Shedman
From the slippery metamorphoses of his 'Fish' poems to the tipsy star-gazing of 'Maximum Shed', Davies' full debut reveals a telling grasp on the subtle threads of memory and desire which colour everyday situations and spaces.
The collection has a healthy sense of the porousness of the boundaries between 'high-brow' and 'popular culture', a case in point being the sing-along animatronics of 'The singing fish' which is narrated to surreal effect by Big Mouth Billy Bass. But it is the astute humanity of Davies' handling of love and bereavement that makes this a truly rounded collection. Poems such as 'Clothes of Grey' salvage an elegiac beauty out of the shadows of bereavement.
Drawing on his Shedman residencies in public buildings, Davies' discloses flashes of beauty that we might not expect in impersonal spaces such as swimming pools: 'The angle of the water-shattered light / is at a tangent to the physical / I pretend not to see the grace / settling around us like mist'.
Full of unexpected graces and driven by a wise, childlike curiousity, this is a great debut collection.
80pp ISBN 978-1-906309-01-5
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PUPPET WORKSHOP
The tulips
I pick for my wife
from our garden
open
and close,
breathing
the light.
Open.
Close.
The hospital breathes people.
In the morning,
there's never enough room
in the car park.
Before the rush
of evening visitors,
there are many spaces.
Take an item of clothing,
with the slightest movement
make it come alive.
Respiration.
Attention.
The tulips
I picked for my wife
from our garden
open
and close,
breathing
the light.
Open.
Close.
