Poetry review – THE BOAT GAME: Kevin Saving examines a nautically-flavoured collection by Siun Carden
The Boat Game
Siun Carden
Stewed Rhubarb Press
ISBN 978-1-910416-42-6
£6,
Hailing originally from Northern Ireland, Siun Carden stands firmly in a poetic tradition stemming from Louis MacNeice, encompassing Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, sweeping through Tom Paulin, Meb McGuckian, Paul Muldoon – and now beyond. This, her second chapbook, features twenty-one poems, mostly in vers libre, (some utilising an attractive, loose formal structure comprising both internal and slant rhymes). Carden’s work has already found favour in magazines such as Magma, The Interpreter’s House, The North and the Glasgow Review of Books. Her doctorate is in social anthropology (and why would a contemporary poet choose any other academic discipline?).
True to its title, many of the poems in this collection are imbued with a nautical resonance. “Whiskey Section” deals with the three ‘special ships’ ordered in the Nineteen Sixties by the (then) Secretary of State for Scotland to guard against the threat of nuclear attack. The writings of the recently-deceased zoologist, Desmond Morris, persuaded this reviewer many years ago that humanity can never be safe whilst ANY of its leaders retain some sense of impunity. We must scrap ALL the bunkers!
“Titanic Cruise” treats of a centennial commemoration (the doomed liner was constructed in Belfast’s Harland and Woolff shipyard).
The tourists want the ship to stop
on the spot, the minute it began
a hundred years ago.
Biodegradable wreaths drop
quietly, to sink towards the wreck.
A lot of fuss for one loss, some crew think.
Carden deftly links the tragic past with a future too ambiguous for any but the most partial consolation.
{…} A mate decides
to check the ice report -a passing thought,
but too much fate to tempt for all that.
There’s nothing there of course.
The future’s clear for endless miles
and endless months, as far as we can see
nothing’s coming for us.
“Goffman in the Sauna” cannot fail to evoke (for those of us of a certain age) tedious hours spent in Nineteen Seventies classrooms studying Erving Goffman’s often acute but more-than-occasionally-ponderous sociological observations. “Windborne” is a romantically-infused meditation on the old maritime mantra “one hand for the ship and one for yourself”.
This publication’s title-poem is, for me, its best. It is a recollection of cooperative sibling bathtimes, but also an examination of memory’s essential subjectivity with its attendant susceptibility to sequential distortion.
When our shared bath becomes a boat,
mine’s a puzzle box
of cubby-holes in brass and teak,
chart desks, clicking locks.
You might Miami Vice it,
ride a bouncing wake.
Service a supply ship.
Carry heavy freight.
{…} Superyacht, bullet-proof and plush.
Outrigger canoe at dusk.
Iron Age trinket with oars of gold
We don’t compare notes until the water’s cold.
Carden’s poetry has been lavishly praised by Jen Hadfield: ‘Wry, surreal and always humane […it…] is a lightbox to which she holds up astonishing facades of Anthropocene existence’. (And you won’t get much more purple-for-your-money than that!). I shall merely record that The Boat Game’s best lines are minor miracles of concision and precision -informed by a discriminating intelligence and involved compassion well beyond the ordinary.
Nov 15 2026
London Grip Poetry Review – Siun Carden
Poetry review – THE BOAT GAME: Kevin Saving examines a nautically-flavoured collection by Siun Carden
The Boat Game
Siun Carden
Stewed Rhubarb Press
ISBN 978-1-910416-42-6
£6,
Hailing originally from Northern Ireland, Siun Carden stands firmly in a poetic tradition stemming from Louis MacNeice, encompassing Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, sweeping through Tom Paulin, Meb McGuckian, Paul Muldoon – and now beyond. This, her second chapbook, features twenty-one poems, mostly in vers libre, (some utilising an attractive, loose formal structure comprising both internal and slant rhymes). Carden’s work has already found favour in magazines such as Magma, The Interpreter’s House, The North and the Glasgow Review of Books. Her doctorate is in social anthropology (and why would a contemporary poet choose any other academic discipline?).
True to its title, many of the poems in this collection are imbued with a nautical resonance. “Whiskey Section” deals with the three ‘special ships’ ordered in the Nineteen Sixties by the (then) Secretary of State for Scotland to guard against the threat of nuclear attack. The writings of the recently-deceased zoologist, Desmond Morris, persuaded this reviewer many years ago that humanity can never be safe whilst ANY of its leaders retain some sense of impunity. We must scrap ALL the bunkers!
“Titanic Cruise” treats of a centennial commemoration (the doomed liner was constructed in Belfast’s Harland and Woolff shipyard).
The tourists want the ship to stop
on the spot, the minute it began
a hundred years ago.
Biodegradable wreaths drop
quietly, to sink towards the wreck.
A lot of fuss for one loss, some crew think.
Carden deftly links the tragic past with a future too ambiguous for any but the most partial consolation.
{…} A mate decides
to check the ice report -a passing thought,
but too much fate to tempt for all that.
There’s nothing there of course.
The future’s clear for endless miles
and endless months, as far as we can see
nothing’s coming for us.
“Goffman in the Sauna” cannot fail to evoke (for those of us of a certain age) tedious hours spent in Nineteen Seventies classrooms studying Erving Goffman’s often acute but more-than-occasionally-ponderous sociological observations. “Windborne” is a romantically-infused meditation on the old maritime mantra “one hand for the ship and one for yourself”.
This publication’s title-poem is, for me, its best. It is a recollection of cooperative sibling bathtimes, but also an examination of memory’s essential subjectivity with its attendant susceptibility to sequential distortion.
When our shared bath becomes a boat,
mine’s a puzzle box
of cubby-holes in brass and teak,
chart desks, clicking locks.
You might Miami Vice it,
ride a bouncing wake.
Service a supply ship.
Carry heavy freight.
{…} Superyacht, bullet-proof and plush.
Outrigger canoe at dusk.
Iron Age trinket with oars of gold
We don’t compare notes until the water’s cold.
Carden’s poetry has been lavishly praised by Jen Hadfield: ‘Wry, surreal and always humane […it…] is a lightbox to which she holds up astonishing facades of Anthropocene existence’. (And you won’t get much more purple-for-your-money than that!). I shall merely record that The Boat Game’s best lines are minor miracles of concision and precision -informed by a discriminating intelligence and involved compassion well beyond the ordinary.