Published by Valley Press. www.jamiemcgarry.com/valleypress
It's impossible to remain unmoved by this new collection of poems. Jagged, thought-provoking, raw, they demand attention and deserve to get it.
The sharp, sometimes to cutting point, observation brings to mind Philip Larkin. He also brought foibles, discomforts, hurts into a tight focus. He also crafted with a considered choice of word sounds and rhythm.
There are deliciously lyrical images here. "...those lush afternoons when the world seemed to poise in our grasp like a peach" from Inasmuch. "There'll be stillness, something/waiting, there'll be sunbeams melting mist./There will be buds that gently ripple into/scarlet, snow and gold." from Bequest. And you can almost taste the words off the page in Jackets 'n' Skins.
Side by side with the appetising comes the tough, unrelenting and tortured. We Fought, in particular, has this balance teetering on an edge but always satisfyingly maintained.
No subject - love, death, murder, cancer, relationships (familial and otherwise) - is too difficult to be tackled - and brought down in the box (since we're all in World Cup mode). Each is explored unflinchingly, all its dark corners poked at.
And the form follows content, being unsettling too. We're not quite sure who or what or when, we have to grasp at meanings that are relevant to us. Making these poems not an easy read, but a fulfilling one.
If I wanted to be nit-picking, I might suggest some of the endings lose this trust in the reader and become a little too explanatory. A few more commas would not have gone amiss either.
That aside, this collection is worthy of much re-reading and contemplation. I went through it almost in one go and I can see there will be poems that I will return to again and re-discover in a different way.
Narratively strong, Hodcroft's poetry holds that fine balance between ugly realism and lyricism; bleakness and hope; death and life, and even life after life after death.
