When Ian Gregson and Carol Rumens edited their anthology of Hull poetry, Old City New Rumours, a while back, one poet with Hull connections who didn’t find his way into its pages was Oliver Reynolds (who took a drama degree there). But he’s someone who has tended to go missing on all manner of fronts in the last decades. It’s a pleasure, then, to see him break cover with a new collection, Hodge, which I review here. Small repetition of the word ‘again’ from sentence four to sentence five owing to interpolated sentence (i.e. not by me). Unfortunately too, a sentence about his poem ‘This poem has won no prizes’ has lost its second half: the poem ‘takes a laudable stand against prize culture, and one I would happily neutralize by awarding a prize, if I could.’ If anyone cares about these things (poetry prizes or missing half-sentences: take your pick).
A tin of sardines would be a more useful gift to the Johnsonian kitteh pictured above, surely.
1 comment:
I know that obscurity, being left out of anthologies, etc, has been a lot in the air lately. With that in mind, I was impressed to read that Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell's Poems sold just two copies on their publication, despite some approving notices by reviewers. That beats even Krapp's sales figures.
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