Poetry review – THE BEAT THE PULSE THE WAVE: Colin Pink enjoys some vivid personal memories retold as poems by Jeremy Dixon
The Beat The Pulse The Wave
Jeremy Dixon
Arachne Press, 2026
ISBN 978-1-917692-02-1
pp65 £12
The predominant thread running through Jeremy Dixon’s new collection is nostalgia. Nostalgia for youth, for instance, remembering bunking off school to buy Bow Wow Wow’s debut album but ‘two plain-clothed police officers / caution me for truancy’; nostalgia for old pop songs/singers, such as watching the world premier of Michael Jackson’s pop video Thriller on a portable TV
we want that red jacket
to learn the stagger dance
to twitch so hard
our limbs fall off
There is also nostalgia for places around Merseyside, for instance in a poem that wittily responds to train announcements (on the West Kirby line) listing the stops on the route where each stop triggers a family memory:
the next stop is Conway Park
grandad won big at Mecca Bingo here
the next stop is Birkenhead Park
mum trains to be a nurse here
the next stop is Birkenhead North
my great-grandparents survive a direct hit here
And nostalgia too for quirky family stories about World War Two, for instance in “Jessie Gollins at 33, June 1941” where a Messerschmitt Bf 109 suddenly appears low in the sky and having no time to take cover:
instead JESS watches the pilot
throw a nonchalant wave
as he skims past
as they wave back
In another World War Two poem Dixon imagines the decadent artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare, while fire-watching in May 1941, witness his nearby home and studio go up in flames:
he cannot leave his post
consumes hours counting
how many paintings are gone
stops himself at three hundred
There are also poems with a more ecological theme, notably in a couple of poems both titled “WARNING” which are by way of found poems, incorporating warning signs, presumably put up by bodies such as the Environment Agency, such as:
beware of silt and soft sand
and mud in the vicinity
of new coastal defences
and in the second “WARNING” its pollution that’s the problem, warning:
is hereby given that shellfish
taken from this area
are likely to be polluted
and could cause serious illness
One of the best poems about the vulnerability of the environment is “subject to erosion” because it does several things at once. The poet is on the beach, there to ‘identify / opportunities to engage / dolly omies trolling / their expensive dogs’. ‘Dolly omies trolling’ translates from Polari as ‘pretty men walking’. Later the poet observes the rocks that have fallen from the cliff and:
now when on the top path
I sprint across those stretches
where earth arches over nothing
dash past tributes laid by the edge
This is one of the most attractive looking poems on the page. As you can see in the sample above the indented lines of the stanzas replicates the erosion that is the theme of the piece, with its attendant danger.
Another strong poem is “all that we know about my great aunt’s life in Germany is what my mother remembers” (many of the poems have extremely long titles, sometimes longer than the poem that follows). This poem, recalling the cold war, works very effectively as a sequence of questions and answers. Here are a few examples:
How long did Auntie Win live in occupied Berlin?
From 1947 to the 1950s. I was 13 when we visited.
…
Who was her boss?
A smart man in a suit, she wouldn’t say more.
Why not?
Said she’d signed the Official Secrets Act.
These kind of exchanges invite the reader to read between the lines and imaginatively fill in the gapes in the story. The poem ends powerfully with an image of two Dutch women Aunt Win worked with:
And she asked them to show you their right arms?
That is my most vivid childhood memory
crude tattoos of jagged numbers so enormous
they ran all the way down from shoulder to wrist.
The book is also interspersed with illustrations or visual poems by the author, for instance the word PU / FF with a photograph of puffins montaged into the large letters. There are a couple of ‘redacted’ text pieces, one a series of black lines with only the words ‘Protesters’ and ‘protest’ left visible, another where the words not blocked out are ‘gay’, ‘secretly gay’ and ‘thinking Hmm’ which resonates with occluded existence of many gay people.
The poem opposite the ‘gay’ redaction piece is called “searching” and is a powerful poem highlighting the enforced compromises sometimes required in gay life:
sometimes we must all sing
the straightest of songs
while entertaining tradesmen
or performing for clinicians
After a series of stanzas touching on the secrecy and subtle signalling of gay life the final stanza provides sound advice for everyone:
never wait for someone to die
before you claim your spotlight
before you shine
you may fade first
Another image provides a neat juxtaposition of a hand print on one side of the page with a hand written note and on the facing page a poem about the most memorable gigs the poet has attended, one of which features Diana Ross taking his outstretched hand. This poem expresses nostalgia for seeing iconic performers such as David Bowie, Michael Jackson and Portishead.
Another double-page spread sets up a parallelism and contrast between two poems, on the left page “aka Dick Dastardly” and on the right “aka Peter Perfect” where the lines on each side contradict each other and can be read across the gutter of the book as well as down each side. This is the most stylistically interesting poem in the book.
The Beat The Pulse The Wave is full of memorable, entertaining and thought provoking pieces. Many of the poems are very clever in their use of found material such as train announcements and coastal signage which signals more about the parlous state of our island than it intends to do.
The writing style is plain and direct, without much use of metaphor. This makes it very accessible but I sometimes wished for a more overtly poetic use of language. It is an enjoyable book with a powerful sense of history, both in a public and personal sense, giving vivid witness to times and places.
