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

There are poets who impress with the ambition in their work, and others who dazzle with rich language. Anne Cluysenaar doesn’t come into either category and instead relies on a calm use of an unforced technique and an unemphatic application of words. She writes as if the best way to approach the world is without rancour or dismay, and she clearly delights in ordinary details and the day-by-day events and occurrences that occupy much of our time:

Resting the ladder against the wall, I think
of the people who did this before, stripping
layer after layer of wallpaper, in all colours.
None that we like: magenta, dark green, purple.
Soon to be brilliant white.

     Now it’s true that writing like that can sometimes lapse into the incongruous, with the poet simply piling up information that the reader has no reason to care about, but Anne Cluysenaar constructs her poems so that we are skilfully moved from place to place, from the description of re-decorating, to where the house is and who passes by, and then back to the interior, with enough variation to keep us interested:

This is no-date. This is just life. Life
as usual, as always. You are grey
with plaster-dust, and Tim writes your name
on your forehead. Now we know who you are.
The sun’s moved round a little. Time to get on?

     There’s a warm feeling about it, contented but not complacent, and it is what sustains many of the poems. They are attractive in their tone, and often quietly moving.

     Timeslips is a New and Selected Poems, and it shows how the poet has been consistent in the writing of low-keyed, thoughtful poems. There are a couple of minor dull patches, and I didn’t find the inclusion of the libretto for a short opera all that interesting. Words written to be performed with music often need to be heard in context if they are to realise their true value. But there is much to be gained from the book as a whole.