There are times when happenstance isn’t limited to the publisher of that name…
…back in the summer, I ordered a
second-hand copy of Jonathan Davidson’s The
Living Room over the internet. A few days later, a padded envelope turned
up. It contained an invoice and delivery note for Davidson’s book, alongside a
1974 first edition of Andrew Waterman’s Living
Room, his first collection from The Marvell Press, decked out in their
characteristic livery that always reminds me of The Less Deceived.
I was already an admirer of
Waterman’s work in anthologies, but this was a chance to get to grips with it
as the poet had originally intended. Living
Room is a terrific book. Just like Douglas Dunn’s Terry Street, which was published five years earlier, it shows
Larkin’s influence in many poems. However, Waterman goes further than Dunn and
manages to establish an implicit dialogue with Larkin. One such example is
“Calling”, in which the speaker takes on the Mr Bleaney role, giving it a new
twist:
“…And I was led up past landing
kitchenettes,
And round and up to a
slope-roofed room, low bed,
Bed-table, titling wardrobe,
cheap bowl fire.
“That’s it, and there’s the
meter.” Then,
“You’re young,” he added, “where
is your home?”
“Home?” I replied. “Home’s where
I find myself…””
There’s a tension throughout Living Room between the need for company
and solitude. In this respect, the afore-mentioned poem bears comparison and
contrast with another poem, “Betrayal”. In recent years I’ve read a number of
successful poems about sharing a bed (Armitage, Duddy and Davidson among them),
but “Betrayal” again contributes a fresh, jolting perspective:
“”…Again? To try again again?” he
shrank.
And so, apart, both slept.
And wake to find their bodies are
entwined
familiarly in warmth and
disengage
retreating to the bed’s cold
edges,
embarrassed that unwilled flesh
should betray
the separation of true minds.”
Waterman’s exploration of his conflicting
view on company and solitude also homes in on the accumulation of emotional and
physical clutter, the urge to acquire it, then loathe it, then shed it. The collection’s title poem plays a key role, as in the following
extract:
“Freedom to thrust like that
through all I’ve dumped into
a bare life since first bareness
seemed failure forfeited
by each act that furnished it,
I dwell here claimed by what
I’ve chosen: living room
that by the more it holds
feels less my home.”
By playing off “more” and “less”,
Waterman again achieves an effect that’s reminiscent of Larkin, but the
emotional drive is all his own.
Andrew Waterman’s Living Room is a collection
that’s held up exceptionally well over the past thirty years. Unlike many of
its contemporaries, neither its attitudes nor its poetics seem dated. I feel
extremely fortunate to have discovered it, and I’ll be rereading these poems
for a long time to come.
