Poetry review – TABLE, WINDOW: Mat Riches finds much to admire in this chapbook by Simon Richey
Table, Window
Simon Richey
Self Published
ISBN 9791036932978
When it was opened again, the light fell on the letters
and the words filled with meaning in a single movement.
It rose from them so brightly that the words were obscured by it,
one kind of light answering another, a book now
of pure meaning, almost invisible, almost weightless.
That’s the final stanza of the final poem in Simon Richey’s first collection, Naming The Tree (Oversteps Books, 2014). The poem is called ‘The Book’, and it feels very apt as a way into his new pamphlet, Table, Window. It’s been at least 10 years since the collection, so “When it was opened again” is a fair assessment in my eyes.
As for the rest of that stanza, well…if the stanza (and therefore the book) ends with the word “weightless”. Table, Window opens with a poem titled ‘The Emptiness’. Both of which speak to a kind of absence, and this wholly fits the poem and its opening lines
When these were taken down
the air that for so long
had been parcelled into rooms
drifted into the day and was lost there
The sense here is of an abandoned house, long since sealed up, being knocked down and of everything held in that home being released like the air. The word “parcelled” does a double shift here, both in the sense of the air being wrapped up in the walls of the house, and also as forerunner to the parcel of land referred to in the final stanza where
[…} the horse-drawn wagons,
laden with new bricks,
with window frame and tiles,
had first pulled up at.
That emptiness at the end of the poem is perhaps the same emptiness as the one we meet at the start; but the ground has been changed by the house, and the reader is changed, I think, by the end of the poem.
Light gets two mentions in that final stanza from Richey’s full collection, and ‘The Emptiness’ also mentions “sunlight”. And light is a reccurring theme or motif throughout this pamphlet. It’s found in at least 50% of the 20 poems. Fair use policy forbids me from quoting all eight lines of the poem, ‘Arithmetic’, or the eight lines of the closing poem, ‘Last Light’, but both are lovely examples of the sort of simple observation that makes Richey’s work sing.
The latter poem describes sunlight hitting a back wall in a room —is it a room in the house that’s pulled down at the start? Hold that thought while we look at the last stanza of this book.
It’s something of note,
that the light should do this,
quietly and without ceremony,
its immense journey
behind it, its ferocity spent.
“ferocity spent” feels like a fair encapsulation of another of the book’s themes, that of aging. The aging is mostly that od the people whom I assume to be Richey’s parent; but by extension it must also apply to him (or at least the protagonist of the poems). In the title poem we see an example of an aging parent succumbing to what I assume is some form of dementia.
She began to forget words.
The word for trellis,
the word for sparrow.
And then for table
and for window.
they fell from her life
like leaves.
I can’t confirm it, but I suspect that table and that window were in the house (or the space it used to occupy) which we encounter in the first poem of the book; but tables and windows crop up throughout the book almost as much as light does. For example, in ‘The House’, we’re told
In an open field
that for centuries lay empty
the house was built.
Now the wind stops at its walls
and the sunlight is fed through its windows.
Flick forward two more poems, and in ‘Still life With Words’
There is a room
with only a table and chair in it
and sometimes
a vase of flowers.
Is this the same table that crops up in ‘Old Photographs’ where two or three generations are linked? A great-grandparent, perhaps, or possibly a parent
sits at his kitchen table
a hundred years ago or so,
the rim of a glass
about to reach his lips.
Reading this pamphlet was an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. The running themes and motifs are enjoyable to spot. I was less keen on some of the poems that made explicit nods to poetry and poems; but these are kept to a minimum and your mileage may vary.
I hope there isn’t another 10 years between publications by Simon Richey. And I hope that self-publishing isn’t needed to get his work out there – although this remark is not meant to be casting aspersions on self-publishing! Richey has made a beautiful pamphlet, filled with some wonderful poems that act “quietly and without ceremony”. Please contact him via simonrichey@btinternet.com to get a copy if only to read all 16 lines of ‘Arithmetic’ and ‘Last Light’.
