Poetry review – PECKINPAH SUITE: Oz Hardwick considers Paul Munden’s collection which reflects on – and could be an introduction to – the work of film director Sam Peckinpah
Peckinpah Suite
Paul Munden
Recent Work Press www.recentworkpress.com
ISBN 978176367067
108 pp
“The poetry of violence” is a term often applied to the work of controversial – notorious, even – director Sam Peckinpah. It’s a much-used phrase but one which, nonetheless, requires a lot of unpicking: what do we mean by poetry here, and how do we relate it to a cinematic oeuvre which, even after the passage of decades, retains the power to shock us at a level which is rarely touched by more permissive contemporary films. This is not the place for that discussion on artifice and visceral emotional truth, but it’s worth citing W. K. Stratton’s prefatory note to his 2011 collection Dreaming Sam Peckinpah (Ink Brush Press), in which he describes Peckinpah as “a kind of poet who worked with metaphors created by visual images and lines of dialogue,” as this is a consideration which haunts Peckinpah Suite, the latest collection by poet – and, significantly, screenwriter and unconventional biographer – Paul Munden.
While for Stratton, Peckinpah represents a presiding idea, rarely referred to directly in his considerations of “the West,” Munden fully inhabits to the director’s world and work via the conceit of checking in to the Suite 322 at The Murray Hotel, Livingston, Montana, where Peckinpah stayed for a number of years, and which now bears his name. In making this commitment, it is, as the first poem acknowledges, “Hard to tell … if what
abides here will prove
to be an inspiration
or mere curse
What follows is an exploration of biography and cinematography – each film and TV series is considered in order – which is done in terms of personal response, creating a conversation between poet/reader and director, mediated by both films and poems.
The early ‘The Deadly Companions’ (after the 1961 directorial debut) sets a precedent of conflict between vision and compromise, ending with
a scene that defies
any logic or excuse:
actors passing like ships
in the all too day-bright night;
no-one able to decide
who finally calls the shots.
This prefigures Peckinpah’s frustrations in his dealings with Hollywood but also asks both poet and reader to consider who is in control in this extensive ekphrastic encounter and, by extension, in all of our committed encounters with art of any kind. Where, indeed, do we erect our personal boundaries in such a porous interaction, particularly when art invites us to empathise with characters who lead us into places we’d rather not acknowledge? As Munden askes in ‘Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia’:
But how are we to ease
ourselves from the scene
where you look down
at one of your dead
assailants and pump
him with more bullets
and the gratuitous words
because it feels so goddamned good.
The poet’s answer here is to retain individual identity through formal control, even as moral distinctions blur at the edges. All but one of the poems – the exception being the central ‘Castaway’, a long poem focusing on a project which, while remaining a lifelong obsession, was never realised – are written in a form consisting of 42 half-rhyming lines, in six stanzas of seven lines each, disposed evenly across the book’s open page. It’s a form that carries allusions to triple sonnets; but while this form may suggest extended contemplation leading to resolution, Munden resists the temptation to draw easy conclusions from difficult material, ultimately addressing Peckinpah in ‘The Racquet Club’ and agreeing to
side with your own
ambivalence—take
the quarrel itself as a sign
that the poetry and passion
of your uproarious art
are in rude health.
At a surface level, this fine collection of poems leads us through a maverick director’s impressive – and impressively flawed – body of work, perhaps guiding us to return to it or maybe even watch it for the first time. Beneath this, though, it invites us to think about our engagement with art more generally, what it can make us think and feel, and how it can fundamentally shape us: art from which “There never was / any real licence / to escape” (‘Straw Dogs’).
Oz Hardwick has published seven full poetry collections and several chapbooks, most recently Actioning the New University (Yaffle, 2026), a number of collaborative works with writers and artists in diverse media, and many edited anthologies and academic essay collections. He has won numerous awards and prizes, some of which have been for poetry, though more for games of chance. He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University (UK).
