I’d no sooner cleared my desk of poetry-books-for-review when five more arrived: three published by Carcanet, one by Shearsman, and one by Waterloo Press. I began by reading a few poems from each and then settled into one of the Carcanet books, which is quite good, I think. Because of all this, I haven’t even been able to start the two new Salt books from Luke Kennard and Jamey Dunham.
I visited the Christian Aid Secondhand Booksale (Europe’s biggest) on George Street and came away with more books – a New Selected Poems of Ted Hughes 1957-1994, Michael Hofmann’s Approximately Nowhere, and Paul Muldoon’s Meeting the British. A week or two before, I’d picked up Frank Kuppner’s astonishing Arioflotga, a long poem consisting only of first lines from imaginary poems that make up a mythical anthology. It looks really funny, apart from anything else.
All good stuff, but I don’t know when I’m going to get a chance to read them, nor where I’m going to put them. I’ve decided it’s time for a clear-out of books I know I’ll never read again, especially those which weren’t much good first time. I don’t like removing books from my shelf and prefer to hoard them, but I will nevertheless enjoy the de-cluttered sensation once they have taken up position in whatever charity shop I hand them to.
