The Poetry of Stuart A. Paterson

It is remarkable what you find when you're not looking for it. It often turns out to be much more interesting that what you were looking for and my room upstairs full of old magazines, concert and theatre programmes, essays and music on cassettes all dusty, dry and yellowing is a place where it is quite likely to happen.

I was looking for an envelope to fulfil that rare thing, an order for books from David Green (Books), when I came across some letters from the poet Stuart Paterson from 1997. He was a friend of a friend and for a time we exchanged a few letters in the days of typewriters or handwritten correspondance. I had forgotten much of those days and was surprised to see how generous he was about my poems. Except that he was the successful poet with the proper book out and, just up until the time it was going to feature my poems, editor of Spectrum, a fine poetry magazine in which I might have first discovered Martin Mooney's poems.

Stuart's book, Saving Graces (Diehard, 1997), was an impressive debut, traditional and formal in many ways. It celebrated nature, had a sense of place and history and was accessible and lucid. All that you need for a fine book of poems, in fact, which is what it is. A Rush of Memory by Polmaise is a personal history of kissing; the title poem is a little meditative masterpiece, Sunsets is a superb elegy to finish on.

Internet research suggests that Stuart might not have pursued his career in poetry that promised so much. His friend and associate Hugh McMillan seems to be regretting as much and the Scottish poetry scene that he seemed to inhabit with Tom Pow and Stewart Conn would have been the better for his contribution. But he might not have disappeared completely. He seems to be travelling, making the most of it all, and so you never know when or where he might choose to reappear.

There was talk of a second volume of poems but I've not been able to trace a copy of it. It would have, no doubt, included perhaps Stuart's best poem John's Christmas, 1992 about the suicide of a neighbour, who left Stuart a note and a can of beer, that ends,

The distance between now and then
I still can’t judge as well as one
small backstep to oblivion;
and then, you know, from there to here,
and soberness with one tin of beer,
has never come so awfully quick.
I drank the beer. Of course I did.

I'm glad I found that poem when I went back to look upstairs again.