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As yesterday begins by Les Merton
125pp, £7.99, Bluechrome, PO Box 109, Portishead, Bristol
BS20 7ZJ. ISBN 1-904781-30-6

The title and the cover are horrible. Horrible like pink balloons or the prospect of living in Glastonbury. Horrible like a first chapter called “In a special time: love was all that was needed to change the world” – with accompanying picture of a hippy and a CND badge.

   Yes, the presentation is a nightmare. Lots of drippy sketches and fonts that make the titles difficult to read. In amongst it, Les Merton’s poetry rarely gathers momentum. There are sections on a Cornish childhood and upbringing, then various travels, New Age profundities and (strained) light humour.

   I know this sounds mean, but maidens in spray, festivals, granite shores and wandering western seas are hellish to read about in neutral tones. And, if you’re going to write about screwing someone, why not go for it? Why write it without trying to capture the energy! Probably won’t work, but who knows? Better than just saying: “You’d better stay. We’ll make up the spare bed, it’s a double. Check and Mate Bella” (“Bella’s Game”).

   And then some brilliant writing. I won’t use that awful cliché: “which alone justifies buying the book”. But “The Hitler Letters” are superb – the only poems in the book which seem truly alive. Paradoxical, because they detail, with great skill and economy, the creepy relationship between Hitler and his young niece Geli (who killed herself in strange circumstances). They could be by a different writer.

   In a sense, they are by a different writer. Because I think Merton needs to forget the stone circles and find some more interesting material. And if that’s dark and “unpleasant”: fine. Another piece (“Starry Night”), on van Gogh’s encroaching madness, shows what a good poet Merton is when he tries this sort of territory.