♣ To A Fault
Monday 23 April 2007
I freely admit that Nick Laird's first collection of poetry was only partly read on my part out of intellectual and cultural curiosity. A much larger part was I wanted to get to know my future rival in vying for the attention of the beautiful Zadie Smith. Alright, so they are married already, but a guy's gotta dream. But I digress. How was his poetry?
Really quite well. Unfortunately, it's hardly the largest volume of poetry I have ever seen in my life, but then, its quality and not quantity that's important. The collection deals with a number of different situations, but is rooted in the obligatary conflict of Laird's Northern Irish upbringing. Much of the rest of the poetry maintains the kind of binary conflict of Northern Ireland; love : hat; man : woman, and the like.
The first poem set me up for a good read. Cuttings weaves a thread of sectarian conflict into a nostalgic trip, and contains some really excellent imagery.
Methodical dust shades the combs and pomade
while the wielded goodwill of the sunlight picks up
a patch of paisley wallpaper to expand steadily on it.
As a fan of very evocative, image filled poetry, this start seemed a good start. There was a fair amount of variety in the collection, but on the whole, it was just a little bit continuously dark for my liking. I almost want to say to Mr. Laird, please, have fun with it. Nonetheless, despite being fairly dark, his poetry is good, and technically diverse. Dare I say it, in places, too diverse. When Laird tackles Layered he takes on (and here he is criticised more than any other part of his collection) the role of the third-way / new labour dialect of the modern everyman.
I remember poncing a fag off some guy at the bar, Then downing the dregs of my last pint of stout,It's just not effective though, and has such an air of artificiality that it rather ruins this section of the poem. Perhaps this is just to be put down to a first time poet experimenting with his voice though. Certainly there are some excellent moments. Aubade is one of my favourite poems of the collection. Combining a remarkable perception into the contradictions of love, yet still maintiaing a fluid and exquisitely readable style, it's a triumph.
Go home. I haven't slept alone in weeks and need to reach across the sheets to find not warmth but loss.Overall, an impressive debut, if a little clumsy and morose in places.
Tintin's rating?
posted by danny @ 13:05,