Oct 29 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – Jeremy Dixon
Poetry review – THE BEAT THE PULSE THE WAVE: Colin Pink enjoys some vivid personal memories retold as poems by Jeremy Dixon
The Beat The Pulse The Wave
Jeremy Dixon
Arachne Press, 2026
ISBN 978-1-917692-02-1
pp65 £12
The predominant thread running through Jeremy Dixon’s new collection is nostalgia. Nostalgia for youth, for instance, remembering bunking off school to buy Bow Wow Wow’s debut album but ‘two plain-clothed police officers / caution me for truancy’; nostalgia for old pop songs/singers, such as watching the world premier of Michael Jackson’s pop video Thriller on a portable TV
we want that red jacket
to learn the stagger dance
to twitch so hard
our limbs fall off
There is also nostalgia for places around Merseyside, for instance in a poem that wittily responds to train announcements (on the West Kirby line) listing the stops on the route where each stop triggers a family memory:
the next stop is Conway Park
grandad won big at Mecca Bingo here
the next stop is Birkenhead Park
mum trains to be a nurse here
the next stop is Birkenhead North
my great-grandparents survive a direct hit here
And nostalgia too for quirky family stories about World War Two, for instance in “Jessie Gollins at 33, June 1941” where a Messerschmitt Bf 109 suddenly appears low in the sky and having no time to take cover:
instead JESS watches the pilot
throw a nonchalant wave
as he skims past
as they wave back
In another World War Two poem Dixon imagines the decadent artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare, while fire-watching in May 1941, witness his nearby home and studio go up in flames:
he cannot leave his post
consumes hours counting
how many paintings are gone
stops himself at three hundred
There are also poems with a more ecological theme, notably in a couple of poems both titled “WARNING” which are by way of found poems, incorporating warning signs, presumably put up by bodies such as the Environment Agency, such as:
beware of silt and soft sand
and mud in the vicinity
of new coastal defences
and in the second “WARNING” its pollution that’s the problem, warning:
is hereby given that shellfish
taken from this area
are likely to be polluted
and could cause serious illness
One of the best poems about the vulnerability of the environment is “subject to erosion” because it does several things at once. The poet is on the beach, there to ‘identify / opportunities to engage / dolly omies trolling / their expensive dogs’. ‘Dolly omies trolling’ translates from Polari as ‘pretty men walking’. Later the poet observes the rocks that have fallen from the cliff and:
now when on the top path
I sprint across those stretches
where earth arches over nothing
dash past tributes laid by the edge
This is one of the most attractive looking poems on the page. As you can see in the sample above the indented lines of the stanzas replicates the erosion that is the theme of the piece, with its attendant danger.
Another strong poem is “all that we know about my great aunt’s life in Germany is what my mother remembers” (many of the poems have extremely long titles, sometimes longer than the poem that follows). This poem, recalling the cold war, works very effectively as a sequence of questions and answers. Here are a few examples:
How long did Auntie Win live in occupied Berlin?
From 1947 to the 1950s. I was 13 when we visited.
…
Who was her boss?
A smart man in a suit, she wouldn’t say more.
Why not?
Said she’d signed the Official Secrets Act.
These kind of exchanges invite the reader to read between the lines and imaginatively fill in the gapes in the story. The poem ends powerfully with an image of two Dutch women Aunt Win worked with:
And she asked them to show you their right arms?
That is my most vivid childhood memory
crude tattoos of jagged numbers so enormous
they ran all the way down from shoulder to wrist.
The book is also interspersed with illustrations or visual poems by the author, for instance the word PU / FF with a photograph of puffins montaged into the large letters. There are a couple of ‘redacted’ text pieces, one a series of black lines with only the words ‘Protesters’ and ‘protest’ left visible, another where the words not blocked out are ‘gay’, ‘secretly gay’ and ‘thinking Hmm’ which resonates with occluded existence of many gay people.
The poem opposite the ‘gay’ redaction piece is called “searching” and is a powerful poem highlighting the enforced compromises sometimes required in gay life:
sometimes we must all sing
the straightest of songs
while entertaining tradesmen
or performing for clinicians
After a series of stanzas touching on the secrecy and subtle signalling of gay life the final stanza provides sound advice for everyone:
never wait for someone to die
before you claim your spotlight
before you shine
you may fade first
Another image provides a neat juxtaposition of a hand print on one side of the page with a hand written note and on the facing page a poem about the most memorable gigs the poet has attended, one of which features Diana Ross taking his outstretched hand. This poem expresses nostalgia for seeing iconic performers such as David Bowie, Michael Jackson and Portishead.
Another double-page spread sets up a parallelism and contrast between two poems, on the left page “aka Dick Dastardly” and on the right “aka Peter Perfect” where the lines on each side contradict each other and can be read across the gutter of the book as well as down each side. This is the most stylistically interesting poem in the book.
The Beat The Pulse The Wave is full of memorable, entertaining and thought provoking pieces. Many of the poems are very clever in their use of found material such as train announcements and coastal signage which signals more about the parlous state of our island than it intends to do.
The writing style is plain and direct, without much use of metaphor. This makes it very accessible but I sometimes wished for a more overtly poetic use of language. It is an enjoyable book with a powerful sense of history, both in a public and personal sense, giving vivid witness to times and places.