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Work that shines and searches

These poems look at holy life and its costs, says Martyn Halsall

Book Jacket © not advert

The Dark Age
James Harpur

Anvil £7.95 (978-0-85646-404-1)
Church Times Bookshop £7.15

reviewed with

The Hawk’s Mewl and other poems
Nigel Humphreys

Arbor Vitae Press £4.99

and

Hiraeth: Selection of poems and writings
Robbie Sharma

Nath and Kiran Sharma £4.99 (978-0-8444718-0-3)

GRIT AND GRACE are the hall-marks of these three contrasting collections of poetry. They offer, respectively, fresh insights on sanctity, on the potential of poetic representation, and on the cost of dedicated pilgrimage.

James Harpur, in The Dark Age, prises Celtic saints out of demure stained glass, or our romantic illusions, and sets them where they belong, on salt-stained edges, at the heart of spiritual conflict. Thirteen sonnets, or near-sonnets, form the central section of his fourth poetry collection, which renegotiates the popular misconception of a “dark age”, and brings it into the flickering torchlight of Christian mission.

Harpur strips his saints to their human and spiritual essences. Brendan is “the naked hermit”; Senan a “wild-haired, half-nude, all dirty”. He writes movingly of the burden of prophetic obedience, and en-ables historic echoes of “devilish tricks”, miracles, and powerful prayer to ring true in contemporary language.

His language displays evocative precision. His use of rhyme, and particularly half-rhyme, introduces unforced beauty, as he re-examines the familiar with deft and novel effects, as here in “Patrick’s Return”:

March mists dispelled the 
    coloured countryside

And hung in curdled webs from 
    ragged trees.

The Dark Age begins with more varied poems, celebrating a sodden Irish landscape, honouring a stroke victim, and portraying a child’s new life with mystical uncertainties:

Did you shake off my shyness, 
    hermit ways,

And curse an absent God and 
    pointless life

And wonder why we brought you 
    to this place?’ (“Alien”)

Harpur completes this highly intelligent and finely written collection with further examinations of holy life, its joys, and its cost.

Nigel Humphreys’s talent for language is announced in the “mewl” of his collection’s title, which precisely evokes a buzzard’s call. These 30 poems open a linguistic debate: how best to communicate so as both to illuminate and to extend experience? Humphrey’s language is often scientifically crisp; yet it is revelatory, and his observations intrigue. He shows us cowrie shells’ “drizzled colours, humpty With inrolled whorls”; or “a simple coffin . . . tumbrilled by strangers On the crackle gravel”.

Original description is matched by haunting, unfinished narratives, such as the “passenger in his own car Quietly slipping away”. Occasionally the language overreaches itself, as in “Somme”, where a taut opening image is soon overwhelmed by linguistic, logical, and narrative confusion. But where Humphreys writes from personal experience, his work shines and searches.

Hiraeth is Robbie Sharma’s obituary. It consists of the poems and “writings” of a Lincoln chorister, Oxford graduate, businessman, and long-distance walker, who committed suicide in 2004, aged 39.

His poetry tracks his geographical, spiritual, and psychological journeys; it is straightforward, determined, analytical. He appears to be a pilgrim wherever he goes: watching a sunset from an Indian train, or looking with equal honesty and intrigue at his map of faith. He shares all these experiences with generous integrity, acknowledging his hard calling:

A poet must sing
A poet must always sing

Wherever he finds himself.

Martyn Halsall is communications adviser to the diocese of Blackburn, and poetry editor of Third Way.

The Hawk’s Mewl and other poems is available through the author’s website, www.nigel humphreyspoet.com.

Hiraeth is available from G. N. Sharma, Coed Talwen, Dyffryn Ardudwy, Gwynedd LL44 2ER; 01341 247331; for £4.99 plus £1 p.& p.

To order The Dark Age, email the details to Church Times Bookshop (please mention "Church Times Bookshop Price")



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