Poetry review – HIGH NOWHERE: Matthew M.C. Smith finds that Jean Atkin’s collection includes poems that range from the economical and to the highly evocative
High Nowhere
Jean Atkin
Indigo Dreams
ISBN 978-1-912876-80-8
£11
Jean Atkin’s High Nowhere is the English poet’s tenth book publication and there are over 60 poems in this collection, which bears the imposing cover image of an immense waterfall on the front cover.
In its measured, taut lines and constrained poetics focusing on nature and place, I was reminded of other authors from Indigo Dreams Publishing, such as Kathy Miles and Jane Lovell, who also engage with place, community, heritage and varying landscapes with a similar tone and brevity in their writing. In short, there is gravitas.
High Nowhere is made up of six sections, ‘Brink’, ‘Spread’, ‘Source’, ‘High Nowhere’, ‘Fable’ and ‘Path’. These sections function well in terms of breaking the work up into smaller blocks, allowing for a slower, more thoughtful progression for the reader. This progression runs from poems about extinction to the unreal experience of lockdown and an expedition to Iceland, with its austere, mighty, volcanic landscape. The book has plenty in the way of shifts and surprises and you’re not quite sure what’s coming next. Although the photography is arguably not needed given the detail of the poetry, it also adds points of interest.
There are numerous highlights through the collection. I was drawn to the first poem ‘wood’, which has an accompanying photograph – it’s a skillfully-executed, short poem. I could imagine the wood with its “din of rooks [that] descend the air to strut as black as beetles. The tatty wood lets out/ its rusted ghost of parish tip, ramshackles down a bank”. This tight micro is followed by a number of pieces that deal with the threat or reality of extinction, for example, poems about the decline of the English cuckoo, the loss of the Dodo and the ‘Cryptic Treehunter’, the latter being the most vivid, “O little bird of the midstorey, bird of the canopy,/ of the bright flowers, of the tall humid trees. You were long of bill, neat-framed, cinnamon-brown/ and screeching.” Once again, my attention is especially captured when Atkin becomes more lyrical, more focused on sound patterning and rhythm, with precise language.
I was also taken with the poem ‘light’ with its imagistic, camera-eye focus, resonant with alliteration –
a magpie lies
crisped among blackberries, dark claws clenched.
Its empty eye is clean and full of sun.
Its dulling feather dredged with dander
– a brilliant moment in the collection where we pan across and zoom in on what is being observed.
The poem ‘listen’ explores the effect of Covid-19 on environmental damage to the ocean because of the slowdown of the oil industry and its undersea development. We find out about the death of zooplankton and the effect of pressurized air from guns into the seabed. This left me wanting to know more about the chain-effect on marine ecosystems and I reflected that this was almost like prose journalism, shaped into a poem of short stanzas that was more of an educational than a poetic experience. Something similar is also seen in the poems about mills, which resurrect an industry that was once so important. Atkin’s work as both a poet and educator may have some bearing on certain poems which you can imagine being performed in colleges or community groups, where heritage poetry can make vital connections with the past and needs concision and clarity to engage with readers and listeners.
Elsewhere, another highlight is ‘With the millers of air’, a poem focused on wind turbines with “blades as pale as wings, angelic almost, chop the firmament […] Jockeyed by their wild anemones, they turn/ their faces windward, will race night and day […] grinding the winds of nowhere”. It’s at points like this where I was most excited by Atkin’s voice, when the constraint shown in some of the poems is put aside for wild, imaginative abandon.
Notable, too, are the Iceland poems, which involve observation of the tundra, the “arctic edge” and the “gorge-green cliffs”. Myth and local legends are touched upon but the formidable geology of the poet’s travels has primacy in this section.
The collection keeps us surprised with twists and turns between poetic and prosaic. At times, this is neat, concise writing that you can imagine on the radio or being performed in an educational context. The writing is often no frills, not too effusive – decidedly measured poetry in its execution; at other times, Jean Atkin unleashes the evocative and the poetic and that makes for an impressive range and scope.
