ENDLESS PRESENT: Kate Noakes reviews a generous selection of articles and reviews by Rory Waterman
Endless Present
Selected Articles, Reviews and Dispatches, 2010-2023
Rory Waterman
Shoestring Press
ISBN 9781915553447
£13.50
I’ve been thinking a great deal about reviewing recently, the whys and hows, especially after a friend received a rather negative review, which I thought was so unfair that, had I been the magazine editor(s), I would probably have declined to publish it. This, followed by the editor writing a piece about how to deal with less than favourable input, sent me scurrying to write my own article on how not to write a review.
So, it is timely that Rory Waterman’s self-selected collection of reviews, articles and essays found its way onto my desk – even though I am not d’accord with his opening explanation (derived from Wendy Cope) that one should only agree to review a book if one is prepared to hate it. On the whole, Waterman doesn’t dislike the books he has reviewed over the last fifteen years. As he says in ‘The Art of Non-Criticism:’
‘Being a poet as well as a reviewer has probably reminded me not to be unkind,
unless I really can’t help it…’ and
‘You shouldn’t review a book unless you are prepared to be honest about it…’
Quite. And granted his first choice here is the sometimes excoriating, no holds barred, William Logan. But Logan’s approach to reviewing is not Waterman’s. Thank goodness.
One might wonder about the merits of putting together such a selection given that all these pieces are previously published and readily accessible in the magazines they were written for. But, as with a selected volume of poems, one can learn something about the tastes of the critic from such a collection. And it has been enjoyable to read Waterman’s thoughts on many of the collections that I have read in recent times (Paterson, Agabe, Antrobus, Robinson, Saphra, Robertson, Agard, Nagra, O’Donoghue, to name but a few randomly). It has proved to be a way of bringing them back into focus long after I have put them on the shelf.
Larkin appears in many pieces at the beginning of the volume, because there was much published about him early in this time period. That’s fine, and I like Larkin and have read almost all of these books; but I wonder whether there could have been less of the recycling of material that inevitably goes on in such work. Did we really do need to have all of these pieces here? On the other hand, I am grateful to be reminded of some of the poets to whom one should return from time to time like R. S. Thomas – how long is it since I read anything by him? Ditto Beckett, W.H. Davies, Bunting and Day-Lewis.
Interesting too are Waterman’s reviews of poetry magazines, as are his comments on ‘The Sonnet’ (in reviewing Stephen Regan’s 2019 OUP text on the same topic), and his own writing. The essay “On ‘Like Father’,” a poem of conversation with his younger self, provides the kind of autobiographical details that we crave sometimes to make sense of a poem, or to contextualise it. They are not necessary to its understanding, per se, but they expand it. I recommend too his essay “(Good) Person Poems” with its reading list of poems that aren’t and can’t be resolved by ‘The best poets who challenge the age, but they are also not afraid to challenge themselves.’ And Waterman’s eulogy for his poet father, Andrew, both fascinates and moves.
Waterman, quite rightly, points to the lack of women and people of colour among the authors he has been asked to review over the years. He regrets this and it makes for a white-male heavy volume. If one was looking to this book as a survey of work on recently published poetry, then it is self-consciously unrepresentative. I hope review commissioners will ask Waterman to do more in future to redress this balance.
My only real quibble is to ask for a better contents page, one which notes the poets, not just the titles of his pieces. This would have helped greatly in finding what one wants to read. That said, this is a volume well worth perusing and returning to time and again as an aid to re-reading poetry from the last decade or so. It is informative and wears its learning lightly for the well-versed, but not necessarily academic reader.
Jul 1 2025
ENDLESS PRESENT
ENDLESS PRESENT: Kate Noakes reviews a generous selection of articles and reviews by Rory Waterman
I’ve been thinking a great deal about reviewing recently, the whys and hows, especially after a friend received a rather negative review, which I thought was so unfair that, had I been the magazine editor(s), I would probably have declined to publish it. This, followed by the editor writing a piece about how to deal with less than favourable input, sent me scurrying to write my own article on how not to write a review.
So, it is timely that Rory Waterman’s self-selected collection of reviews, articles and essays found its way onto my desk – even though I am not d’accord with his opening explanation (derived from Wendy Cope) that one should only agree to review a book if one is prepared to hate it. On the whole, Waterman doesn’t dislike the books he has reviewed over the last fifteen years. As he says in ‘The Art of Non-Criticism:’
Quite. And granted his first choice here is the sometimes excoriating, no holds barred, William Logan. But Logan’s approach to reviewing is not Waterman’s. Thank goodness.
One might wonder about the merits of putting together such a selection given that all these pieces are previously published and readily accessible in the magazines they were written for. But, as with a selected volume of poems, one can learn something about the tastes of the critic from such a collection. And it has been enjoyable to read Waterman’s thoughts on many of the collections that I have read in recent times (Paterson, Agabe, Antrobus, Robinson, Saphra, Robertson, Agard, Nagra, O’Donoghue, to name but a few randomly). It has proved to be a way of bringing them back into focus long after I have put them on the shelf.
Larkin appears in many pieces at the beginning of the volume, because there was much published about him early in this time period. That’s fine, and I like Larkin and have read almost all of these books; but I wonder whether there could have been less of the recycling of material that inevitably goes on in such work. Did we really do need to have all of these pieces here? On the other hand, I am grateful to be reminded of some of the poets to whom one should return from time to time like R. S. Thomas – how long is it since I read anything by him? Ditto Beckett, W.H. Davies, Bunting and Day-Lewis.
Interesting too are Waterman’s reviews of poetry magazines, as are his comments on ‘The Sonnet’ (in reviewing Stephen Regan’s 2019 OUP text on the same topic), and his own writing. The essay “On ‘Like Father’,” a poem of conversation with his younger self, provides the kind of autobiographical details that we crave sometimes to make sense of a poem, or to contextualise it. They are not necessary to its understanding, per se, but they expand it. I recommend too his essay “(Good) Person Poems” with its reading list of poems that aren’t and can’t be resolved by ‘The best poets who challenge the age, but they are also not afraid to challenge themselves.’ And Waterman’s eulogy for his poet father, Andrew, both fascinates and moves.
Waterman, quite rightly, points to the lack of women and people of colour among the authors he has been asked to review over the years. He regrets this and it makes for a white-male heavy volume. If one was looking to this book as a survey of work on recently published poetry, then it is self-consciously unrepresentative. I hope review commissioners will ask Waterman to do more in future to redress this balance.
My only real quibble is to ask for a better contents page, one which notes the poets, not just the titles of his pieces. This would have helped greatly in finding what one wants to read. That said, this is a volume well worth perusing and returning to time and again as an aid to re-reading poetry from the last decade or so. It is informative and wears its learning lightly for the well-versed, but not necessarily academic reader.