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

The Beryl Cook fat-lady painting on the cover suggests the tone of this book, the humour, but not the pain.

     There are signs of that expected generalised feminine resentment, but also acceptance of the persona’s own mistakes and responsibility:

I made you an impressive self, my love.
From insufficient cloth I crafted it,
Stuffing you into it, dismissive of
The clear inadequacy of the fit...

     A series of poems can be called love poems, though the woman cares and the man clearly doesn’t: a pattern of humiliation at indifference, and failed attempts to communicate. Another sequence is about a better relationship, but that is ending in sickness and death. Among the other miseries there’s the misery of seeking a job, the word identified with jobs done in a potty. Yet the stories are told with wit, protective irony, a lightness of touch and literacy: its a wry, skilful and often tender record of a difficult life lived with courage and humour. The title poem ‘Backwork’ allegorises the method: it’s mining in the shady world of the worker underground. She’s not one of the hackers and slashers: there are enough of them. Hers is a soft dedicated scraping: “Me. Working close to my chest with a bastard file.” (A file with a medium degree of coarseness.)

     There are poems on a variety of other themes - home (turning it into a temple), animal-relationships, and characters: Foxy Lady, whose Woolworths perfume recalls a vixen smell: “Urine and dog-feet. Sweat of a ripe bitch...” The same Eve in another poem drinks Calvados and hopes “The Lord has one more Adam up His sleeve”.

He’s going to have to take her as she is
Out in the garden in a dressing-gown
Breathing old apples as the sun goes down.

These are among the most sadly entertaining of a well-written volume.