Anthony Wilson's The Wind and the Rain.

Anthony Wilson's sixth collection, The Wind and the Rain, is due out from Blue Diode Press next month. I was delighted to be asked to provide an endorsement for this excellent book. It reads as follows...

Throughout The Wind and The Rain, Anthony Wilson walks the tightrope of simplicity. He peels off layers of language, paring it back to its core, searching for the means to express the intensity of grief. In his skilled hands, less becomes more.

Inner and outer worlds, Anthony Wilson's The Afterlife

I’ve long been an admirer of Anthony Wilson’s poetry, ever since I picked up a copy of his first collection, how far from here is home? (Stride, 1996) at a second-hand bookshop over a decade ago. I later discovered his excellent blog, of course, and his work as an editor, which has brought poetry and new poets into so many people’s lives, but it is his own creative output that always calls me back, invites me in once more and moves me afresh.

For this reason, I devoured his latest collection, The Afterlife (Worple Press, 2019), in one greedy session, before going back over it again and again. From his first collection onwards, Wilson has displayed a talent for re-energising everyday language, for using ordinary words to conjure something extraordinary. He does this by engaging with events via observations of the people who live through them, as in the following extract from Sitting With Your Body:

…and Tatty stroked

your shoulder as if comforting

a child who was poorly and hadn’t slept,

all the while watching your stillness,

finally you were still, as though present,

then we kissed your ice forehead

and found our coats and walked

across the common to eat with the others.

The emotional intensity of these lines develops in subtle ways, by the juxtaposition of contrasts such as movement and stillness, by the ambiguous double or triple meanings of certain pivotal words. For instance, Wilson implicitly hints at different interpretations of terms like sleep and presence, trusting his readers to forge their own connections and take off on their own journeys.

An ability to play with the multiple meanings of words is also present in the collection’s title, The Afterlife. Initial readings might offer up religious connotations of life after death. In fact, Wilson is referring to a second life that comes after having faced your own death, a second life in which everything has changed forever.

This theme runs through the collection and marks a step forward in the poet’s thematic concerns. In dealing with his second life, Wilson works to find reconciliation between his inner and outer worlds, as in the opening lines of There are Days…

There are days I lose to knowing

it has come back.

An ache in my back, a run of night sweats.

Then nothing.

I am me again, climbing out of bed

to make the tea…

Physical acts are here portrayed alongside emotional torment, routine seen as a necessary counterpoint to the loss of former certainties.

The Afterlife is far from being a depressing or morbid read. Instead, its poems celebrate life with greater intensity thanks to their acknowledgement of our frailty, encouraging us to seize our days too. I thoroughly recommend it.

Feminine muscularity, Naomi Jaffa's The Last Hour of Sleep

Naomi Jaffa is perhaps best known for her old job as Director of the Poetry Trust and driving force behind the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. However, she’s also a poet herself. I was dimly aware of this fact, but Anthony Wilson’s recommendation of her recent pamphlet, Driver, brought my interest into focus. Of course, being contrary, I decided to begin exploring her work by going back to the start and getting hold of her first chapbook, The Last Hour of Sleep, which was published by Five Leaves back in 2003.

It’s a remarkable book. A detailing of its qualities might theoretically provide insufficient insight, but there is a definite usefulness in listing them, as its surprising juxtapositions and delicately achieved combinations of theme and technique are key to any understanding of The Last Hour of Sleep. In Jaffa’s hands, the everyday becomes disturbing, the ordinary becomes startling, bold expressions of sexuality become matter-of-fact, clear-cut emotions become loaded with ambiguity, straightforward lines become complex.

The ending to “Weekend” provides one such example:

“…That winter, another weekend, holed-up beside a lake

in a log cabin in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, you opted out

of our fantasy with us and your best friend, Richard. I still wonder

what you felt looking down through the banisters,

why you risked leaving us in front of the fire, seeing

much too clearly what you were missing.”

Such long lines are notoriously difficult to pace and control, but Jaffa’s sense of cadence is surefooted here. Moreover, her juggling of pronouns and prepositions is so clear and precise that it almost goes unnoticed. And then there’s the incredibly skilled manipulation of “risked”. Jaffa turns the verb on its head, making the reader wonder just who was risking more, what they were risking, whether this piece itself is a fantasy or reality. The poem’s feminine muscularity is striking.

The Last Hour of Sleep is packed with such instances of verbs being invested with fresh meanings, as in the following extract from “Unrehearsed”:

“…When skin no longer breathes it yellows and grows cold,

one-sided conversation soon runs dry,

trousers stain and smell without embarrassment.

Everything and nothing is too late…”

Of course, breathing wouldn’t initially be associated with skin. However, Jaffa pulls off the achievement of jolting the reader with this surprise before making it feel natural and inevitable, thus reinvigorating and strengthening the verb’s power.

This extract also highlights Jaffa’s deft use of juxtapositions. Not only is an everyday detail followed by the invocation of abstracts but those two apparently opposing abstracts – nothing and everything - are conflated and given the same quality.

The Last Hour of Sleep is an exceptional pamphlet. It goes without saying that I’ll be seeking out Driver as soon as possible, while a full collection from Naomi Jaffa would be a thing of wonder.

