Religion and the Arts 20 (2016) 366–377 RELIGION and the ARTS brill.com/rart

Verses Sacred and Profane ’s Valediction and Other New Poetry Collections*

Kevin J. Gardner Baylor University

Clemo, Jack. Selected Poems. Ed. Luke Thompson. : Enitharmon, 2015. Pp. 103. £9.99 paper.

Deane, John F. Semibreve. Manchester: Carcanet, 2015. Pp. x + 135. £9.99 paper.

Dennison, John. Otherwise. Manchester: Carcanet, 2015. Pp. 61. £9.99 paper.

Hooker, Jeremy. ScatteredLight. London: Enitharmon, 2015. Pp. 120. £9.99 paper.

Thwaite, Anthony. Going Out. London: Enitharmon, 2015. Pp. 64. £9.99 paper.

Williams, Rowan. The Other Mountain. Manchester: Carcanet, 2014. Pp. 64. £9.99 paper.

In recent months six new poetry volumes have arrived on my desk, courtesy of two of the most respected of British poetry presses. For many years, Carcanet and Enitharmon have built their reputations by publishing some of the most prestigious contemporary poets in the British Isles, poets whose craft has been constructed on a foundation of poetic tradition and formalism.1 It was thus no surprise to find in many of these poems sundry kinds of order—stanzaic

* Quotations from the poems of John F. Deane, John Dennison, and Rowan Williams are reproduced by kind permission of Carcanet Press and its editor, Michael Schmidt. Quotations from the poems of Jack Clemo, Jeremy Hooker, and Anthony Thwaite are reproduced by kind permission of Enitharmon Press and its editor, Stephen Stuart-Smith. 1 The catalogue of poets championed by Carcanet and Enitharmon include Eavan Boland, Alan Brownjohn, Gillian Clarke, Kevin Crossley-Holland, Donald Davie, U. A. Fanthorpe, David Gascoyne, Michael Hamburger, John Heath-Stubbs, Elizabeth Jennings, P. J. Kavanagh, Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin Morgan, Les Murray, Neil Powell, Anne Ridler, Peter Scupham, C. H. Sisson, Charles Tomlinson, and Clive Wilmer, among many other worthies.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi: 10.1163/15685292-02003006 review essays 367 forms such as quatrains and tercets, lines metrical as well as syllabic, sound pat- terns including rhyme and alliteration—standing in stubborn defiance of the expectations created by the mainstreams of Modernism and Postmodernism. Yet there is nothing derivative about the six poets represented here, nor indeed is there much in their work that is overtly traditional. They are moreover quite distinct from each other, at least culturally: they include a debut collection by a New Zealander, the most recent volume from a leading figure in Irish poetry, a new collection by an Anglo-Welsh poet and scholar, a newly edited anthology of a Cornish regionalist’s verse, the latest volume from a leading Christian apologist, and what may well be the very final offering from one of the most distinguished men of letters in Britain. Indeed, this might appear to be a relatively diverse gathering of poets, except for the notable fact that the imagination of each of these six writers is informed by a distinctively Christian perspective, resulting in unique poetic perspectives on matters of faith and the- ology.

Anthony Thwaite, surely the most accomplished and lauded among these six poets, has said that Going Out is likely to be the last book of poems he publishes in his lifetime. One hopes this wistful assessment is premature. The poems in this collection exhibit great liveliness, ranging through forms and subjects of great variety. Throughout his long and distinguished career, Thwaite has excelled in an extraordinary array of poetic forms, perhaps to be best appre- ciated by a long immersion in his Collected Poems (reviewed in Religion and the Arts 12.4, pages 623–625). His penchant for traditional forms continues in Going Out: lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming tercets, senryu, and even Skel- tonics are all on frequent display here. However, the poet is never controlled by the form, allowing natural movement in rhythm to take precedence over metri- cal constraint. Thwaite’s earliest publications, some sixty years ago, showed the influence of , and though his poetry has evolved remarkably and steadily through the years, some of The Movement’s more important principles remain visible in his work. These include a tight control of syntactical move- ment in his lines (evident, for instance, in his brilliant use of enjambment), as well as an insistence that the poem communicate directly and with unmistak- able clarity. Thwaite’s extraordinary creative energy, all the more remarkable as most of these pieces were written after he turned eighty, is also demonstrated by the range of subjects Going Out addresses. A number of poems address the violence and madness of human culture, visible in both ancient and contemporary society; others examine nature and language; and others still might be grouped as elegies and tribute poems to friends and fellow poets. For many readers, the

Religion and the Arts 20 (2016) 366–377