Poetry review – TALKING TO SKELETONS: Steve Komarnyckyj discovers great variety in a new collection by David Dumouriez
Talking to Skeletons
David Dumouriez.
Liverpool: erbacce-press,
ISBN 978-1-912455-59-1
90pp £10
David Dumouriez’s collection is a wild bareback ride mixing exuberance and creativity. The jacket quote on this collection is a typically arch verse by the author himself which sets the jocular self depreciating tone of much of the book:
Celebrity endorsements never came,
and leading critics didn’t want to know.
In lieu of them, I’ll simply state one aim:
to dazzle you and part you from your dough!
It is, of course, hard to believe that with the impressive array of publication credits in the book no one found a good word to say about this chameleon collection. All poetry is a dialogue with the dead or, perhaps, a monologue directed at them. This book is a cupboard out of which the skeletons of older poetries tumble, displaying a myriad of voices yet remaining uniquely the single voice of the poet.
The opening poem “Put It All In A Square” is almost rectangular in form and has the feel of an adult nursery rhyme while acting as a manifesto of sorts for the book. The last lines really seem to state the approach of this poet:
No, this square’s your link to
…. Surprise us with
your slants – make us gasp with your
bizarre. Prick the sleepers; puncture
them repeatedly until they think.
The book is constantly surprising us with its slants and its bizarre takes. The very next poem “A Fellow Creature” effortlessly finds profundity in a trivial event, the speaker accidentally causing the death of a creature, perhaps a bug they have trodden on:
I’ll mention that your end foretells my own:
destroyed by something bigger and unknown
There must be very few of us that have not regretted causing the death of a small creature (with the possible exception of the instinctive psychopaths that walk among us). Few have written a poem so accessible and profound. The rhyming scheme has an almost children’s verse level of simplicity perhaps reminiscent of Lear but the joke is rather sad.
The third poem “Poetry Is Wank” extends the poet’s self depreciation to his own art form. It is a daring title for a book of poems and one which calls into question the value of reading the whole book. However, the crudity of the title belies a finely crafted work which, as good poetry should, extends both the imagination of the poet and his audience, de-familiarising our reality
No one wrote or read it round our way.
Poetry was bakelite, a penny-farthing,
or an antimacassar. It was any version of
the Liberal Party, or a mangled gramophone.
“Poetry is Wank” careens down the pages using shifts in line spacing and format brilliantly and was clearly worked on rather than being, to use the poem’s glib style, quickly tossed off. The fourth poem “Grandparents on the Beach” marks another shift in tone and perhaps illustrates the difficulties of reviewing this collection. It is a completely unironic tribute to the poet’s grandparents evoking a photograph from the era when they existed on paper. It has the eye for detail of a Philip Larkin
He stands, relaxed in hobnail boots,
the trousers of his suit, a shirt, a sleeveless
pully and a hanky knotted to replace
the cap that usually topped his head.
These opening pieces illustrate just how many skeletons there may be in this poetic cupboard. The fourth poem “IntoThis Subtle Light I Stare” is written in verses of primarily nine lines centred on the page
And so, and so I look
and I construct and deconstruct,
and every picture’s centre
looks the same.
The details change:
some colours shift
and some remain,
but any vision starts
and ends with you.
I have focused on these opening poems to show just how diverse this collection can be. It canters from childhood memories to riffs on the poet/speaker being an imaginary dictator. We travel with the poet from Dennis Hopper’s grave to Istanbul where he now lives. It is sometimes said that a poet needs to find their voice but this poet has found many voices.
This is a diamond of a collection but, like many of the best diamonds there are flaws. The very diversity of styles, the exuberant anarchy and shifts in tone can make this book seem discordant. Rather than an orchestra playing in coordinated harmony it can feel like an anarchic gathering of street musicians each playing their own tune. But is that really a flaw? It feels like there are several, more thematically coherent books, gestating within the womb of this collection.
Sometimes I felt the poet did not (in Keats’s phrase) ‘load every rift with ore’. The language of the collection at its best is brilliantly inventive but “Euroyouth” falls into descriptions that are lacking the exuberance of this author at his best: ‘The bridges, and the lights and darks of Prague’, for example is a weak evocation of a city that this poet could paint in much more imaginative hues. In the same poem the lines about ‘Walking free in Russia – the land they said would change us into vapour’ struck a discordant note with this reviewer whose relatives have faced being vaporised by that rapacious imperial power, and who can point to recent statements on Russian state TV expressing a desire to plunge the UK underwater with a nuclear drone.
However, despite these quibbles, shaped in part by the reviewer’s own tastes and biases, the book rises above whatever reservations I may have. English poetry sometimes seems at risk of becoming ever more divorced from writing that is simultaneously accessible, well crafted and profound. Talking to Skeletons may be a bit close to the bone but it proves that poetry is far from being wank and is more necessary than ever now when its theme is the human condition.
Stephen Komarnyckyj is an accomplished British-Ukrainian poet, translator, and recipient of three English PEN awards and two Ukrainian Book Institute Awards. His latest poetry collection Singing Carols For James Mason, was published by Caparison Books in 2026.
