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Jim Burns

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Review

The Looters, Robert Minhinnick, Seren Books. £4.95

Before reading this book I’d only come across Robert Minhinnick’s poems in magazines. I’d found them interesting, but didn’t know if he’d be able to sustain a collection. I’m now convinced he can. And I’m also persuaded that his work has a continuity to it that comes from an overall vision and purpose, as well as from a voice with its own strong characteristics. It never pushes language at the reader in too forceful a manner and yet it still manages to impress with its conviction. And it has certain constant concerns (environmental ones, for example) which are established without too much lecturing:

Now here was a valley, stranger than most
In the legends. A heap of rusted cars
Lay racked like toast, and the pool of green
Nitrogen simmered between rocks.

     But if he’s good at social themes, he’s similarly skilful with personal relationships and domestic arrangements, the pain of dealing with someone afflicted with mental illness, and the necessity of getting by on a day-to-day basis. I did sometimes sense a slight distancing in the poems, as if the poet didn’t want to get too close to certain matters, but that’s a minor reservation. I was generally impressed by the writing and the sharp little vignettes which stick in the mind:

And the men sit and
Wait, elbows on the rolled-
Down glass, the clockfaces
In the dash starting to glow.
The dusk turns petrol-blue.

 

Page(s) 67-68

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