The Poetry Room

It was a small but focussed group that met last night to discuss Christopher Reid’s moving collection A Scattering (Arete Publications). Everyone welcomed the opportunity to read some poems from the book that’s been in the news for winning this year’s Costa Prize. We threaded our way from the Cretan labyrinth through the growth of a soul to the novel of one person’s life in poems that troubled, impressed and touched us. Here was the essence of life and death in elegantly crafted, highly imaginative poetry, displaying a wit similar to that of the metaphysical poets in the sixteenth century.

Christopher Reid achieves that difficult thing – making a poem look easy, as if it were a spontaneous utterance: Glib analogies!/ Makeshift Rhymes! But these are well-wrought poems, making full use of end rhyme and assonance, alliteration and apostrophe to achieve their effects. Two favourite poems catch intimate moments between husband and wife – one, when he is shaving her head after chemotherapy and revelling in its lineaments, the curve of her clean scalp – ‘Virgin landscape,/ so neat and so new!’ ; and then, as he waits in bed for her to return home one night, until the shock of the realisation: Of course, I’d forgotten she’d died. But the dream continues as she rolled and settled towards him before wisp(ing) clean away.

These are poems that are hard to read but you read compulsively for the sheer pleasure of their articulation, the searing knife edge they walk between distance and total immersion in the experience of grief. There is an almost scientific detachment that allows Christopher Reid to revisit memories of his long and happy marriage to a charming and remarkable woman and the space left in the wake of her passing; also an immense courage in admitting to his bereavement’s murky labours,/ quintessential upheavals, noxious bubblings/ at the bottom of a flask, as it strives to distil pure tears.

If you weren’t able to make it to this session, do pick up a copy of A Scattering when you can and read these astonishing and important poems. While you’re in the bookshop you can also buy Carol Ann Duffy’s Selected Poems, which is our selection for March. Tuesday 2nd in Blackwell’s at 6.15pm. Looking forward to seeing you then.

A fortnight later than planned we read a selection of poems from the remaining five poets on the T.S. Eliot shortlist. We ignored the fact that the winner was announced the night before and concentrated on the words on the page. Every single poem touched us in a different way and we enjoyed the variety of tone, perspective and subject matter. The themes spanned strength and vulnerability, aging and death, grief and rebirth – an satisfying cycle to mull over on a wet January evening.

At the end of the session it was revealed that Philip Gross had won this year’s prize with his collection The Water Table, a surprising choice for this group at least. We chose Christopher Reid’s A Scattering (Faber) to read at next month’s session, deeply impressed by the title poem. It also recently won this year’s Costa Prize in the Poetry Category. Eilean Ni Chuilleanain’s The Sun-fish was also a strong contender and is on our list to return to later.

Everyone asked after Anna, who stayed at home to look after baby Archie, who was born on 29 December 2009. Congratulations, Anna! We look forward to seeing you again soon. Maybe at the next meeting, in a fortnight’s time, on Tuesday 2 February 6.15pm-8pm, at Blackwell’s (who are ordering copies of A Scattering for us, so do pop in and buy a copy and claim your discount).

We were invited into five very different worlds of the imagination during our December session. Reading a poem from half of the collections shortlisted for the T.S.Eliot Prize, the group was impressed by their deftness and their complex but subtle juxtapositions of times and places.

Eilean Ni Chuilleanain’s ‘On Lacking the Killer Instinct’ (from The Sun-fish) told three stories at once – the speaker of the poem coming across the hunting of a hare in a newspaper, bringing back the memory of seeing one after visiting her father in hospital dying, and the tale from 1921 when her father evaded capture by soldiers by taking refuge in a country kitchen. The poem drew us in, provoking as many questions as providing answers.

Two other poems concerned parents – Fred D’Aguiar’s ‘Leaving’ (from Continental Shelf) and Jane Draycott’s ‘Zulu’ (from Over). Each of them beautifully articulating the impulse to create myths, necessary and endless. At the other end of the family spectrum, Sinead Morrissey’s deceptively titled ‘Through the Square Window’ told the dream of an anxious new mother where the dead turn up to clean the windows of her house. We enjoyed the layering of references to breath and blueness; although the group was split on whether the poem was entirely convincing, despite its having won First Prize in the National Poetry Competition in 2007.

Philip Gross’s ‘Yalta, 1945’ (from The Water Table) took us onto a wider stage, revealing the short-sighted bureaucracy of the terms and treaties agreed after WWII. The Italian sonnet form made a tight structure to contain the damning considerations of papers, punctuation and pigeons for lunch. It was a poem, the group felt, that was very relevant to many of our current problems regarding war and borders, nationhood and immigration.

These five poems whetted everyone’s appetites for reading more of the shortlisted work as well as exploring the individual poet’s collections further. After the next T.S.Eliot Prize-based session in January we plan to take a poll to choose our own winner and then read that collection in February.

We rounded off the evening with a poetry book swap and everyone went home with at least one new collection in their pocket. This is something we can do more of, if folk like the idea. And do keep in touch on the blog about the T.S.Eliot poems if you weren’t able to make the session.

So, till next time we meet – at Blackwell’s on January 5th, 2010, 6.15pm-8pm – enjoy a relaxing time over the holidays, read lots of poetry and have a Happy New Year!