Nov 11 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – David Dumouriez
Poetry review – TALKING TO SKELETONS: Steve Komarnyckyj discovers great variety in a new collection by David Dumouriez
Talking to Skeletons
David Dumouriez.
Liverpool: erbacce-press,
ISBN 978-1-912455-59-1
90pp £10
David Dumouriez’s collection is a wild bareback ride mixing exuberance and creativity. The jacket quote on this collection is a typically arch verse by the author himself which sets the jocular self depreciating tone of much of the book:
Celebrity endorsements never came,
and leading critics didn’t want to know.
In lieu of them, I’ll simply state one aim:
to dazzle you and part you from your dough!
It is, of course, hard to believe that with the impressive array of publication credits in the book no one found a good word to say about this chameleon collection. All poetry is a dialogue with the dead or, perhaps, a monologue directed at them. This book is a cupboard out of which the skeletons of older poetries tumble, displaying a myriad of voices yet remaining uniquely the single voice of the poet.
The opening poem “Put It All In A Square” is almost rectangular in form and has the feel of an adult nursery rhyme while acting as a manifesto of sorts for the book. The last lines really seem to state the approach of this poet:
No, this square’s your link to
…. Surprise us with
your slants – make us gasp with your
bizarre. Prick the sleepers; puncture
them repeatedly until they think.
The book is constantly surprising us with its slants and its bizarre takes. The very next poem “A Fellow Creature” effortlessly finds profundity in a trivial event, the speaker accidentally causing the death of a creature, perhaps a bug they have trodden on:
I’ll mention that your end foretells my own:
destroyed by something bigger and unknown
There must be very few of us that have not regretted causing the death of a small creature (with the possible exception of the instinctive psychopaths that walk among us). Few have written a poem so accessible and profound. The rhyming scheme has an almost children’s verse level of simplicity perhaps reminiscent of Lear but the joke is rather sad.
The third poem “Poetry Is Wank” extends the poet’s self depreciation to his own art form. It is a daring title for a book of poems and one which calls into question the value of reading the whole book. However, the crudity of the title belies a finely crafted work which, as good poetry should, extends both the imagination of the poet and his audience, de-familiarising our reality
No one wrote or read it round our way.
Poetry was bakelite, a penny-farthing,
or an antimacassar. It was any version of
the Liberal Party, or a mangled gramophone.
“Poetry is Wank” careens down the pages using shifts in line spacing and format brilliantly and was clearly worked on rather than being, to use the poem’s glib style, quickly tossed off. The fourth poem “Grandparents on the Beach” marks another shift in tone and perhaps illustrates the difficulties of reviewing this collection. It is a completely unironic tribute to the poet’s grandparents evoking a photograph from the era when they existed on paper. It has the eye for detail of a Philip Larkin
He stands, relaxed in hobnail boots,
the trousers of his suit, a shirt, a sleeveless
pully and a hanky knotted to replace
the cap that usually topped his head.
These opening pieces illustrate just how many skeletons there may be in this poetic cupboard. The fourth poem “IntoThis Subtle Light I Stare” is written in verses of primarily nine lines centred on the page
And so, and so I look
and I construct and deconstruct,
and every picture’s centre
looks the same.
The details change:
some colours shift
and some remain,
but any vision starts
and ends with you.
I have focused on these opening poems to show just how diverse this collection can be. It canters from childhood memories to riffs on the poet/speaker being an imaginary dictator. We travel with the poet from Dennis Hopper’s grave to Istanbul where he now lives. It is sometimes said that a poet needs to find their voice but this poet has found many voices.
This is a diamond of a collection but, like many of the best diamonds there are flaws. The very diversity of styles, the exuberant anarchy and shifts in tone can make this book seem discordant. Rather than an orchestra playing in coordinated harmony it can feel like an anarchic gathering of street musicians each playing their own tune. But is that really a flaw? It feels like there are several, more thematically coherent books, gestating within the womb of this collection.
Sometimes I felt the poet did not (in Keats’s phrase) ‘load every rift with ore’. The language of the collection at its best is brilliantly inventive but “Euroyouth” falls into descriptions that are lacking the exuberance of this author at his best: ‘The bridges, and the lights and darks of Prague’, for example is a weak evocation of a city that this poet could paint in much more imaginative hues. In the same poem the lines about ‘Walking free in Russia – the land they said would change us into vapour’ struck a discordant note with this reviewer whose relatives have faced being vaporised by that rapacious imperial power, and who can point to recent statements on Russian state TV expressing a desire to plunge the UK underwater with a nuclear drone.
However, despite these quibbles, shaped in part by the reviewer’s own tastes and biases, the book rises above whatever reservations I may have. English poetry sometimes seems at risk of becoming ever more divorced from writing that is simultaneously accessible, well crafted and profound. Talking to Skeletons may be a bit close to the bone but it proves that poetry is far from being wank and is more necessary than ever now when its theme is the human condition.
Stephen Komarnyckyj is an accomplished British-Ukrainian poet, translator, and recipient of three English PEN awards and two Ukrainian Book Institute Awards. His latest poetry collection Singing Carols For James Mason, was published by Caparison Books in 2026.