(2.5) Armitage has been the Poet Laureate for yonks now, but I can’t say his poetry has ever made much of an impression on me. That’s especially true (2.5) Armitage has been the Poet Laureate for yonks now, but I can’t say his poetry has ever made much of an impression on me. That’s especially true of this slim volume commissioned by the National Trust: it’s 3 stars for Angela Harding’s lovely if biologically inaccurate (but I’ll be kind and call them whimsical) engravings, and 2 stars for the actual poems, which are light on content. Plum, cherry, apple, pear, blackthorn and hawthorn blossom loom large. It’s hard to describe spring without resorting to enraptured clichés, though: “Planet Earth in party mode, / petals fizzing and frothing / like pink champagne.” The haiku (11 of 21 poems) feel particularly tossed-off: “The streets are learning / the language of plum blossom. / The trees have spoken.” But others are sure to think more of this than I did.
A favourite passage: “Scented and powdered / she’s staging / a one-tree show / with hi-viz blossoms / and lip-gloss petals; / she’ll season the pavements / and polished stones / with something like snow.”...more
(3.5) I found more to sink my teeth into here than I did with his debut collection, Thinking with Trees (2021). Part I’s childhood memories of Jamaica(3.5) I found more to sink my teeth into here than I did with his debut collection, Thinking with Trees (2021). Part I’s childhood memories of Jamaica open out into a wider world as the poet travels to London, Paris and Venice, working in snippets of French and Italian and engaging with art and literature. “I’m haunted as much by the character Othello as by the silences in the story.” Part III returns home for the death of his grandmother and a coming to terms with identity. [Winner: Forward Prize for Best Collection; Past: T.S. Eliot Prize and Writers’ Prize shortlist]
Crossing between Somalia, Italy and London and proceeding from the 1830s to the present day, this debut collection sets family history amid wider globCrossing between Somalia, Italy and London and proceeding from the 1830s to the present day, this debut collection sets family history amid wider global movements. It’s peopled with nomads, colonisers, immigrants and refugees. In stanzas and prose paragraphs, wordplay and truth-telling, Mehri captures the welter of emotions for those whose identity is split between countries and complicated by conflict and migration. I particularly admired “Wink Wink,” which is presented in two columns and opens with the suspension of time before the speaker knew their father was safe after a terrorist attack. There’s super-clever enjambment in this one: “this time it happened / after evening prayer // cascade of iced tea / & sugared straws // then a line / break // hot spray of bullets & / reverb & // in less than thirty minutes we / they the land // lose twenty of our children”. Confident and sophisticated, this is a first-rate debut.
A few more favourite lines:
IX. Art is something we do when the war ends. X. Even when no one dies on the journey, something always does. (from “A Few Facts We Hesitantly Know to Be Somewhat True”)
You think of how casually our bodies are overruled by kin, by blood, by heartaches disguised as homelands. How you can count the years you have lived for yourself on one hand. History is the hammer. You are the nail. (from “Reciprocity is a Two-way Street”)
For the year following her father's death, Abbs could barely sleep. Don't expect a straightforward book about insomnia, though. Instead, this is a widFor the year following her father's death, Abbs could barely sleep. Don't expect a straightforward book about insomnia, though. Instead, this is a wide-ranging study of the mind and body at night, filtered through the experience of female writers and artists who discovered the magic of nocturnal freedom and creativity. I suspect the author had leftover material from Windswept (who's ever heard of Clara Vyvyan?!), but also wanted to repeat a successful pattern of locating women gurus whose lives might shed light on her own. Some of the names are familiar (Sylvia Plath, Katherine Mansfield, Rachel Carson); others are less so but quickly become part of the shorthand here (Laura Cereta, Lee Krasner the widow of Jackson Pollock, Maria Mitchell).
Each chapter has one or more presiding spirit, but the organization is thematic. Abbs explores the night as a time of imagination, anger, anonymity, adventure or fear. She learns about the hormones that govern sleep and wakefulness and the negative effects of nighttime light. Despite her trepidation (inevitable for a woman alone in the dark, it seems), she goes for night walks and swims, and watches the stars. Most of her travels are through books or in her own homes (London vs. country cottage), but she also contrasts Singapore, lit-up all through the night, with the perpetual darkness of the Arctic Circle, to which she journeys by boat amid the aurora.
At times the connections are so wispy it seems the book will crumble, but Abbs manages to hold it all together with her curiosity and determination. Rather than lamenting her sleeplessness, she asks how it can free her to do new and courageous things. This 'Night Self', she hopes, might be more observant, playful and uninhibited. Just over a year after her father's death, she's back to more regular sleep patterns, but she does still wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, and enjoys the liminal time to herself. (I was surprised that menopause is not discussed at greater length, but I suppose she was resisting the easy ways people might try to explain away women's insomnia or label it a negative attribute of the 'hag'.)
This was less about death than I expected, but grief is a background theme and one I felt she described accurately. If her publishers are clever, they'll emphasize the book's similarity to Wintering by Katherine May. However, to me it seemed more highbrow, akin to Olivia Laing on bodily freedom (Everybody) or solitary wanderings (The Lonely City). There was also some crossover with Chasing the Sun by Linda Geddes, and Abbs cites A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter and An Ode to Darkness by Sigri Sandberg.
Favourite lines:
"When I spot Orion and his belt of stars, or Cassiopeia, I'm seeing exactly as my distant ancestors did. I like this sense of being tethered to my own history. In the midst of unrelenting change, I find it vaguely comforting."
"all the life I've failed to experience because I've been welded to light, sleep, safety indoors."
"My accumulated night journeys have shown me that our world will always contain elements that lie beyond our understanding."...more
I was most drawn to the poems in Part I, “All but Forgotten,” about his father’s last year or so. The titles participate in telling the story: “AlcohoI was most drawn to the poems in Part I, “All but Forgotten,” about his father’s last year or so. The titles participate in telling the story: “Alcoholic Dementia,” followed by “Twin Oaks Nursing Home.”
The sheep-tracks of your mind were worn to trenches. … Then what you’ve turned yourself into – half there on one side of a final single bed you might not leave till the rest of you has left – starts, stares through me, says ‘I’m being held against my will!’, tells a nurse to ‘Just fuck off’ then thanks her. Old boy, when did you get like this? The sheep-tracks of my mind are worn to trenches.
Then they moved you to a home that still wasn’t home. ‘Why am I in this fucking place? Nothing’s wrong with me.’ So I’d tell you all over again, but only the easy part (‘You’re not remembering things well at present.’ ‘Yes I fucking am’) and you relearned that you’d never learn – mindless torture, until I stopped it. Your silences were trains departing.
From the miscellany of Part II, I plucked out “Gooseberries” and “Perennials,” both of which conceal emotion among plants. Then Part III, “Lincolnshire Folk Tales,” turns the tone mischievous, with the ABCB end-rhymes of “Yallery Brown,” “The Metheringham Lass,” “The Lincoln Imp,” and “Nanny Rutt” (I felt I’d stumbled on a limerick with its rhythm: “Math Wood is a small plot of trees south of Bourne, / next to McDonald’s and Lidl. / It’s privately owned, full of shot-gun shells, pheasants – / but still, a bit of an idyll”). Plenty of good stuff, then, but it doesn’t all seem to fit together in the same collection.
