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

There is an interesting mixture of poems in this book. In the first section Stewart Brown looks closely at his family and does the balancing act over the pit of sentimentality, though he doesn’t fall into it. With poems about children you have to be careful, but Brown is often slyly ironic, as in ‘Growing Pains,’ which suggests a little more than mere childish behaviour. And it’s a brave poet who will kick off a poem with the line, ‘How shall I address you, little one, on the eve of your birth,’ though again it works, mostly because the movement and feeling carry the reader forward.

     The second section begins to open out the concerns. There’s an amusing poem about a scheme to infiltrate home-made postcards into the Tate Shop. It’s a fairly slight joke, really, but again the enthusiasm and rhythm carry it along to a neat conclusion. And there are some short poems which cleverly utilise the facts of the scholar’s life to talk about wider issues. One such is ‘Bookmark,’ which deals with relationship between poet and wife, and another is ‘Blockbuster,’ in which larger issues are discussed:

a thousand bark-bound volumes
stacked, a winter’s library
of fuel for the imagination
kindling hearth-side mysteries
of firelight and dream:
man’s oldest reference work.

     In the final section the action moves to Nigeria mostly, and the long title poem looks at the effects of imperialism on an African state. It’s a poem with a couple of pages of notes attached to it, and it’s perhaps necessary to read these to fully understand what is under consideration, though it’s not exactly obscure without them. It’s just that they do help give more meaning to the poem.

     This is a good book. It isn’t earth-shattering in its impact, but it has some skilled writing, a degree of delicate emotional tightroping, and intelligence to recommend it.