Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

The photo on the front of this book shows a neat street on an estate, the houses much the same and the grass verges tidy and trim. And flicking quickly through the poems gives a similar impression of orderly lines and carefully trimmed verses. As we know, though, what goes on behind the curtains of ordinary houses can be quite varied and it’s a mistake to assume that everything will be the same. Thompson’s poems also offer a range of ideas and experiences, even if they are usually quietly stated and without any major claims to breaking new ground. What they do instead is show how the old ground can still be used with success:

Suede was high fashion in that year of Pop,
My shoes looked small though by the full-
                                                     length coat
Your family’s newfound wealth down South
                                                     procured,
A new life on immaculate estates.

It isn’t great poetry but it’s deftly handled and the rhythms are easy. And Thompson doesn’t limit himself to poems about the “home front”. Some take us to the Carolinas, where “a streetcar rolls percussive in the heat”, and to the Apennines, where “a herd of hills/ Sprawled hogback in the sun”. And they look back to heady days in London in 1968 (“Indica Books, with its bangles and beads”) and early memories, with “Young kids given send-off from parental rein”. One of the best poems in the collection is called ‘Zulus, Radios, a Bedsitting Room’, and recreates the curious days of childhood when all kinds of experiences blend into each other. Thompson recalls listening to the radio, reading about Rorke’s Drift, and visiting his grandmother and the old lady’s final days when she had to be moved from her home:

An ugly little flat well off the Front was
                                                        found,
A bedsit in St Anne’s-on-Sea. And there she
                                                                  died,

An empty VP Sherry bottle by the bedside,
A bedpan underneath. A gas ring by the sink.

     This is a modest book in the best sense of that word and its competent handling of identifiable themes makes for pleasant reading.