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Guardian, June 18, 2005
In poetry I've just read Roddy Lumsden's terrific selected poems Mischief Night... Nick Laird
Product Description
Roddy Lumsden is one of the liveliest and most inventive poets writing in Britain today. From the formal, frenetic debut Yeah Yeah Yeah, through the playful wit and cynicism of The Book of Love, to the 'magnificent song to himself' of Roddy Lumsden is Dead, his poetic journey has already been eventful and he remains fascinated by the intrigues of men and women and the short steps from real life to folklore to the surreal. Mischief Night brings together the best work from Roddy Lumsden's three previous collections, as well as a whole new collection, The Drowning Man. It also contains poems from his pamphlet The Bubble Bride and the previously uncollected sonnet sequence Cavoli Riscaldati. 'Sharp, bright and utterly heartbreaking, this collection by one of the most intriguing voices is alternatingly roguish, curmudgeonly, insecure, and tender. The speaker woos and teases, cajoles and repels, withdrawing before beginning again. Though the poems offer no utopian promise, no deliverance, they cut to the quick with the difficult truth of longing, need, and the "salt of hopelessness".' - monique tschofen, New Delta Review 'There are tremendous narrative poems, mysterious, lingering ones...and unforgettably realistic tales of melancholy sexual encounters. ..Lumsden is a brilliant vivisector and pathologist of the contemporary relationship...all we can ask for in poetry: contemplation, intelligence, stylistic beauty. Like a spreadsheet of a morality adventure, like perfectly articulated pain...a helpless celebration of Life's adventures' - alan warner, Scotsman
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1 review
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
extremely uneven
11 Dec 2004
Format:Paperback
This collection of poems is extremely uneven. Lumsden's early work, _Yeah Yeah Yeah_ and _The Book of Love_ contains an overall work that isn't too bad (and here is where you'll find the great poem "Always"). But it isn't enough to carry the book. The new poems are weak and trite. And the previously unpublished sonnet sequence, Cavoli Riscaldati and his collection _Roddy Lumsden is Dead_ is just plain bad. There's nothing real great here. And I had such high hopes for this collection.
Always
After the full-day's westward drive you find
the house familiar from a photograph,
its brass-hung door thrown wide.
A meeting party welcomes you: up front,
the matriarch, corn hair tied in a bunch,
the husband of few words
and, in behind two sniffly, smutty boys
you'll take a good few days to tell apart,
a gran'ma, blunt and blouse.
It's then that you sense her, in and down the hall,
so vague, at first you take her for a shadow
or portrait on the wall,
the daughter who, that night, will steal in slow
to visit you with kisses coarse and sweet,
to gift you with her heat,
and who through the remainder of the week
won't speak again, although you send her notes,
whose name you never know.
And always this will whittle at your wits-
the way she gave her nightdress to the floor,
one finger to her lips
to call aboard the silence of the land
to forge the night-time colours in her hair-
until you grow unsure
of what was real and what was in the wind,
of all that being meant before and since
that single word she said.
Always
After the full-day's westward drive you find
the house familiar from a photograph,
its brass-hung door thrown wide.
A meeting party welcomes you: up front,
the matriarch, corn hair tied in a bunch,
the husband of few words
and, in behind two sniffly, smutty boys
you'll take a good few days to tell apart,
a gran'ma, blunt and blouse.
It's then that you sense her, in and down the hall,
so vague, at first you take her for a shadow
or portrait on the wall,
the daughter who, that night, will steal in slow
to visit you with kisses coarse and sweet,
to gift you with her heat,
and who through the remainder of the week
won't speak again, although you send her notes,
whose name you never know.
And always this will whittle at your wits-
the way she gave her nightdress to the floor,
one finger to her lips
to call aboard the silence of the land
to forge the night-time colours in her hair-
until you grow unsure
of what was real and what was in the wind,
of all that being meant before and since
that single word she said.
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