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

Many of the poems in this book take their cues from places abroad - Gibraltar, Prague, Rome, Turkey, Spain, etc. - and a few some nearer home, such as Hebden Bridge, London, the Isle of Wight, and Grasmere. There’s the poet, travelling and registering what she sees and hears and experiences, and it’s as if the names evoked are meant to add colour to what is described. The problem is that too few of the poems really go beyond the ordinary, by which I mean that the ideas inspired by the locations rarely rise above the mundane. “Travel narrows the mind”, someone famously said, and Kant, when challenged about his reluctance to stray far beyond his home town, replied, “I have travelled far in Koenigsberg”. I’m not against travelling and I like Paris and Prague and London, and yes, Hebden Bridge, but the point I’m making is that when it comes to writing poetry, being in a different place isn’t necessarily a good thing in itself. A poem has to be more than a postcard:

The square shimmers
In heavy stupor,
Scorched under
The torrid sun.

Cream and brown
Parasols droop
Like fading flowers
Over painted tables.

Neat enough, but it could be a description of a painting or photograph. It lacks the individual touch that would take it outside the ordinary.

     Interestingly, the most convincing poems in this collection are those which don’t rely on a particular place to give them substance. There’s a short but effective piece about a Quaker meeting which catches the atmosphere of uncertainty and hope, and one about a garden that sustains a tranquil tone. A simple poem about ‘Easter Rain’ also works well. Best of all is a poem about the poet’s father which builds up a real picture of a man who was, by this account, often a mass of contradiction, something not unusual in fathers. I responded to this poem and wanted more like it.