Stuart A. Paterson - Looking South

Stuart A. Paterson, Looking South (Indigo Dreams)

Just when it seems I've not seen much new poetry this year, it all comes at once. Some failure of the poetry bush telegraph left me the less informed but eventually I found out about this and there's a couple more to come.
Stuart Paterson's Saving Graces was an excellent debut in the 1990's after which it went quiet but he's back now and making up for lost time.
Not much has changed, and we can be grateful for that. These are poems rooted in time and place, the title referring us to his return to Scotland after years in, I think, mainly Manchester. They are direct, uncomplicated meditations on home, local history, nature and some politics, free of the sort of linguistic showmanship and adventure to be expected in the Roddy Lumsden book just arrived. In some amateur poets such sincerity and unlayered poems can become mundane or sentimental but Stuart is never that, his themes accumulating to an authenticity and truth that make for richness in an entirely convincing collection. His sense of place is full of the people, past and present, that made it,
Loves were made to last, fused through the brick
& woven into smoky floor and thatch,

and the details of several obscure figures from the history of Galloway, often C18th, are provided in a number of footnotes.
The nationalism that Stuart began with, when his poem, Dream State, gave its name to an anthology, hasn't abated. Personally, I don't see political independance being necessary in making identity and countries seem to me better off in alliances than in isolation but politics is not the primary purpose of poetry. Although it is a natural place for the discontents.
Looking for Wullie reminds me of my own search for Rosemary Tonks as Stuart tries to find the grave of Wullie McClellan, blacksmith, whose photograph shows him at work,
                                       lost in 
what it means to live but not forget.

And Sketched, on the page opposite, is a similar thing, with
Grace wedged into the very essence of
geology, herself a poem, a sketch
still being drawn not by word or line
but by the steady expert hand of time.

That closing on a rhyme in otherwise usually unrhymed poems is a regular feature in poems held together by phrasing and rhythm. It is effective and undemonstrative, never in danger of being accused of being prose set out in lines but neither allowing itself to be forced into unnecessary disciplines.
My Last Word on Herons is acute in its observation and depiction; Margaret Wilson's Abjuration is as powerful as anything with its conflation of political and religious dissent, gender perspective and life denied; Not Summer Yet describes the contingency of unseasonable weather.
The book, so specific about events and characters, is about timelessness, though. It is always extending beyond circumstances to something wider, the grander scale of things not by any means accepted as right or proper but understood, and impressively set down. It would be difficult for anyone, whether a regular reader of poetry or not, not to enjoy it at whatever page they open it.
It's great to see him back in such consistent good form.      
    

Oh Babe, What Would You Say

What a week it's been. Virtually written off as a week I'll never get back as a result of the spam e-mail being sent from my hi-jacked address. I'd be grateful if you'd consider accepting my apologies if you've been a recipient of any of them. They won't necessarily have been in my name but they will have originated from my address.
I'm grateful to those who understood about it, and I'm surprised at how many it has happened to before me; I can only apologize and continue to explain that it's not my fault to those who were troubled by it and I can only feel sorry for those who didn't even realize and replied to me, not understanding what it was about, but thinking they were replying to the name that appeared in their inbox.
I do feel degraded and sullied by the experience and it's not often I feel like that. I can only hope the perpetrators get some satisfaction out of their enterprise because it does no favours for me, those that have been in my address book over the years or those it has progressed onwards to, who are people at least two degrees of separation away from me.
I spent hours on the phone to India, talking to my new best friend, Madhur, who assures me that it will be sorted out after all the scans and wizardry that he did so remotely to solve the problems. Good grief, I thought I'll quite happily give up on the internet, all this vainglorious blogging and e-mail, I have a big pile of books, the wireless and an All Gas & Gaiters DVD, surely that's enough for anybody.
And, also, by the way, the programme for the forthcoming year of Portsmouth Poetry Society is now on the website (see nearby link) and so, if you're in the area, come and see if you enjoy a meeting. Your first visit costs nothing at all and we will be delighted to see you. I've been to a number of the groups in the past and looked at the websites of others and I can promise you there's not another I'd rather go to.
So, let's hope the nightmare is over and I can have my life back.
But more and more apologies in the meantime.
---
Like any box office attraction, I've looked at the ticket sales for the Poetry Lunch at the Havant Literary Festival. Sales seemed to going well earlier in the week when it said only three tickets were still available.
But now there are six.
I can only assume that three people realized that I was reading there and promptly asked for their money back. But I can assure everyone that it won't be that bad and it will only be a couple of poems from me and everybody else will be lovely and charming. So, roll up, roll up and make the event a sell out. I mean, I've bought a ticket, I'm doing by bit, I don't think Mick Jagger pays to get into Stones gigs.
--
Our walk this afternoon began in Earnley, it's name was Earnley and was near the slowest seashore in the West. It has a bird sanctuary and I was told by those that know that I saw an egret. I don't know how good that is. But it was slow going on the shingle and one can appreciate how Red Rum won three Grand Nationals by practicing on Southport beach. But it was fresh air and the hugest of fun.
For instance, having been the fourth best in the world at what he did, was Tim Henman a failure.
Well, when you are fourth best in the world at anything you do, please let me know.
And what of Jeremy Corbyn's prospects as Labour leader or Prime Minister. Probably precious little but he struggled to get enough nominations and now, the last time I looked, he was 2/9 favourite to be Labour leader. But at least he will be a Labour leader, if he becomes it, because there's no point winning a General Election to keep the Conservatives out if you only do what they would have done if they had got in.
Oh, it's a lively debating chamber on these walks sometimes. I can hardly believe I actually care enough but then I notice I'm jabbing my finger at the opposition, the opposition who are some of the few best mates I have. Luckily there was some scenery to look at as well.
--
Meanwhile, back on the camera and the latest in my series of photographs of David Green's books, herewith a picture of the George Eliot section of the library here, which is complete in as far as it now comprises the novels and a biography. There's no point being completist about these things because that's an obsession one can never get to the end of. I haven't even got everything I've done. But I think it's fair to say I love George Eliot. She is admirable, hugely intelligent, makes me laugh more than you might think and I'm very glad I realized in time to collect this little pile of cheap second hand copies.
I don't need pristine collector's item copies of books, it's the words inside that matter and as long as they're not too scruffy and don't fall apart, any such book is welcome here.
--
ERRATA. Stuart Paterson wrote to point out some errors in my review of his new book. He's not the least bit upset about what I think about the poems, they are fine. But he hasn't returned to Ayrshire, he has gone back to Scotland and lives in Galloway. Some of my other observations were astray. The poem, John's Christmas, was not included in this book because it doesn't fit with the rest of the book for perfectly good reasons. It was not left out due to any lapse in editorial judgement and will be in a longer, forthcoming volume in due course. I won't be the only one looking forward to that.
But I'll be leaving my review as it is. I like mistakes, like when Larkin saw a tomb in Chichester Cathedral and then went home and wrote An Arundel Tomb.
--
That'll do.   