Anthony Wilson chooses The Knives of Villalejo as one of his favourite collections of 2017

Having long been an admirer and reader of Anthony Wilson's poetry blog, I was interested to read his post last week in the light of a certain famous poet's remark that 2017 had been a "thin" year for poetry. Suffice to say, I was surprised and delighted to find he had chosen my first full collection, The Knives of Villalejo, as one of his favourite books this year, alongside the likes of Michael Longley, Michael Symmons Roberts, Tania Hershman, Rishi Dastidar, Jacqueline Saphra and Zayneb Allak, all as part of his convincing argument that 2017 certainly hasn't been a thin year for poetry.

Pen vs. pencil

Anthony Wilson's recent blog post about the virtues of the pencil reminded me of Larkin's fondness for a 2B, as Anthony himself mentioned, while also chiming with my own tastes. Both pens and pencils are far superior to a keyboard in my mind, especially for poetry. Like Anthony, I love the tactile experience of writing. However, my choice is a pen instead of a pencil.

I do understand that only a pencil allows you to make notes in the margin of a page without defacing it forever, but then I've never been keen on physically altering books. Their magic really does take me over with reverence for the object, no matter how pompous that may sound. In other words, this potential benefit of a pencil over a pen doesn't do it for me.

However, the key benefit for me of a pen is that the destruction of a draft is far more difficult than via the delete key or a rubber. In a moment of frustration or rage, a keyboard or a pencil would enable me to get rid of text forever far too easily, thus cutting me off from a way back. Without the evidence that's left behind by the ink of a pen, how could I retrace my steps through the creation of a poem and salvage a turn of phrase or realise where I'd taken a wrong turn? I often even return to drafts of a second or third attempt while tussling with the sixth or seventh version of a poem.

In summary, a pen always wins out over a pencil when I'm writing poetry. A keyboard, meanwhile, comes a very distant third. What about you?

Helena Nelson on Andrew Waterhouse

Over at Anthony Wilson's blog, Helena Nelson has written a guest post about Andrew Waterhouse.

She tells the story of how she discovered his poetry, how it affected her and stays with her even today. Moreover, she also gets to grips with the linguistic mechanics of why, and that's where her insight reveals new facets to his poems.

Her post is a lovely read for a bank holiday weekend. If it encourages readers to learn more about Andrew Waterhouse and seek out his startlingly original verse, so much the better!

Naomi Jaffa on the end of an era at Aldeburgh

As the former long-time Director of the Poetry Trust, Naomi Jaffa is in a unique position to evaluate the situation at Aldeburgh, where it seems this year's festival might be the last of its kind. Her guest post on the subject over at Anthony Wilson's blog is consequently required reading. I very much recommend you read it in whole: her habitual generosity is on show once more, highlighting the work of poets rather than her own huge amount of graft. Perhaps the following quote from her article is key to how we might view recent events:

"...If it’s true what they say about all good things – and how can it not be, given our finite reserves of time and energy – then sometimes I can’t help wishing we’d strive to be less greedy (people always seem to want and feel the right to expect more) and more grateful. It’s been a marvellous thing, Aldeburgh, and no one can take away the preciousness of all those shared live readings and the evidence of the archive recordings. Enough should be enough..."

Let's celebrate what Aldeburgh has given us. Moreover, it's been a point of reference and departure for so many new festivals that have sprung up around the country over the past few years. Every time we attend such a festival in the future, we'll be accompanied by the legacy of Aldeburgh.

Anthony Wilson's Lifesaving Poems are to become a book

I've previously mentioned my admiration for Anthony Wilson's Lifesaving Poems - a series of blog posts in which he selects and discusses poems that have deeply affected him during his struggle with life-threatening illness - and so I was delighted to read the news that Bloodaxe are to publish them in book form.

Far too many thematic anthologies lack a personal thread running through them, a narrative that drives them forward. Lifesaving Poems will provide these qualities in spades. What's more, Wilson's deft touch in his commentaries won't just illuminate verse for non-poetry-reading people who have bought the book on a wave of emotion. It will also capture long-term readers for the genre.  I look forward to getting hold of a copy myself.

Anthony Wilson's lifesaving poems

Anthony Wilson is an excellent poet with direct experience of life-threatening illness. In that context, one of his online projects, titled Lifesaving poems, is especially relevant. He explains it as follows:

"I was struck by a remark of Seamus Heaney in an interview he gave some years ago now. He was musing on how many poems can affect the life of an individual across that person’s lifetime. Was it ten, he said, twenty, fifty, a hundred, or more? This is the question that has underpinned this pet project of mine since I began it in July 2009...

...My criteria were extremely basic.  Was the poem one I could recall having had an immediate experience with from the first moment I read it? In short, did I feel the poem was one I could do without?"

This is also the key to my own love of poetry - I often feel a collection is a success even if it just contains one single poem that engraves itself on me.

In his series of Lifesaving poems (which begins here), Wilson blogs on how each piece has struck home with him. It's personal, subjective and all the better for that.

Moreover, Wilson's range is extremely wide. He's introduced me to many wonderful poems that I'd never read, often by little-known poets. This is the catalogue of a life's reading. For example, one of my favourite posts is about Suzannah Amoore's An Upstairs Kitchen. It's a terrific chunk of verse by a poet who's disappeared from view, and I'm grateful to Wilson for having shown me the way to it.

Why don't you have a browse for yourself? There really are poems that can save your life.