BOB COOPER: DRINKING UP TIME Redbeck Press 24 Aireville Road Frizinghall Bradford BD9 4HH UK ISBN 0 946980 65 2 £3.95 BOB COOPER: PINNOCHIO'S LONG NEB Smith/Doorstop Books The Poetry Business Bank Street Arts 32-40 Bank Street Sheffield S1 2DS UK ISBN 1 902382 33 1 £3 BOB COOPER: ALL WE KNOW IS ALL WE SEE Arrowhead Press 70 Clifton Road Darlington DL1 5DX UK ISBN 0 9540913 3 7 £6.95 [US$11.95] visit the website of The Poetry Business email Arrowhead Press visit the website of Arrowhead Press email the author Web design by This page last updated: 28th June 2008. |
BOB COOPER: DRINKING UP TIME | |
Bob Cooper writes earthy poetry with a lyricist's touch. This combination of toughness and sensitivity is a winning team. Geordie characters, one after another, rise up from these pages fully formed — not just in the physical sense — but with an added dimension; giving them a dignity and mystery whether they're repairing a car or having a piddle: JOHN AT THE SHIELDFIELD GARAGE A glance seems enough as he bends, unscrews the airfilter, prods with a finger — fetch a half cup of petrol — pours. start it again — a spurt — then he spits, wipes his eyes, swears. Cleaning his hands he explains a lazy fuel pump — and your carburettor, the jets the width of a darning needle, doesn't block, just needs time. Or prime it see? He accepts we sometimes keep running on empty, tikes his trannie loud as he works — ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE, LOVE — he sings as the bonnet's pressed shut, and the body rocks slightly, and all that he's touched still trembles, hums.Cooper is not afraid of the long line as many contemporary poets are; each line is as long as it needs to be — his eye is never off the ball. Like a genre painter Cooper's subjects are all around him. In the untypical short-line poem ON THE NEWCASTLE METRO he demonstrates an ability to create an almost moving image (pun not intended!) from a very ordinary scene. This is a poem with senryu qualities: And there with the overcoats, smooth hair, gloves, where people crowd in, crowd out, like pollen an unconsidered touch of perfume, cashmere, stays with me on the escalator, sunlit.His eclecticism within the frame of working-class Newcastle is heralded in the very first work of this twenty four poem collection — MOVING INTO A TOP FLOOR FLAT. An ordinary life here is centred on the place where he lives: a myriad of small things — sounds, sights, desires ... an ordinariness made special by his ability to single out everyday objects, feelings and melt them into other worlds infinitely more profound: Life is either your hat, coat and umbrella laid on the settee or the simplicity of fingers that pick up and unwrap as everything packed in the chest is unpacked; ... Life is either looking down on a curve of trees, a bread van, wet streets, people hurrying, or across the midsummer horizon and sky where a black-headed gull, solidly large at this level, is excreting its blessing while turning.Redbeck Press have produced yet another beautifully designed small book that serves this talented writer well. Bob Cooper is definitely not running on empty. | ||
reviewer: Michael Bangerter. | ||
BOB COOPER: PINNOCHIO'S LONG NEB | ||
Twenty one poems with geographical clues that clearly point to a writer who knows Newcastle well. The poems are deceptively open but each brings to the light the hidden secrets of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people. It is this revealing of the hidden, the stripping of layers of deception that make the title apt. The title poem ALL WE KNOW IS WHAT WE SEE sets the tone for the whole book. Particularly poignant is THE TROUBLE WITH CAROL who carries the sense of absurdity and falsity of life around through a hard life until ...she knows if she doesn't walk away quickly it will come out, unrestrained, unbelievably loud.Cooper's poetry is written with the ease of someone at home with the natural rhythms of speech but who is also able to dig under people's outer shell to reveal not only their own character but the underlying determination and resilience of the people of the north east. | ||
reviewer: Polly Bird. | ||
BOB COOPER: ALL WE KNOW IS ALL WE SEE | ||
Bob Cooper's new collection, ALL WE KNOW IS ALL WE SEE, is a treat for devotees of his work, and a revelation for those who, like myself, have not come across his poems before. As a first time reader, what I really relished here was the economy of words, and the power of the poet's imagery. The poems that struck me as being the most memorable were contained in the sonnet sequence THE WET CHILD, which is subtitled Following Wordsworth with a series of 34 poems along the River Duddon. Following Wordsworth anywhere is, in my book, always a poetic risk, as is calling him by the familiar name Willie. Yet it is a risk that, in this instance, Cooper pulls off with aplomb. In his journey along the River Duddon, Cooper encounters backpackers, arguing couples, climbers, publicans, families, the ghost of Wordsworth himself, and Wordsworth's child of the clouds, the Wet Child of the sequence's title. Lines such as: the Duddon makes its river sounds once more and leaves applaud his performance, loudlyrecall Wordsworth's own precision. Cooper's strength as a sonnet writer, it seems to me, comes from his balance of the lyrical and the mundane. These qualities can also be perceived outside his sonnet sequence, in poems such as WHEN BIG STEVE SPENT IT LIKE WATER and ON THE NEWCASTLE METRO. Here the interplay of everyday experience and the beauty of the natural world mean that faces on the underground crowd out, like pollenThis balancing of the hard-edged with the lyrical is one of Cooper's greatest strengths, as is the memorable title, or exactly recalled turn of phrase. In poems such as YES, Cooper's detailed descriptions of natural phenomena are reminiscent of Ted Hughes, but also of the American poet, Galway Kinnell. Indeed, the opening lines of the poem put me in mind of the opening of Galway Kinnell's THE BEAR. In YES, Cooper transforms the landscape by making the sun reminiscent of a dying animal: So quietly, like an old mammal dying in winter, the blood orange sun bled for us again last night.I found openings such as this to be both precise and transforming, demonstrating what Michael Schmidt has termed the real weather of the poem. ALL WE KNOW IS ALL WE SEE, is an inventive book that changes, and challenges the reader with each new section. Beginning with poems about climbing (reminiscent of work by the Leicestershire poet. Mark Goodwin), and then moving on to the sonnet sequence mentioned above, allows Cooper to demonstrate the flexibility of his work. In short, this is a well written, and nicely structured volume, that re-pays reading. Finally, it is interesting to note that the experience of rock climbing seems to be proving a fertile ground for poets, from Mark Goodwin in Leicestershire, to Cooper in many landscapes, including the Highlands and the Lake District. This volume in particular benefits from a sense of the real outdoors, and the exact textures of place. | ||
reviewer: Deborah Tyler-Bennett. |