Matthew M.C. Smith is the author of The Keeper of Aeons and Paviland: Ice and Fire. He is a reviewer for London Grip and staff writer for Poetry Wales. He edits Black Bough Poetry and TopTweetTuesday Twitter: @MatthewMCSmith Also on Insta, FB and Bluesky
Jul 1 2024
London Grip Poetry Review – Jean Atkin
Poetry review – HIGH NOWHERE: Matthew M.C. Smith finds that Jean Atkin’s collection includes poems that range from the economical and to the highly evocative
Jean Atkin’s High Nowhere is the English poet’s tenth book publication and there are over 60 poems in this collection, which bears the imposing cover image of an immense waterfall on the front cover.
In its measured, taut lines and constrained poetics focusing on nature and place, I was reminded of other authors from Indigo Dreams Publishing, such as Kathy Miles and Jane Lovell, who also engage with place, community, heritage and varying landscapes with a similar tone and brevity in their writing. In short, there is gravitas.
High Nowhere is made up of six sections, ‘Brink’, ‘Spread’, ‘Source’, ‘High Nowhere’, ‘Fable’ and ‘Path’. These sections function well in terms of breaking the work up into smaller blocks, allowing for a slower, more thoughtful progression for the reader. This progression runs from poems about extinction to the unreal experience of lockdown and an expedition to Iceland, with its austere, mighty, volcanic landscape. The book has plenty in the way of shifts and surprises and you’re not quite sure what’s coming next. Although the photography is arguably not needed given the detail of the poetry, it also adds points of interest.
There are numerous highlights through the collection. I was drawn to the first poem ‘wood’, which has an accompanying photograph – it’s a skillfully-executed, short poem. I could imagine the wood with its “din of rooks [that] descend the air to strut as black as beetles. The tatty wood lets out/ its rusted ghost of parish tip, ramshackles down a bank”. This tight micro is followed by a number of pieces that deal with the threat or reality of extinction, for example, poems about the decline of the English cuckoo, the loss of the Dodo and the ‘Cryptic Treehunter’, the latter being the most vivid, “O little bird of the midstorey, bird of the canopy,/ of the bright flowers, of the tall humid trees. You were long of bill, neat-framed, cinnamon-brown/ and screeching.” Once again, my attention is especially captured when Atkin becomes more lyrical, more focused on sound patterning and rhythm, with precise language.
I was also taken with the poem ‘light’ with its imagistic, camera-eye focus, resonant with alliteration –
– a brilliant moment in the collection where we pan across and zoom in on what is being observed.
The poem ‘listen’ explores the effect of Covid-19 on environmental damage to the ocean because of the slowdown of the oil industry and its undersea development. We find out about the death of zooplankton and the effect of pressurized air from guns into the seabed. This left me wanting to know more about the chain-effect on marine ecosystems and I reflected that this was almost like prose journalism, shaped into a poem of short stanzas that was more of an educational than a poetic experience. Something similar is also seen in the poems about mills, which resurrect an industry that was once so important. Atkin’s work as both a poet and educator may have some bearing on certain poems which you can imagine being performed in colleges or community groups, where heritage poetry can make vital connections with the past and needs concision and clarity to engage with readers and listeners.
Elsewhere, another highlight is ‘With the millers of air’, a poem focused on wind turbines with “blades as pale as wings, angelic almost, chop the firmament […] Jockeyed by their wild anemones, they turn/ their faces windward, will race night and day […] grinding the winds of nowhere”. It’s at points like this where I was most excited by Atkin’s voice, when the constraint shown in some of the poems is put aside for wild, imaginative abandon.
Notable, too, are the Iceland poems, which involve observation of the tundra, the “arctic edge” and the “gorge-green cliffs”. Myth and local legends are touched upon but the formidable geology of the poet’s travels has primacy in this section.
The collection keeps us surprised with twists and turns between poetic and prosaic. At times, this is neat, concise writing that you can imagine on the radio or being performed in an educational context. The writing is often no frills, not too effusive – decidedly measured poetry in its execution; at other times, Jean Atkin unleashes the evocative and the poetic and that makes for an impressive range and scope.
Matthew M.C. Smith is the author of The Keeper of Aeons and Paviland: Ice and Fire. He is a reviewer for London Grip and staff writer for Poetry Wales. He edits Black Bough Poetry and TopTweetTuesday Twitter: @MatthewMCSmith Also on Insta, FB and Bluesky