Kevin Bailey has generously written a terrific review of Whatever You Do, Just Don't for HQ Poetry Magazine, so terrific that I'm almost willing to forgive him for calling me Matt! Here are a couple of quick quotes... This is superb and engaging poetry - highly recommended and worth getting. As a poet-of-sorts myself, when I start to think ‘I wish I'd written that’, I know that the experience of engaging with their work is going to be a good one.
Geoff Hattersley, who died
yesterday, was one of the most outstanding but underrated poets of his
generation, while his impact on other poets was so great that it wouldn’t be hyperbolic
to suggest his emergence back in the 1980s transformed U.K. poetry. In fact,
this influence will undoubtedly become a fundamental part of his legacy to the
genre, alongside his idiosyncratic, top-notch poems.
Back in the late 1980s and early
1990s, he was a pioneer in embracing American techniques and aesthetics, infusing them with the humour and character of oral language in Yorkshire
society, and generating something new. I remember reading his work for the first time and suddenly waking up
to the possibility of Transatlantic poetic communication far beyond expected
channels.
Without his example, I find it
difficult to imagine Simon Armitage writing Zoom!, as it shares numerous
qualities with Hattersley’s poetry. What’s more, Zoom!, the current Poet
Laureate’s first full collection, also includes several poems that were previously
published in a pamphlet titled The Distance Between Stars, which was
edited and brought out by Geoff Hattersley himself under his Wide Skirt
imprint.
In the above context, given
Armitage’s importance and relevance to the present-day scene, Geoff Hattersley’s
contribution as an editor and publisher has been immense. As for his poetry
itself, why not celebrate his life by getting hold of his most recent
collection, Instead of an Alibi (Broken Sleep Books, 2023), recently the
subject of an excellent review by Matthew Paulan excellent review by Matthew Paul for The Friday Poem and with a sample poem from it in The Guardian a couple of months ago…?
There’s some terrific poetry being written
these days around the motif of ghosts. Anna Saunders’ Ghosting for Beginners
(Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2018) is an excellent case in point, as are Rebecca
Farmer’s two pamphlets, Not Really (Smith-Doorstop, 2014) and A Separate
Appointment (New Walk Editions, 2022).
The latter poet is especially
interesting as a point of comparison and contrast with the subject of today's review, Lucy Dixcart and her first full collection, Company of Ghosts
(Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2024). In both poets’ writing, ghosts interact with
the living, though the ghosts in Rebecca Farmer’s poetry are primarily lost
loved ones, which is understandable given she is from an older generation.
In
Lucy Dixcart’s case, meanwhile, her ghosts tend not to be sourced from the
dead. Instead, they represent the hypothetical selves that could have existed
if different life choices had been made, or they act out the role of former selves,
all seen from someone who’s approaching the mid-point of life, looking back on
youth and wondering what might have been.
One such example of forking paths can be found in the opening lines to ‘In Concert’…
At night, my lost sisters rise –
floating ghosts manacled with kelp,
faces moon-soaked, lassoed by their
own
salty hair.
Each sings her last moment -
a job declined, a child that wasn’t,
a door closed, or opened.
I’ve shed a self at every threshold…
And then those afore-mentioned former
selves appear later on the collection, passing judgement on present-day events and
speakers, as in ‘Reunion’, in which the third person
plays the ghost…
…She’s rolling her eyes,
propels me to some former friends. We
sift
through weddings, children, work –
nothing sticks.
I call for help, but she’s jigsawed
apart
and all her edges are missing…
Throughout this collection, Lucy
Dixcart takes the device of ghosts and uses it innovatively to explore the evolving
nature of the self. Like all good poetry, Company of Ghosts confounds
our expectations and enriches our own inner lives as we find ourselves
encountering our own ghosts too…
