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JEFF NUTTALL: Objects. Trigram Press, 22 Leverton Street, London NW5. 66pp/£1.50 (paper).

Jeff Nuttall’s poetry has always struck me because of the sheer muscular energy uncoiling in everything he touches. His earlier work spat from the page with a lacerating edge of neurosis, frenziedly scratching all itches and breaking against rational structures. This new collection oozes into far, far mellower patterns than ever before and seems rather wistful by comparison.

     But all the skillfully drawn tension still infects these pieces and the internal rhymings give a sense of bubbling depth lurching from a tightly meshed nylon dance of shadows, forwards into the sunlight.

     Nuttall is exercising his eye for shape, contrast and line to greater advantage in this new book, using structural concepts riding the line between the film-taker’s technique - carefully shot and smoothly edited and those techniques shown with mastery by Charlie Parker on the Verve recordings.

     Nuttall broods like a bird over the northern working landscape, sketch-the passage of its people cutting across it, swearing at and fighting the daunting, swallowing mouth that surrounds their movements, caught between loving respect for mother and leaving home. He passes you words and they expand in the hand, standing sprightly among the sauce bottles. He passes you words to take. If you’re still not convinced - STAND UP & READ . . . . . .

“Walked through the spittle, dead cats shattered phone booths
Winced at rain-soaked mattresses amongst the willowherb
Turned into Fenton, bought a packet of Park Drive and fifteen pints
Took a bus to Otley, shot his bloodcoil into endless recesses of
                                                            midnight summer rain.”

Above all, Jeff Nuttall has energy, energy to burn.