Cello Music
By Mervyn Linford
177 poems, 214 pages
Price: £10
ISBN: 978-1-912412532
Publisher: Littoral Press
To order: littoralpressuk.jimdofree.com
Reviewed by Neil Leadbeater
In common with the title of one of Mervyn Linford’s previous collections, ‘Arrangement in the Key of Light’, the title of this, his latest collection, also shares a musical theme. This is expanded upon in the imagery that he employs in the title poem, ‘Cello Music’:
There are swallows on the stave of my regrets -
so many looping notes without their clefs
composing valedictory refrains
as summer dies and raindrops smear the text
on my life’s page.
The mood may be reflective here but, generally speaking, the poems in this collection, often tinged with humour, are positive in tone, taking their cue from all the beauty that is ours to behold in the natural world – and, in Linford’s case, his particular world of rivers, streams, fields and mudflats in the counties of Essex and Suffolk located in South East England.
The collection is subtitled ‘A Selection of Seasonal Poems’ and, in keeping with this theme, it is divided into four sections, one for each season with a substantial number of poems in the middle headed ‘Miscellaneous’. Taken together, these provide a good balance and offer up an equally good variety of subject matter.
Linford’s poems are more than mere descriptions of nature. They often ponder the imponderables with their questing spirit. In ‘The Sun’s Hot Brass,’ for example, he questions if the colours of a rainbow are real or illusory and then goes on to contemplate the sun asking if it is ‘just a gold idea on the curved horizon / as it moves to the north or south or else stands still / like a voice or a proof revealed when the point of focus / is a bold uncertain sphere full of gas / and photons.’
One of his many strengths as a writer is his ability to convey ‘atmosphere’, especially in situations where nothing appears to be happening. In ‘Hovering in the Light’, he writes convincingly about the silence he enjoys standing by the clear river listening to the faint sound of water flowing beneath alders and willows in translucent light. The same effect is achieved in ‘Bulletin in June’ where ‘one intrusive swift’ breaks the silence and ‘expresses sound / and an ear’s discordance.’
Many of his poems are teeming with birds: the blackcap in his garden who ‘wants to skulk within the gloom of the ceanothus’ but can’t resist listening to his song on a smartphone’s mobile app; a pair of barn owls who are ‘quartering the reed beds’ in the meadows by the river; house martins in Liston Lane that ‘flare and flicker in the light of an August day’ and ‘warblers in the reeds or by the lilies / are June’s remembered blistering idea / of hoops and fire’.
In ‘Clear-Cut’ the combination of light on river water brings ‘brilliance and clarity….when what was once so hazy and enclosed / becomes the clear concision of a text / that shines and sharpens.’ In ‘August, River Stour, Liston Lane’ as Linford peers into the depths of the river, ‘water fractures where the swifts /skim over light’s refractions and the rift / in its thin meniscus.’
Recurring themes are often tied to the changing of the seasons and, by implication, life’s journey. On this level, Linford’s poems can be viewed from both a personal and a universal perspective.
Depictions of childhood are frequently recalled with reference to both the place and the weather. In ‘Spirits, Blithe or Otherwise’ the scene is set in the opening verses:
And how the ground cracked wide in that far summer:
London clay and heat when found together
know that the weather’s way is first to shrink
and then divide one section from the other
until the thinnest line becomes the brink
of a gaping chasm.
A little boy, the child that I was
could easily be lost in such a void
if he fell in.
There is a part of this collection that is retrospective. In ‘Remember – Don’t Forget’ Linford writes ‘We’re always going back. Why, or why not? / Where else is there to go – into the future / that doesn’t exist? Even the now / won’t last, the unknown awaits.’ later on, in the same poem, he writes ‘Let’s forget the probable / and concentrate instead on what we have / and what we had. Memories will keep / us grounded.’ There is also a part of this collection which is very much concerned with here and now. There are references to AI and to space travel as well as poems that document climate change. In ‘Rising Waters’ a river bursts its banks in spectacular fashion:
At a tangent to the tarmac, water, flows across the lane:
the riverbank can’t hold this autumn flood
that populates the fields with pike and bream
and many another cyprinid escape from the overflowing
reaches and meanders.
This spate’s the worst since 1968, or so they say,
and as I splosh my way along the lane
to photograph this rarely seen event
a cormorant flies as straight as any arrow
confused by so much water, so much space
that’s inundated.
In the ‘Miscellaneous’ section, Linford occasionally turns from his preoccupation with the natural world to more urban matters. One such poem, ‘A Measured Overspill’ charts the spread of the so-called ‘new towns’ which Linford views in hindsight with some scepticism:
Overspill was filling those estates
with future wives who’d learnt domestic science
and all those mates that building sites would train
to swallow pints and pounds without restraint
whilst backing losers.
Whether he is writing about observing tidal mudflats along the Essex coast, negotiating a Z bend at speed beneath elms and between branches or reflecting upon ‘the last of summer’s cash in autumn’s purse,’ Linford’s multi-layered poems delight us with their craftsmanship. |
