Booksy

This has the look of a classic literary chapbook, with its good-quality, cream-coloured paper and its pleasing front cover ink-drawing. But I bought a copy because I already knew several of the poems in the collection and knew they were rich and accomplished enough to revisit – the beautiful ‘Madonna de la Febbre’, the extraordinary ‘Lickspittle’ and the sobering ‘Somme’ – the latter being, for me, a mark of Humphreys’ worth as a poet. When I first saw the title I thought surely there is no more to be wrung out of 1st WW trench goings-on – but I was wrong. ‘Somme’ is original, absorbing, and its message about the human will to live – or to die – is worth thinking about even in the 21st century.

New to me was ‘The Beech Tree’ – the story of a tree which, with a rope hung from it ‘like a bell pull’ is a challenge and a friend to the young narrator ( that line took me right back to Winnie the Pooh ) but the narrator grows up and ‘abstracts’ the tree so that it ‘fades like garret wallpaper’ – until it is felled, and the man is ‘rooted by its void’ where there is ‘nowhere to hang a rope’ – forget the joyful frolicks of Christopher Robin, now the rope seems like the symbol of the hangman.

The eternal mysteries of living and dying, of presence and absence, are the tones that ring through this collection, not least because the poet goes out of his way to add the caveat to the book - 'The reader should not presume that any one of these pomes is autobiographical' thus, naturally, making the reader wonder which ones might be. But it is the richness of the language and the ideas that makes me want to go back again and again, revisiting those poems that present Hay Tor as ‘a fist punched through the moor’ and tell me that to plant a tree is to ‘set a trap for the future’, and that the smiles bestowed on a waitress are ‘grappling hooks’.

An excellent collection, and well worth the price. What’s next, Nigel?

I’ve never been attracted to poetry – probably because I’ve lacked the patience (and time) to study the genre. Similarly, I’ve always preferred large paintings, sweeps of landscape stretching into the distance; portraits where every line of the features is clearly delineated, rather than miniatures which have to be studied carefully to appreciate the artist’s talent.  Having met, and enjoyed the company of Nigel Humphreys, I wondered how and about what he would write when I began to read his book of poetry, ‘The Hawks’ Mewl’, expecting the poems to go over my head as most poetry does.  I was wrong.

Every poem is a miniature painting in words, carefully crafted and bringing to life a picture. The hawk’s primitive cry, an everlasting howl through the ages; memories of a barely noticed beech tree until it had gone and the horror of the Somme described in sparse, but horrific words. I marvelled at the language painstakingly chosen to illuminate the terror and pain men suffered far more clearly than a novel full of words. Such a joy to read in these days of limited vocabulary.

Some of the poems are too abstract as yet for me to grasp – I’m only a novice after all – but the musicality of the poetry even if, in some cases, discordant in order to emphasise outrage at man’s inhumanity, grips the imagination and draws one into the imaginary world of the poet.

Nigel, you have converted me to a poetry reader. I shall return to your book again and again.

Pam Eaves