Sep 16 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – Paul Munden
Poetry review – PECKINPAH SUITE: Oz Hardwick considers Paul Munden’s collection which reflects on – and could be an introduction to – the work of film director Sam Peckinpah
Peckinpah Suite
Paul Munden
Recent Work Press www.recentworkpress.com
ISBN 978176367067
108 pp
“The poetry of violence” is a term often applied to the work of controversial – notorious, even – director Sam Peckinpah. It’s a much-used phrase but one which, nonetheless, requires a lot of unpicking: what do we mean by poetry here, and how do we relate it to a cinematic oeuvre which, even after the passage of decades, retains the power to shock us at a level which is rarely touched by more permissive contemporary films. This is not the place for that discussion on artifice and visceral emotional truth, but it’s worth citing W. K. Stratton’s prefatory note to his 2011 collection Dreaming Sam Peckinpah (Ink Brush Press), in which he describes Peckinpah as “a kind of poet who worked with metaphors created by visual images and lines of dialogue,” as this is a consideration which haunts Peckinpah Suite, the latest collection by poet – and, significantly, screenwriter and unconventional biographer – Paul Munden.
While for Stratton, Peckinpah represents a presiding idea, rarely referred to directly in his considerations of “the West,” Munden fully inhabits to the director’s world and work via the conceit of checking in to the Suite 322 at The Murray Hotel, Livingston, Montana, where Peckinpah stayed for a number of years, and which now bears his name. In making this commitment, it is, as the first poem acknowledges, “Hard to tell … if what
abides here will prove
to be an inspiration
or mere curse
What follows is an exploration of biography and cinematography – each film and TV series is considered in order – which is done in terms of personal response, creating a conversation between poet/reader and director, mediated by both films and poems.
The early ‘The Deadly Companions’ (after the 1961 directorial debut) sets a precedent of conflict between vision and compromise, ending with
a scene that defies
any logic or excuse:
actors passing like ships
in the all too day-bright night;
no-one able to decide
who finally calls the shots.
This prefigures Peckinpah’s frustrations in his dealings with Hollywood but also asks both poet and reader to consider who is in control in this extensive ekphrastic encounter and, by extension, in all of our committed encounters with art of any kind. Where, indeed, do we erect our personal boundaries in such a porous interaction, particularly when art invites us to empathise with characters who lead us into places we’d rather not acknowledge? As Munden askes in ‘Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia’:
But how are we to ease
ourselves from the scene
where you look down
at one of your dead
assailants and pump
him with more bullets
and the gratuitous words
because it feels so goddamned good.
The poet’s answer here is to retain individual identity through formal control, even as moral distinctions blur at the edges. All but one of the poems – the exception being the central ‘Castaway’, a long poem focusing on a project which, while remaining a lifelong obsession, was never realised – are written in a form consisting of 42 half-rhyming lines, in six stanzas of seven lines each, disposed evenly across the book’s open page. It’s a form that carries allusions to triple sonnets; but while this form may suggest extended contemplation leading to resolution, Munden resists the temptation to draw easy conclusions from difficult material, ultimately addressing Peckinpah in ‘The Racquet Club’ and agreeing to
side with your own
ambivalence—take
the quarrel itself as a sign
that the poetry and passion
of your uproarious art
are in rude health.
At a surface level, this fine collection of poems leads us through a maverick director’s impressive – and impressively flawed – body of work, perhaps guiding us to return to it or maybe even watch it for the first time. Beneath this, though, it invites us to think about our engagement with art more generally, what it can make us think and feel, and how it can fundamentally shape us: art from which “There never was / any real licence / to escape” (‘Straw Dogs’).
Oz Hardwick has published seven full poetry collections and several chapbooks, most recently Actioning the New University (Yaffle, 2026), a number of collaborative works with writers and artists in diverse media, and many edited anthologies and academic essay collections. He has won numerous awards and prizes, some of which have been for poetry, though more for games of chance. He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University (UK).