Aug 6 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – Simon Richey
Poetry review – TABLE, WINDOW: Mat Riches finds much to admire in this chapbook by Simon Richey
Table, Window
Simon Richey
Self Published
ISBN 9791036932978
When it was opened again, the light fell on the letters
and the words filled with meaning in a single movement.
It rose from them so brightly that the words were obscured by it,
one kind of light answering another, a book now
of pure meaning, almost invisible, almost weightless.
That’s the final stanza of the final poem in Simon Richey’s first collection, Naming The Tree (Oversteps Books, 2014). The poem is called ‘The Book’, and it feels very apt as a way into his new pamphlet, Table, Window. It’s been at least 10 years since the collection, so “When it was opened again” is a fair assessment in my eyes.
As for the rest of that stanza, well…if the stanza (and therefore the book) ends with the word “weightless”. Table, Window opens with a poem titled ‘The Emptiness’. Both of which speak to a kind of absence, and this wholly fits the poem and its opening lines
When these were taken down
the air that for so long
had been parcelled into rooms
drifted into the day and was lost there
The sense here is of an abandoned house, long since sealed up, being knocked down and of everything held in that home being released like the air. The word “parcelled” does a double shift here, both in the sense of the air being wrapped up in the walls of the house, and also as forerunner to the parcel of land referred to in the final stanza where
[…} the horse-drawn wagons,
laden with new bricks,
with window frame and tiles,
had first pulled up at.
That emptiness at the end of the poem is perhaps the same emptiness as the one we meet at the start; but the ground has been changed by the house, and the reader is changed, I think, by the end of the poem.
Light gets two mentions in that final stanza from Richey’s full collection, and ‘The Emptiness’ also mentions “sunlight”. And light is a reccurring theme or motif throughout this pamphlet. It’s found in at least 50% of the 20 poems. Fair use policy forbids me from quoting all eight lines of the poem, ‘Arithmetic’, or the eight lines of the closing poem, ‘Last Light’, but both are lovely examples of the sort of simple observation that makes Richey’s work sing.
The latter poem describes sunlight hitting a back wall in a room —is it a room in the house that’s pulled down at the start? Hold that thought while we look at the last stanza of this book.
It’s something of note,
that the light should do this,
quietly and without ceremony,
its immense journey
behind it, its ferocity spent.
“ferocity spent” feels like a fair encapsulation of another of the book’s themes, that of aging. The aging is mostly that od the people whom I assume to be Richey’s parent; but by extension it must also apply to him (or at least the protagonist of the poems). In the title poem we see an example of an aging parent succumbing to what I assume is some form of dementia.
She began to forget words.
The word for trellis,
the word for sparrow.
And then for table
and for window.
they fell from her life
like leaves.
I can’t confirm it, but I suspect that table and that window were in the house (or the space it used to occupy) which we encounter in the first poem of the book; but tables and windows crop up throughout the book almost as much as light does. For example, in ‘The House’, we’re told
In an open field
that for centuries lay empty
the house was built.
Now the wind stops at its walls
and the sunlight is fed through its windows.
Flick forward two more poems, and in ‘Still life With Words’
There is a room
with only a table and chair in it
and sometimes
a vase of flowers.
Is this the same table that crops up in ‘Old Photographs’ where two or three generations are linked? A great-grandparent, perhaps, or possibly a parent
sits at his kitchen table
a hundred years ago or so,
the rim of a glass
about to reach his lips.
Reading this pamphlet was an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. The running themes and motifs are enjoyable to spot. I was less keen on some of the poems that made explicit nods to poetry and poems; but these are kept to a minimum and your mileage may vary.
I hope there isn’t another 10 years between publications by Simon Richey. And I hope that self-publishing isn’t needed to get his work out there – although this remark is not meant to be casting aspersions on self-publishing! Richey has made a beautiful pamphlet, filled with some wonderful poems that act “quietly and without ceremony”. Please contact him via simonrichey@btinternet.com to get a copy if only to read all 16 lines of ‘Arithmetic’ and ‘Last Light’.