The Anvil's Prayer, by James W Wood

Ward Wood Publishing, 2013, £8.99
Surprise in poetry, most readers would probably say, can only be a good thing. The surprise of new forms, of words used to create new sounds, new music, or the surprise of original and wholly distinctive subject matter.
There's another sort though, and that's the surprise achieved by all really good poetry, of making you feel that something's been said the only possible way it could be said. The surprise of an effect that's both emotional and intellectual, but that creeps up on you unannounced.
That's how James Wood's poetry works. His technical skill and ear for language are outstanding, but what repeatedly catches you off-guard in this memorable debut collection is the emotional heft that he asks them to carry.
I found that all the more impressive given that I'd seen the manuscript of the book well before publication, and have read and re-read the two chapbooks - The Theory of Everything (HappenStance, 2006) and Inextinguishable (Knucker Press, 2008) - that contribute to its contents.
(I should add, at this point, that another more surprise occurs to me, namely that it took this long for a publisher to offer a full collection).
The book is split into three sections, Hymn, Elegy, and Exaltation, but while that broadly deals with themes of praise, grief and mourning, and celebration, one of its strengths, I think, is that all those elements are present throughout.

Take the wonderful The Craws, from the middle section:

                                                     You were
no prizewinner, sportsman, or great thinker,


just a man like any other, and one
whose life asks us for little grieving.

It's bracingly clear-eyed and honest, and it manages to perfectly balance mourning with recollection of a life well-lived. There's no attempt by the poet to distance himself from difficult or uncomfortable subject matter - the understated precision of the language is trusted throughout to steer clear of the pitfall of sentimentality.
Catherine Wheel, dealing with a suicide, is another good example, asking its questions gracefully and without a hint of melodrama or straining for easy emotional effect.

                                           you were
a Catherine Wheel blazing brilliantly

in a ploughed field at midsummer, a spark
that might have cloaked us all in fire
if only we could have seen it.

We're talking about restraint, here (sometimes abetted by Wood's skilful use of the constraints of form), rather than the sort of buttoned-down politeness of which much mainstream British poetry is often accused. When Wood wants to, he can really put the spurs to the language and positively gallop across the page. A poem like The Theory Of Everything is exhilarating for the way it pulls together a whirlwind of diverse ideas and images to celebrate the sheer variousness of the world (no, the universe), while there's a similar joy in both language and life itself to be found in Fantaisie De Fruits and Buccaneers.
Wood's control of pacing is evident not just in individual poems, but in the structure of the collection, closing with the superb An Fraoch Mor and Departures, both perfectly controlled in their reflectiveness after some more free-ranging excursions just before. The latter is again clear-eyed, refusing to look for excuses or distractions, closing with "So set sail for life, / keep steel in your eyes. Hold hard to your course / and let the storm clouds rise."
The love poems are highlights too, and I'll close by pointing out one further surprise that involves them. I suspect many poets would have kept the opening piece here, The Same Page, towards the end of the book, a sort of pay-off after the difficult journeys that have gone before, what with its potential for a happy ending of sorts. Here, though, it's an interrogation of both the nature of love and of poetry, and the hold it takes on you isn't released until the end of this very fine book.

Inextinguishable - James W Wood

Inextinguishable
James W Wood (Knucker Press, www.knuckerpress.com)
If you enjoyed James Wood’s 2006 HappenStance chapbook The Theory Of Everything half as much as I did, then you’re probably not going to take too much convincing to buy this, his latest pamphlet, a handsome full-colour publication matching the response of 13 artists to his poems. So, my apologies if you’re already converted, because I’m going to preach to you anyway (something the poems never do, incidentally).

The first thing to say is that this collection represents significant progress from an already impressive starting point. That HappenStance pamphlet was notable for the sheer variety it offered, with Wood leavening the more serious, resonant moments by taking off at all sorts of playful tangents. The poems in Inextinguishable, on the other hand, are much more homogenous, the better to carry their considerable elegiac weight.

And carry it they do. The first poem, An Fraoch Mhor, sets the tone simply but movingly, both looking back to the past and imploring “Let memory go now”, and several of the other pieces here explore that tension – on the one hand, wanting to do justice to people and places past, on the other, wanting to move on into an uncertain future.

Fine craftsman that Wood is, he knows just when to deploy that plain, unvarnished style elsewhere. The Craws, for example, contains the lines:
“…You were
no prize-winner, sportsman or great thinker,
just a man like any other, and one
whose life asks us for little grieving.”

The emotional impact of the poem is all the greater for that willingness to speak a simple, unvarnished truth, to do much more than a little grieving without ever slipping into sentimentality, an effect that’s replicated elsewhere.

Another favourite was Catherine Wheel, an elegy which closes with the fine:
“…you were
a Catherine Wheel blazing brilliantly

in a ploughed field at midsummer, a spark
that might have cloaked us all in fire
if only we could have seen it.”

And the final poem, The Orchestra Plays Nielsen’s ‘Inextinguishable’, serves to gently but firmly restate what we’ve already taken from what’s gone before:
“music is life, and like it, inextinguishable.
A principle
for every anxious soul to follow,
forged and hammered in our heart’s crucible,
the beat that trips and will not rest,
all things in ebb and flow.”

Taken on their own, these poems add up to a very strong chapbook collection, so maybe I saw the artists’ responses as something of a pleasant but inessential bonus. Perhaps a few too many seem to interpret Wood’s words a little too literally, but I liked Jaimie Lane’s By The Station Café, Fiona Purves’ Thirteen and Elizabeth Walker’s Catherine Wheel in particular.

But it’s the poems that I really want to talk about. Buy them, read them, and wonder when this man is going to get the full collection his talents deserve.

Inextinguishable

I've just received Inextinguishable, the third chapbook by Scottish poet James W Wood. It's a 32-page, full colour pamphlet featuring his poems, and responses to them by 14 young artists from the Edinburgh College of Art, and the result looks positively mouth-watering.

It's the first Knucker publication I've seen, and they do perfect justice to an idea that, in lesser hands, might have ended up looking a mess. I've written before on Polyolbion about how the physical appearance of a book or pamphlet can greatly add to my reading pleasure (if that makes me a fetishist of some sort, then so be it), and this is a perfect example. It's so beautifully produced, you can't help but want to keep picking it up and reading it.

And the contents fully match the surface richness. So far I've only flicked through, picking out two or three poems to read, but they maintain the thematic and formal variety, not to mention lightness of touch, that characterised Wood's excellent chapbook The Theory Of Everything (HappenStance, 2006).

I'll be posting a full review when I've had time to read the collection properly, and think about the artists' responses - watch this space...