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New British Poetry 20: Contrasts and Surprises

© Dr J D Ballam

Once again this month I turn to Lapwing Publications as the source of new work which impresses because of its depth, diversity and originality, as well as their understanding that those of us who read the work of established and emerging poets like to feel we are buying books which are carefully crafted to reveal each author's talents most fully. The three titles I've chosen contrast in every way, except that each shows a well-wrought excellence in execution.

Matthew Geden has published widely in magazines and anthologies, and his first solo collection, KINSALE POEMS (Belfast: Lapwing, 2001) fuses a variety of outlooks with a singularly controlled and often understated style. Notice the alliteration and verbal artifice that give both unity and melody to lines like this from 'Mackerel';

Far-off farewells, slip through the waves/ on the Irish Sea; the mackerel months/ spent riding storms...

Or look at how an image of stopped-Time can come to represent the larger motif of the aptly-titled 'Museum Piece':

Try to piece together the dust,/ motes seen to slant through/ the dust windows shimmer/ upon sporadic remnants so few//

Of which survive.

Part of the effect of these lines is brought about from the unlikely insertion of the comma after the first line, which results in 'dust' being re-read as a noun, rather than as an adjective describing 'motes'. This implies that it is the work of the museum to 'piece together' dust - an idea which is subsequently developed as a theme. Such attention to the nuances of reading is apparent throughout the poems in this collection, practically all of which centre themselves on the transitory realizations of the author's surroundings, enabling him again and again to capture some fleeting sense of clarity in his perceptions of the world of Kinsale. For all its restrained manner, there is nothing wholly tamed or feebly discretionary about Geden's view of that world.

Another widely-published author is Margaret Moore, whose WHAT THE WIND SCATTERS (Belfast: Lapwing, 2003) offers many delights. Moore has had a rich and unusual career, teaching in various schools and universities, publishing in a range of genres, including crime fiction. The majority of poems in WHAT THE WIND SCATTERS, were actually written before 1980, although there is little sense that the work is in any sense 'dated'. Most of the poems are word-centered - that is, trying and re-trying to gain some kind authority over the circumstances they describe by applying new impressions, phrases or terms to their subject, as often as not in juxtaposition, and without the deadening effect of trying to manufacture some kind of linearity about their author's understanding of her subject. The effect is curiously unsettling in its apparent spontaneity. Here is an example from 'Waywisers, Cambridge':

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