Stuart A. Paterson, Border Lines

Stuart A. Paterson, Border Lines (Indigo Pamphlets)

Stuart Paterson has adopted a radical approach to the 'difficult second album' syndrome. He's left a gap of 18 years between his first collection and the second and, to all those artists who ever made a disappointing second album, it works.
Stuart's been away, you see, down in that there England much of the time but, now back in his native Ayrshire, has provided the long, long awaited follow up to his excellent debut, Saving Graces. I had looked forward to the next book for so long that eventually even I had all but forgotten that there might be more to come.
Not much has changed. These are very recognizably poems by the same poet, so much so that one is actually a new, slightly altered  version of a poem that appeared in the first book. So, these are not all recent poems produced in a new, homecoming burst of creative energy. There are one or two others I recognize from the 1990's and so I have to express a slight regret that the tremendous John's Christmas, 1992 that I still have here in typescript is not among them. Perhaps it was considered too dark to be put alongside these poems or maybe it missed the cut. Stuart wouldn't be the first poet to have left out a piece that I particularly admired.
It is entirely a good thing that these poems haven't moved on much from the earlier book. That first set had all the accomplishment, understated panache, sanity and good humour that make this sort of poetry very much the way that some of us would like to see British poetry go. There is no need for overly-ambitious syntax, linguistsic pyrotechnics or arch cleverness, Mr. Paterson is well capable of doing all that is necessary within the compass of an honest, clear poetry that is casually formal but neither over-dressed or under-cooked.
The 24 poems are easily read at a sitting and that is probably the best way to do it at first. It might seem a slight book, and thus a 'pamphlet', compared to many one sees but, as one who generally produces a booklet of 14 poems or so no more than every four years, it isn't for me to say it is thin and I'd rather have 24 good poems than 24 good poems spread among 60. Ideally, there should be no need of a Selected Poems, the selection should have been done before the poems saw print. So, although the book reads well taken as a whole, and is something I rarely do with longer books, one returns to specific favourites or highlights on further reading. The first of those, for me, is Barnhourie, in which,
every darkness keeps a little light,
which shows Stuart's natural optimism, or positive demeanour, in these poems because many poets, whether now or in the past, are often keen to find the darkness in any light.
Skylines is a good idea beautifully expressed, tangentially suggesting the creative process and how he might leave the poem for others to write. Spate treats time, space and size in a disarmingly accessible way that Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Quantum Physics have never been able to. Passing Through ends memorably with,
past & futures caught
between that final, tiny sunburst
& the long beyond of doubt.   

But just in case this looks like an inside job and anybody thinks Stuart is my mate, that's not quite so. We once had a mutual acquaintance and only ever exchanged a few letters all those years ago. It would be quite possible for us to have taken part in the same pub quiz and neither of us would have realized. Although how many he has been to in Portsmouth, or how many I've done in Kilmarnock, is a moot point.
But, just to prove it, I'll express a reservation about ships 'hoving' into view, which looks like an unreconstructed cliche to me but might well look like completely appropriate use of the verb to anybody else. I might also express some envy at the way that Irish poets, and Scots like Stuart, can use place names that are poetry in themselves. Never mind Michael Longley's Carrigskeewaun or some of Stuart's place names here, if you live in the minor conurbation of Gosport, Fareham, Portsmouth and Havant then you don't have such ready-made, evocative words to play with. And, furthermore, we don't want a referendum of our own because we're glad to have you but, by all means, each to their own.
But there are a lot of books of new poetry that really don't get me interested enough to even read. I knew I wanted to read this one and I was not disappointed. The obvious thing to say is that I hope it's not 18 years until the next one and so I won't say that, but I'll enjoy returning to this.