hook that line -/

To keep a keen edge.

He returns to this theme in his wonderful elegy, 'In the Garden',

Da's penknife glints/ Between rows of chrysanthemums. I help gather leaves/ Dabble dirt./ 'Is that you finished son?'/ 'I'll be back later Da,/ Back when the ground softens.'/

... One to another,/ Like on-edge dominoes,/ They topple his body/ Under the soil's soft scoop./

My scuffed shoes, Da's flowers cut.../

One could go on quoting such poems, in the same way it is possible to turn over the leaves of a stranger's photo album, wondering at the lives momentarily stilled in one's hands. But more than photographs, each of these vignettes contains something of the artist himself, something reflecting on to the life just out of the frame, as it were. For this reason too, they make for a touching, uncompromising and very enjoyable read.

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