JAMES DAVIDSON: LITTERING Driftwood Publications 5 Timms Lane Formby Liverpool L37 7DW UK ISBN 1 904420 15 X £4 email Driftwood Publications Web design by This page last updated: 11th December 2007. |
JAMES DAVIDSON: LITTERING | |
Eighteen pleasant poems showing an inventiveness and quickness of thought and expression, the more effective probably in performance, with their twists and turns, echoes, lists and repetitions creating insistent rhythms. Here is an example from LITTER: already wasting— amassing fingerprints and smudges little wrinkles and tears you can feel the change the wanting to escape impatience for the aimless wind the wandering drift of rubbish the gathering at street corners the final mass of faceless mushJames Davidson certainly has a sense of natural rhythm, as in AUTUMNAL: poetry wot the fck poetry wot the fck i never sept wot at school and all that shit i forget wot the fck do i care yer jus live yer life least try toAs in VOCATION, a poem about being unemployed, he has a distinctive and expressive quirkiness of thought: You don't have a boss But you live With your parents instead And the daily reminders of How they work to keep you— Clippings from the jobs pages Turning up beside your cup of tea Or on the pillow in your bed So you come downstairs With newsprint on your faceHe generally writes about common everyday things, love and girls, birthdays, work or the lack of it, writing poetry, and so on. Every now and then he does aim for a greater profundity, but the seriousness sometimes slips into sententiousness, as in THERE IS A KIND OF SPEAKING: And only in the dark Is there any ending In the earless shadow The aimless monologue Where all worlds vanish into emptiness Inadequate to express Their own purposesBut all in all, a promising debut. | ||
reviewer: Alan Hardy. |