Nayler & Folly Wood: New & Selected Poems

In Peter Bennet’s poetry nothing is what it seems to be. Modern spaces are haunted by the past and the unreal. We cannot tell the encroacher from the encroached. Discontinuities in time and space and playful short-circuitings produce exhilarating shivers. Bennet is an astute observer of people, places, and things, however, and we find ourselves surprisingly at home on this border between plausible narrative and the wilder territories of the imagination. This comprehensive selection reflects Bennet’s full range for the first time, and begins with poems from the early 1980s, when he arrived in Jon Silkin’s Stand at the no longer young age of forty. It draws on seven collections published since then and includes his major sequences: The Long Pack, Jigger Nods, Folly Wood, Bobby Bendick’s Ride, Landscape with Psyche and Ladderedge and Cotislea. New work introduced here centres on another major and powerfully imagined sequence, a colloquy which bridges three centuries to evoke the voice of the Quaker James Nayler, who was abominably punished for ‘horrid blasphemy’. The book concludes with a substantial group of recent poems. Poetry Book Society Special Commendation.

Table of Contents:
13 Light on the Wanney Crags 14 Crazy Dog 15 The Silence 16 Lottie Little and the Trees 17 Souvenir of Malling 18 Síle na Gig or Playmate of the Month 19 Barmaid 20 Funny Man 21 Looking Through a Parched Sea Holly Bush 22 Fête Day at Bellingham 24 Not at Home 25 Hareshaw Linn 26 Winter Hills 27 Duddo Stones 28 Face Painting at Threpwood Hill 29 First Calf 30 At the Queen’s Hall 31 The Old Moor House 32 Cancer Patient 33 Extraction 34 Logan Street 35 The Murrough Lady 38 Berenson at the Borghese 39 The Exhibition of the Esquimaux 41 Le Plan des Pennes 43 THE LONG PACK 63 Ha-Ha 64 Spalpeen 65 Tithonus at Kielder 66 Fairytale 67 The Fossil 68 The Damp Harmonium 69 The Pigeon Loft 70 Squiffy 71 Breathe Carefully 72 The Imp 73 The Sally Garden 74 The Angel 75 JIGGER NODS 97 The Silver of the Mirror 99 The Squirrel 100 The Redesdale Rowan 101 The Tourist 102 Après-midi 103 St George’s Day 104 Black Country Browning 105 FOLLY WOOD 116 The Brass Band 118 The Acorn 119 The Green Corn 120 The Bather 121 Unity in the Englischer Garten 122 Penny Dreadful 123 BOBBY BENDICK'S RIDE 132 Epithalamium 133 Sentinels 134 The Owl Herb 135 Augenlicht 136 Mademoiselle de Silhouette 137 The Mistress 138 The Place I Am 139 The Riddle 140 Auberge 141 The Unsafe Landing 142 The Comfort Service 143 The Laboratory 144 A Helpmeet for Protestant Mystics 145 The Better Place 146 Gantries 147 The Magic Castle 149 LANDSCAPE WITH PSYCHE 156 Proxy 157 Next Time 158 After Pevsner 159 Pastoral 160 Virgil 161 French Windows 162 Sanquar 163 LADDEREDGE AND COTISLEA 174 The Gypsy Fiddle 175 The Vapour Trail 176 Death and the Spinster 177 My Mother at Erbistock 178 A Piano in Hobart 181 NAYLER 219 Vade Mecum 220 Graduands 221 The Scare 222 À Côté de la Sorgues 223 Iron Railings 224 MCMLVI 225 The Promenade 226 The Lucky Ones 227 Taliesin 228 The Floor Above 229 Night Wanderers 230 Ex Sublimis 231 Icarus 232 The Doorstop 233 Vale Royal 234 Klutvang 235 Gestalt 236 Neck Verse 237 The Kite 238 The Refugee 239 Hemistich 240 An Invitation 241 The Goodbye Note 242 Shadowed Water 243 My Mephistopheles 245 Notes

About the Author :
Peter Bennet taught in secondary and further education, including work with redundant steelworkers following the closure of Consett Steel Works, and spent 16 years as Tutor Organiser for Northumberland with the Workers' Educational Association. He lived for 33 years near the Wild Hills o'Wanney in Northumberland, in a cottage associated with the ballad writer James Armstrong, author of Wannie Blossoms. He now lives in North Shields. His BloodaxeThe Glass Swarm (2008) was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.

Review :
Peter Bennet considers the moments of interaction between past and present, fairytale and fact, using folklore’s staples to cast light on contemporary concerns. His watchful, thicketed landscapes, the stateliness of his language, all fit themselves perfectly to winter. This is fireside poetry. Bennet often tips his hat to his literary heroes, wielding the instructive tone of Norman MacCaig, the direct address of W.S. Graham, and Robert Browning’s sophisticated handling of the dramatic monologue and acoustic texturing, but it is to the imagining of a poetic place that Bennet gives his all. Bennet really does know, very precisely, how to contrive the entry of the powers of place and history into his poems without depriving them of idiosyncrasy, surprise, or their darker natures.