![\"\"](\"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/d5c876_1294eefe560c4639a2f1aea08a83b9ff.jpg_srz_p_229_171_75_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_jpg_srz.jpg\" "\\"d5c876_1294eefe560c4639a2f1aea08a83b9ff.jpg_srz_p_229_171_75_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_jpg_srz\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Marc Woodward is a musician, which is tangible in A Fright of Jays.<\/em> With controlled rhythm and sense of pacing, many of the pieces here carry you along with them. There are stories of moonlight and wildlife in the strange, small wildernesses of the South West. In its strongest passages, the relationship with the landscape is both brutal and beautiful \u2013 hints of the sublime and the realistic one finds in Jack Clemo or Ted Hughes. The proliferation of foxes, owls and rabbits clearly marks a sympathy with the latter, as does the unflinching description of finishing off a life in \u2018Eel Catching\u2019.<\/p>\n The convincingness of the stories is greatest when they are simplest. The myth of \u2018The Bowman\u2019s Lament\u2019 is full of memorable images \u2013 \u2018The air stepped sideways, \/ shivering at the brush of fletching as the shaft \/ flew past and rush on up to the white moon\u2019. The sustained, precise gentleness of \u2018Revival\u2019, about saving a lizard \u2018stunned to stupor by the late March chill\u2019 is remarkable. It\u2019s also no coincidence that these poems are the most formally controlled (both sonnets), avoiding the occasional bagginess of some longer pieces.<\/p>\n \u2018Beyond Broadwoodwidger\u2019, for example, is spooky and physical, capturing the chill of being stranded in deep countryside at night. So easily lost \u2018on these shapeless acres\u2019, the night encloses you, soft and inescapable: \u2018You hear the weight of condensation \/ on a vast ocean of bending blades\u2019. The beautiful sensory wash of the poem is undercut a little by\u00a0 its more overtly dramatic gestures, which reach for bigger effects than the poem needs; restraint produces the more genuine images. Contrast, in \u2018Beyond Broadwoodwidger\u2019, the stretch of \u2018Here there is nothing to save you. \/ If you lie down now, this wet ditch \/ may be your decomposing place\u2019 in this poem with the tenderness of the ending of \u2018Revival\u2019: \u2018I felt her move, \/ faintly, as she responded to the heat\u2019.<\/p>\n My favourites in this collection make the poet palpably \u2018present\u2019, speaking quietly and directly. The most effective is \u2018The Nightshades at the Church House Inn\u2019, which opens with a group of musicians grabbing a smoke between sets \u2013 \u2018I\u2019m here not for the nicotine \/ but the camaraderie. \/ The cupped hands, click of lighters, \/ the lighting off from one another:\u2019 This is the least rhythmically orderly poem \u2013 the musician taking a break? \u2013 but is also unselfconscious and full of details. Like all these poems, it\u2019s great to read aloud, but here we get closest to the poet\u2019s natural voice, it seems. The final lines highlight the best parts of the collection. They most clearly reveal the poet as quietly contrarian observer, letting the weight of the exact word do the work: \u2018I pick up my mandolin \u2013 a warm brown shade: \/ \u2018Cremona\u2019 if it was a fiddle. \u2018Tobacco\u2019 mandolinists say.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mike Rose-Steel<\/strong> is editor for Spindlebox press, and founded the Exegesis writing collective. He researches on Wittgenstein and poetics. Recent poetry collections include Paraphernalium<\/em> and Drawing Over is Drawing Under.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n