The best recent poetry: new work from Harry Clifton, Andrew Fitzsimons and Majella Kelly

‘I miss breakfast rolls and the sense of humour but our life in the US has been as normal as anyone else’s with young kids’

Fitzsimons brings completeness to this collection in more than one sense: as a poet and Professor of English and Cultures at Gakushuin University in Tokyo, his immersion in Japanese culture and in particular the life of Basho inform the fascinating introduction and meticulous annotations.

Fitzsimons is an equally attentive “see-er”, providing the historical and cultural context which allows the readers to get a little closer to Edo Japan. Centuries fall away as we hear again the sound of cracking water jars, “a water jar cracks/in the ice of nighttime/ in bed awoken”.

Muldoon leaps through a wealth of associations from the Tyrian purple of the Roman Emperor to the “periwinkle feather boa” supported by a “totally zonked” Marc Bolan through a stream of sexual connotations associated with the truffle-hosting oak grove, proving the impossibility of ever censoring sexuality while using metaphors from the natural world “…Such is the self-generative drive/of that... truffle its scent mimics a hormone/ in a male pig’s saliva.

Kelly’s deepest preoccupation is with voice and especially stifled voices, “To go into The Home was to be given/your voice on a spoon and told: swallow it./When they shaved our heads, our voices wilted /on our tongues …cut nettles in empty cups… they insisted on silence on the birthing table…” InKelly’s ear is literally to the ground, “I have come to listen for the lost voices of the children. I know they are here. They are here absolutely.

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