"Blizzard" by Matthew Francis (Faber, 1996)

He's done 10 years in the software business, has an interest in chess, writes poetry and prose, works in a university (a creative writing professor) and writes occasional non-mainstream Formalist/Oulipo pieces, and he's roughly my age. On the face of it he's as close a match as I'll find.

Many of his pieces have formalist shapes while avoiding the standard formalist preoccupations. The 8 stanzas of "After the Bee" have a syllabus count of 999994 and a rhyme scheme of abacbc. "Again" is a villanelle. "Chasak" is a sestina. "Diversion has abba stanzas. "From a High Place" has looser rhymes, the pattern being abaacdcd. "Poem Without Words" is 5 abababcc stanzas, the first beginning

An afternoon in early you know it has birds in it the time of year they're always writing about things grow the whatever shines. I'm sitting here

which is fun for a while. I quite like "Tuba Mirum". "Poem Found in a Box of Indoor Fireworks" is almost light verse - quotable lines surrounded by padding. "Winter City" sounds like it's set in Cambridge, with ghosts and a relaxed pace - "My clock, roosting on a live record-player,/ shrieked its alarm each morning at full volume". "Power Cut" is 5 abba stanzas, easy going

Neighbours are talking in the garden - we didn't know we had so many. Their voices crisscross, passing between hedges, as their cats do. Did you phone? And did they tell you what they told me?

"Notes for Nightingale" is indeed that - notes about the bird, and notes for a poem. "Towards Midnight" is 40 abacbc stanzas, with material more often found in prose - e.g. "He didn't even look at the clock/ so perhaps it was true after all,/ he could taste time. At least he could drink/ half the night, which may be the same thing" (p.52); "The room seemed worn out, the walls/ scantily papered, the fabrics thin:// chair cover, carpet, bedclothes. Maybe/ people had lived harder in this room/ and it had room fatigue. Nobody/ could weave blankets so frail. And the bed/ was so tightly made that every time/ I wanted to turn over I had// to ask permission." (p.53). "Blizzard" is longer still - 30 numbered sections each of 4 stanzas, the rhyme pattern being abab cbc dede fef. Again the style can be relaxed - "How it began I don't remember. The beginning's shrunk in the past and/ the ending glides into the future./ There is no telling how it will end".

So were we separated at birth? I don't think I could have written any of these. I was impressed by more of them than I liked, and I liked his later book, Dragons, more.

"Singing a man to death" by Matthew Francis (Cinnamon, 2012)

12 stories, the shortest 8 pages long. There are first, second, and third person pieces, the main characters often female. The settings are medieval and modern, the locations spanning continents. The only prevailing trait I noticed was mention of the power of song. In the title story music makes its first appearance

When you put on a record, assuming you do it right and don't jab your stylus down in the middle of a track, there is first no sound at all and then the sound of amplified silence. That can last as long as thirty seconds, rather pleasurable ones usually, in which you prepare yourself to listen. You find out also at this stage whether the recording is old and likely to be scratched or not (p.17)

It's later used as a simile

Jessie probably looked on her house as a sort of record, one that endlessly replayed to her all the mess and clumsiness that was lived in it (p.19)

I wasn't convinced by "American Fugue". "The Lovers" seemed to change genre (which is fine); it ended "Everyone knows fifteen-year-old boys don't have bicycle accident. At fifteen, the only thing that can kill you is love". I need to read it again. I thought "Demonland" was fine. "Between the walls" has 4 sequential first-person voices. "Green winter" didn't appeal. "Sleevenotes" was great fun - 8 attempts to write a 500-word sleevenote - part pretentious Melody Maker, part Nick Hornby. "The Vegetable Lamb" had me struggling again. "Edward's Garden" has an ending whose point I've missed (maybe it's something to do with the dualism mentioned on p.111). I wasn't sure which way "Beehive" would go - Gothic? Like "Demonland" it alluded to computing - "'What language is it anyway?' 'It's C' 'What's that?' 'The language that comes after B'" (p.127). "Cargo" is partly in Pidgin, partly about cargo cults and religions.

The final, longest story, "Assassin", reminded me of Jim Crace's style. Using the second person it mentions Paradise, "Angels", and escaping obligations. It starts with "Suppose you had to kill someone". Later, as the mission is described, we told that "At least you will not be alone. Beside you, as you wait, is your companion, who seems confident, untroubled by doubts, everything you are not". Both you and the companion are called Ali, reinforcing the idea that they are aspects of the same persona. At the end there's speculation about what would happen if the assassin changed his mind - "You could become farmers, marrying a couple of local girls, pretend you had always lived there./ But after all there is no supposing about it. You know who you are. You know what you have to do.". The use of the "you" (rather than "I" or "he") means that both Alis can be referred to. It also speaks directly to the reader.

The collection made me realise how naturalistic and contemporary I've become.

Other reviews

• Kaite O'Reilly
• John Lavin (Wales arts review)

"Dragons" by Matthew Francis (Faber and Faber, 2001)

"Dragons" is a poem where all 38 lines end in "dragon". "Invocation"'s 44 words all start with "w". "Spending the Night in the Temple" has 9 sections. Each section has 10 lines, the 1st having 13 syllables and each subsequent line having a syllable less than the previous one. The lines are organised into 4 stanzas - 4, 3, 2, 1 lines. And "Bath" is a villanelle.

I didn't care for the Winchester poems but even in those there's evidence that the poet's aware that he's using words on a page.

I especially like "Frog Chronicle" and "Twentieth-Century Dream"