Castle Poetry

“Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.”

THE MAGPIE ALMANACK, Simon Williams

Vole Books, Dempsey and Windle £10 [2020]

Simon Williams is a former Bard of Exeter and a one-time Arvon Foundation writing centre director, along with his partner and longtime poetic collaborator Susan Taylor. An accomplished, long-established Devon poet, The Magpie Almanack is Williams’ ninth poetry collection. Playful, erudite, amusing, his poems speak firmly of the everyday as we know it – ‘snack bar wrappers,’ ‘Ding-a-Ling,’ ‘limited time offer’ – but all done with a dark undertone suggestive of things not being quite what they seem or even openly, eyerollingly ironic. ‘Kiss the mad poet,’ Williams insists, hope springing eternal. ‘Keep your lips off poets/who claim they’re sane’.

Equally, the word ‘Anthology’ as the poem title declares, ‘is the study of anths,/small creatures with lisps’ while the ‘Poetry Book Cat’ might not ‘pester for crunchies’ but still ‘leaves/meows banging round your skull’. Meanwhile, one line from a poem inspired by a NASA scientist seems to describe the general ethos of this collection: ‘We remain confused, but that’s what makes it fun.’

Away from playful and surreal elements, however, there are moments of resonance that take us into unexpectedly lyrical territory. Williams’ surprising inventions or reappropriations of language – ‘crocusrise’ ‘waterfat’ ‘flashfish’ – are often accompanied by a sudden shift of register, moving from ludic verse to stately cadence with little discernible effort, as here in ‘Little Gulls’: ‘so even red-necked grebes on the water/and a roseate tern on the air, marvel.’ And I smiled to see a lovely poem about Gawain’s horse, for I wrote one too, way back when. Great minds, et cetera.

There are many moments of startled delight here too, like the T-Rex whose ‘little arms are made for cuddling’ (‘A T-Rex Explains’) and this marvellous evocation of ‘Static’ from clothes when undressing in the dark, where even the bright crackle of line-breaks echo what’s being depicted:

It’s the separation of one
layer from the next. They
want to be together and
spark in rattles of light
as I pull.

Magpies love to collect shiny things, and so do magazine editors. Some of the many acknowledgements for these poems at the back of the book left me suspicious that this was yet another poetic joke on the reader: One Hand Clapping, Rats Ass Review, Riggwelter, Smeuse, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, The Stare’s Nest, et al. But no, I've just been out of the game too long, these quirkily named publications do indeed exist, and they've been lucky enough to feature Simon's poetry. A home from home, I'd say.

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THE PICKERS AND OTHER TALES, Simon Williams

Vole Books, Dempsey and Windle £10 [2024]

Like football, this fascinating and quirky poetry collection is a game of two halves. During the first half, Simon Williams examines the humdrum and yet oddly fantastical in the life of the fictional Pickers – Mr and Mrs – in a sly, tongue-in-cheek battle of the sexes, where this droll couple take turns in coming out on top.

Sometimes Mrs Picker – or Cherry, as her parents christened her with strange foresight – is the loser in these exchanges, becoming ‘just a little jealous’ in the poem ‘Cars’ of the ‘sexy’ satnav voice instructing her husband on ‘which exit/he should take.’ On most occasions though, ‘Mr P’ – undermanager at Pronto a Mangiare until his unfortunate redundancy – is the one brought face to face with his own shortcomings, yearning to switch to an alternative universe in which he drives a Bugatti Veyron instead of a Nissan Micra, and is ‘four inches taller’ or ‘a well-respected/particle physicist, rather than/a sandwich seller in a shop.’ Cherry, on the other hand – and frankly I’m with her on this – longs for a world where trees are ‘made entirely of dark chocolate’. Yet, despite all the daily triumphs and disasters, this couple continue to make sweet music together, as in ‘Phone’: ‘he approaches from behind/when she is washing up or on the phone’. Nuff said.

Nonetheless, this innerscape of wry jokes and gentle one-liners masks a certain disquiet over the jarring effects of modern – and particularly married – life, where all those longed-for alternative universes feel tantalisingly possible, while always just out of reach. Science plays an important role too, a perpetual fascination that suggests other worlds may in fact exist in the known universe and be ours for the taking, if only we could read the manual.

Thankfully, after many vicissitudes in fortune, as in the best fairy-tale endings, we leave Cherry dreamily ‘riding a big one’ (calm down – she’s just surfing) while Mr Picker runs a beach shop ‘with some of the best/spelt wraps and quinoa bagels west of Camborne,’ seemingly happy and fulfilled at last. All the same, I couldn’t help wondering if A. Picker is secretly tempted to drop everything – literally – and plunge into the waves never to be seen again, i.e. do a Reginald Perrin and reinvent himself.

After zesty half-time oranges, the second half of this humorous collection deals with all creatures great and small, and their impact on the poet – or humanity in general. (We were perhaps pre-warned of this shift back in the first half when Mr P in ‘Diet’ struggles to lose weight and ‘becomes interested in Strange Science, believes/it may be easier to morph into a marmoset’.) Via comic tales of bizarre interactions with dogs, pigeons, badgers, giant lobsters, not to mention the vaguely salacious ‘Statement From a Woman with Fish on Her Face’ we have shifted here into the territory of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, though set against rather less classically Grecian backdrops, e.g. Morrisons’ supermarket or the Clifton car park. These poems are about observation and interpretation, which are seen as distinct and separate activities, and not always to be trusted. Caveat lector! Simon Williams is a slippery narrator of his own internal landscape, as he warns us in ‘Two Choughs’.

Two birds that ought to be choughs
(this is Cornwall after all) are just too far away for us
to see the colour of their legs.

This poetry is neither loud nor showy, yet there’s a peacock lurking behind the sand dunes, hiding his distinctive plumage while delighting in the surprise of poor saps taken off guard by a mild, understated delivery, on whom his best lines pounce triumphantly. (See the ‘choughs’/‘us’ rhyme above.)

Simon Williams is a master of the volte-face and the poetic ambush, many of his closing lines coming at you seemingly out of nowhere, and yet perfect, a revelation. However, what I particularly enjoy is his ability to create earworm poems; lines and images that hook into your psyche and refuse to be shaken off. Since reading this collection, I’ve started referring casually to my husband as Mr Picker, to which he replies on cue, ‘Yes, Cherry?’ So far, despite this promising development, his skills as a sandwich maker have shown little sign of improvement. But sharing these poems with him has been a delight…