"Whatever you do, just don't" by Matthew Stewart (Happenstance, 2023)

Poems from Bad Lilies, High Window, Poetry Birmingham, Rialto, Spectator, Stand, Wild Court, etc - a good list. The sections are entitled

• "Británico" (life in Spain) - "July peas" are struggling - "moisture fading from the soil's memory.// We try to ignore their sudden decline"
• "Starting Eleven" (about Aldershot FC 80s players) - Dale Banton, who's re-signed "by the board/ to silence our protests -/ though the manager knows/ full well his legs have gone". During one of his readings, the poet mentioned how football had helped him feel like one of the lads. The players (who could represent role-models or ways to be part of society, or career trajectories) were often seen "in real life".
• "Family Matters" - with the help of a brand-new paper clip, birth certificates and wills form a perfect rectangle. "How neatly, temporarily, it brings them together"
• "Retracing steps" - (Back to England) - "It took me back/ to our wedding day in Farnham/ at St Thomas on the Bourne./ Hearing your Mum say I do/ instead of you" .

The poet describes his method as using the specific to hint at the general. Sometimes when poets use an anecdote they end by stepping out of the anecdote to tell us how to generalise it. In this book, any hints are contained within the anecdote.

I can't improve on what others have already written, so browse the other reviews.

Other reviews

• Bo Mee
• Christopher James (There’s a warmth and humanity to these poems that make them accessible and relatable, with enough depth and bite to reward repeated visits ... patience – along with a finely honed craft and remarkable sensibility to cadence – also runs through these accomplished, graceful and at times deceptively simple poems. ... One of my favourite poems here is the memorably named: ‘The Aristocrat of Pipe Tobacco' ... ‘Heading for the Airport’ is one of the collection’s most potent pieces. It’s a sonnet in disguise ... All of Stewart’s poetic gifts are at work here: the filmic scene setting which throws us immediately into the drama, the vivid specificity, the lurch from prosaic specificity into lyricism, and the dramatic shift of emotional tone. The percussive sound effects are also brilliantly composed)
• Steve Whitaker (about Farnham Library Card)
• Emma Storr
• John Field
• Neil Elder
• Andy Hopkins (Fourth poem in (‘July Peas’) completely floored me. )