We Will Eat Breakfast With Our Children, Niall M. Oliver (Nine Pens, price: £7.50)

The inks of poetry are many; rarer, in my experience, are poems penned with inks that might be described as happiness. In We Will Eat Breakfast With Our Children, Niall M. Oliver is unafraid to seem uncool, which is to say not mired in angst, and as a result, there are meditations and meditative moments that stem from the everyday which are just lovely.

One poem, Reflection, sees the poet making oats and looking out at the garden, at “a robin / hopping along the garden fence, / a distant tree crowned with starlings”, and other things. It’s a beautifully observed and penned description of one of those ‘staring’ moments we all have; a “moment in-between”, and the simplicity and sensitivity in the piece are wonderful. As well as gardens, there are breakfasts and dinners, biscuit tins, cupboards, offices, supermarkets, taxis and other familiar things and places; alongside these are family and funerals, friends and newborn babies.

It’s the stuff of life from Niall M. Oliver, essentially; fittingly, the poems are incredibly accessible and unpretentious; and even though a final poem states, in a subtitle, that “You Have Fucked Your Life Up Big Time”, still there is solace to be found in family; in the wife who “lies still and warm” and in, as per the title, eating breakfast with the children.

We Will Eat Breakfast With Our Children is a book that warms one up, so to speak, as if we were lying in bed, too – despite, or in spite of, life’s harshness, here is poetry that affirms, coddles, cwtches, and lifts the reader up all at once. Another lovely batch of new poetry from Nine Pens this April, a very fine small press publisher indeed.

Cormorant, Elizabeth Parker (Seren, price: £9.99)

We’ve all seen cormorants, I should think, especially here in Wales where the coast is so in reach. Elizabeth Parker acknowledges this in her poem Their Cormorants, in which different people’s views of the bird are colloquially presented. In these views, cormorants are variously martyr- or priest-like; move at “frightening” speed beneath water; seem “gilded” to a young man in a post-Blitz city; are, by one sea-faring person, hated. Our preconceptions of this bird are many; images of darkness intertwine with ones of this “oily black” bird to explore these projections, in poems collected in Cormorant that do not shrink away from the shadow side of such.

There’s a strong sense of place / places throughout this collection, and the description is often very fine and exact rather than wide-angled or soft focus; this gives the book a grit and heft which I greatly enjoyed. I also really like some poems which lean into being more spell-like, possessing an incantatory quality that is, variously, achieved through assonance, repetition, and other literary techniques. One fine example of this is the poem Braids, with its repeating refrain and strong lyrical, even musical, sense. Accomplished and artful, heartfelt and addressing themes such as family and loss, Cormorant is a marvellous second collection of new poetry from Elizabeth Parker.

East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon, Taz Rahman (Seren, price: £9.99)

Awareness of sound, including the tone and timbre of language itself, permeates East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon, the first collection of Cardiff-based poet Taz Rahman. Taking its title from a well-known jazz standard, this too points to the musicality inherent in the book: indeed, the poet’s ear is keen, and words and images collide, intertwine and dance together, via a pen that’s deft and a keen observational vision.

Rahman identifies as a ‘flaneur’ in these pieces, too – and this is true, from what I know of the poet – so expect the capital and places beyond to be captured within these pages, also, with wit, sensory appreciation, and an eye that falls on the known, transmuting it to something new and interesting, as well as the unknown, even the banal or unbeautiful. What Rahman’s poems show is that everything is to be delighted in, and nothing is, in his sweeping gaze, ‘left out’. As a writer with roots that come not just from Cardiff but also from Baghdad, that fact speaks volumes in its own way about what, and who, we deem to be important. 

Assured and experimental, East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon is a book of new poetry which defies hierarchies, without being political; instead, it’s refreshingly experimental, lyrical, and intelligent without ever lording it over the reader. Instead, it simply asks you to dance.

And I Will Make Of You A Vowel Sound, Morag Anderson (Fly On The Wall Press, £7.99)

These are poems – and this is a poet – unafraid to grapple with life’s shadow this April; to get into the guts, “dank and foul as rotting colons”, and to show it. Imagery in And I Will Make Of You A Vowel Sound often includes that of human innards, from bones and organs – “the ladder of my ribs”; “swollen basket of teeth”; “the last knuckle of light” – to its various substances/liquids – “piss-reek”; “bleeding wombs”, etc.. This isn’t to say that this is incessant, but it’s one daub of paint in the poet’s pallet. Alongside it are fine, sickle-sharp observations of people and places, histories and relationships, with poems in a variety of voices and from a number of viewpoints, even those – as in the poem What Ails The Girl? – that are unsavoury. 

As a poet myself, I always look for what I admire most in every book I review in this column – and, as space is limited, also only looking to review items I think I will like – and what I love about this one is Anderson’s brilliant use of unique and original similes. In just one of her poems, None Of The Nine Were There, we have “a trickery of cuts / thin as justice”, crows “black as extinction”, a scent that “hung like a wet pelt”, spittle that is “like blow spray”, and more besides. These images are surprising and graphic, bringing a whole new realm of imagination and meaning to the poem, and similarly in others.

Overall, And I Will Make Of You A Vowel Sound is a strong, stark book from Morag Anderson that isn’t for the faint of heart but, still, is full of it. Daring, disturbing, and defiant, it’s very much worth adding to your TBR pile – and reading very soon.

Skin, David Harsent (Faber, price: £10.99)

Skin is a collection of new poems from David Harsent that takes the form of 10 sequences and is described, in the blurb, as ‘visionary’. Is it? Well, yes, but so are many poets. What I think I like most about this book is not how ‘visionary’ it is, because that’s true of so many writers, but how great its breadth of vision is, which cannot be said of all.

Thus, stones are just as important and interesting as ghosts, here; the poet’s imaginative range, too, is great, and for me the most affecting sequence is Hallways & Rooms, in which the writer reveals scenes within a number of rooms, encompassing violence, strangeness, the domestic, social ritual. I enjoyed following Harsent’s imaginative renderings and, at the same time, his empathy, which runs a rich seam throughout the collection, as does his fluidity, flexibility, and ability to take us into surprising, unexpected places.

As one example, the last of the sequences is called Nine, and features “a reconstruction of certain passages from a notebook found among the writer’s effects”. Again, it showcases surprising, unpredictable scenes and unfamiliar places and people. It’s something like a dream, with images that shift and slide into each other, almost a kind of “spell-making”. My other favourite sequence is entitled Of Certain Angels, and describes winged beings in all sorts of unlikely situations – “on the bed, arms raised, legs spread” – and as demi-deities with duties in particular areas – The Angel Of The Skyborne Mirage; The Angel Of Rise And Regret. In this sense, sure, it’s visionary, in a bleak, Blakeian way, perhaps.

Skin is a big book, with a big mind behind it, and plenty of breadth, depth, and height. Amazing that a poet like David Harsent has been given such space and support, but it is deserved, and I enjoyed this colossal collection of new poems this April very much.