A poem from Paul Ings' first pamphlet

The dishes I most enjoy are cooked by chefs who demonstrate an understanding of how flavours and textures work together, a subjective understanding, of course, that coincides with mine. From the first mouthful, I know we’re on a similar wavelength. And the same goes for poetry. Within a stanza, I know whether a poet has a certain feeling for a line, a cadence, a sentence, that I also share.

In both cases, food and poetry, there’s always a delight in making unexpected discoveries, either at a backstreet tapas bar or from a small press publisher. One such example is Paul Ings’ first pamphlet, One Week, One Span of Human Life (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). This title might give certain readers the erroneous impression that the work inside might be abstract or metaphysical. However, it simply serves to indicate the pamphlet’s structure, which follows the course of a week.

The key moment, however, was when I started on the poetry itself. By way of example, I’m delighted to have been granted permission to reproduce the following poem in its entirety, as shorter quotes wouldn’t do justice to its gradual, subtle, cumulative effects:

After an Hour of Walking Sheer Clifftops

there’s this reluctant beach has its back turned towards us;
as we peer down through bracken mesh up on high
it makes like it’s not there in its shady surround
but we’ve spied it and we’re coming down.

Our discovery has an unassuming, laid back manner
of nonchalance in its expulsion of us;
water laps yet again at our retreating toes
till we’re all backed up against the cliff before we know it

where we throw in the towel; but as we climb
and as the awkward terrain occasionally allows
we cast glances back down at what is now
a bay of frothing mashing waves contained

within its vessel; so vast and uncompromising this view
that I only happen to glance at my slapping sandaled feet
and the young adder so discreet that it merely laps
wavelets at my toes passing off amongst ferns.

Throughout this poem, an awareness of form is latent in the background, giving the initial impression that its long lines are relaxed and free, when in fact the poet has a close eye on syllables and stresses, alongside a keen awareness of the role of line endings. Moreover, Ings’ ear for natural language means that the poem wears his craft lightly, inviting us along with its speaker, never dictating, never overreaching, never lapsing into poetic preening, allowing rhyme and half-rhyme to merge into the background.

As mentioned above, Paul Ings’ work has been a lovely discovery for me. You never know what tapas you might find off the beaten track, and the same goes for poems too!

A letter to an Oxfam Bookshop customer

Dear Oxfam Bookshop Customer,

I doubt I’ll ever know your name or face, but I do know that you visited the Oxfam Bookshop in Chichester at some point between Easter and August this year, pulled my book, The Knives of Villalejo, from the shelf in the Poetry section, and decided to buy it. I’m left to imagine you browsing, picking it up and flicking through the pages, perhaps pausing to skim-read a poem or two before taking the plunge, maybe wondered who Camilla might be (the person to whom I dedicated this copy of my book when it began its first stab at life).

I only discovered my collection had gone when I visited the shop last month, checked its old spot, and found it had vanished. It was no longer sitting in its slot under S for Stewart between other books that used to accompany it and are still left waiting to be chosen (see picture below!). 

There’s a thrill to giving a book a new owner, another reader, and I hope you’ve enjoyed your copy. The unanswerable question now, of course, is whether you’ll keep it, go back to it or even let it go again in due course to another charity shop. For now though, I’d simply like to thank you for granting it a second chance.

All the best in a shared love of poetry,

Matthew Stewart

A selection of Evangeline Paterson's poetry on The High Window

A few months back, The High Window commissioned me to curate a selection of Evangeline Paterson's poetry. The result is the feature (see here) that's now been published. I do hope you enjoy Evangeline's work. She's an unjustly neglected poet who warrants serious re-evaluation...

Christopher James' The Storm in the Piano

My review of Christopher James' new pamphlet, The Storm in the Piano (Maytree Press, 2022), is up today at The Friday Poem. You can read it in full at this link, but here's a short extract as a taster
Whether using the first or third person, the poet stands far further behind these poems than is common these days, thus avoiding any temptation to conflate the poet and the narrator. Dramatic set piece after dramatic set piece, Christopher James invites us into his vast array of worlds via an aesthetic approach that feels pretty much unique in the context of contemporary UK poetry.

In a juster world, Christopher James' books books would sell in thousands...

Ploughing its own furrow, Ruth Beddow's The Thought Sits With Me

When I first came across Ruth Beddow’s poetry on Wild Court, I was especially struck by the natural flow of its language, a quality that makes her work immediately stand out among her contemporaries (Beddow is still in her twenties). I was thus keen to get hold of a copy of her first pamphlet, The Thought Sits With Me (Nine Pens, 2022), and a close reading confirmed my initial impression, as in the closing stanza to ‘Birmingham Central Library, 1973’:

…and later, a year since I had left the place
for good – a decade after my parents
dismantled our home – the rubble piled high
on Paradise and said, as I stood watching,
there’s a grace in being forgotten.

The above extract demonstrates an acute sense of the delicate, tense relationship between line and sentence, employing enjambment judiciously, harnessing language to musical effect without ever falling into the trap of artificial fireworks. And then there’s Beddow’s ability to root her poems in the everyday as a point of departure before lifting them into their own world far beyond mere anecdote. In this case, that transformation takes off as soon as the reader realises the rubble is speaking.

Moreover, in thematic terms, this poem is a perfect example of Beddow’s deeply felt awareness of the passing of time. Her invocation of changing generations, also referenced in other poems in this pamphlet, implicitly invites us to think about our own personal histories. And along those same lines, the following extract from ‘Ode to a Reuterweg Bedsit’ also stands out:

…My bag was already packed upstairs
in the matchbox room I had thought Neolithic
but which, in time, as with all the walls we love

and leave, had softened all around me…

This quote again flows easily while also packing an emotional punch. Furthermore, in its reaching out for the first person plural, it again demonstrates Beddow’s ability to carry her poems beyond day-to-day experiences, encouraging us to explore the significance that objects and places acquire in our lives.

In the context of contemporary trends, Ruth Beddow’s The Thought Sits With Me is consequently a remarkable first pamphlet. It defies fashions to present us an idiosyncratic poetic aesthetic that ploughs its own furrow. Of course, the intriguing issue now is where she’ll take her poems from here. I’ll be following Beddow’s progress with interest. 

A new poem in The Spectator

I'm properly chuffed to have a new poem in The Spectator this week. ‘Heading for the Airport’ is taken from my second full collection, which is forthcoming from HappenStance Press in November 2023. It's a significant poem for me and you can read it here.

Summer / Break by Richie McCaffery

Due to having a generous mention in the acknowledgements section of Richie McCaffery’s third full collection, Summer / Break (Shoestring Press, 2022) and  having kept up a long-distance, email-based friendship with him over several years, I don’t feel I can review his new book with any degree of independence or objectivity.

However, suffice to say, Summer / Break is an excellent example of the poetry I enjoy reading. Apparent simplicity, delicious poetic leaps and achingly resonant object-led poems have long been McCaffery’s trademarks, but his recent personal upheaval seems only to have driven him further and deeper in a quest to find the means of expressing and transforming extreme emotions. Completely and utterly recommended!