The undercutting of everything that came before, Richie McCaffery’s Skail

While maintaining many characteristic traits of his poetry, such as the portrayal of relationships and the human significance of objects, all within the context of condensed lyric snapshots, Richie McCaffery’s new pamphlet, Skail (New Walk Editions, 2025), also offers its readers a glimpse into the new routes that his writing is exploring.

To start with, there’s his abandonment of the first person in much of the collection, many of the poems referring to a ‘you’ and a ‘he’. This decision on McCaffery’s part not only generates greater distance between the poet and his characters, but also highlights a fresh filter of external observation.

This above-mentioned use of reportage relates to a constant questioning and doubting of certainties that runs through the pamphlet. Of special interest is McCaffery’s repeated use of specific words. For instance, ‘but’ crops up on no less than thirteen occasions in these twenty pages of poems, while ‘though’ appears eight times. What’s more, they’re employed together in certain poems, one after the other, as in the closing stanza to the title poem…

But the bulk of his ash was left to her, and went
headfirst into the remains of the vegetable bed.
And though it was a wet night, the dust cloud of him
hovered under the streetlamp, as if getting its bearings.

At several points throughout the collection, ‘but’ acts as a hinge, starting a last line or a final stanza, just like in the above example, indicating a change in tone as McCaffery homes in on the core of his inspiration. And then in the poem’s concluding clause, ‘as if’, another of McCaffery’s favoured turns of phrase, also kicks in with a leap that lends the poem an extra layer.

When looking at this quatrain in depth, it becomes clear to the reader that those three devices (‘but’, ‘though’ and ‘as if’) all undercut each other in turn. Absolutes no longer exist in vital and linguistic terms. Supposedly modest and clear-cut words suddenly take on unexpected new ramifications.

This additional depth of nuance is to be savoured by any reader, but especially by McCaffery aficionados. Skail evokes the undercutting of everything that came before it, hinting at riches to come in his future writing, a significant landmark on his continuing poetic journey.