The poems inNot There – Hereare somewhat more relaxed and conversational in tone than Taylor’s earlier books, but are still in the vein of minimalist, compressed writing typical of his work, in which close observation of the external world is mixed with a collage of texts and discourses. For this short review I want to focus on a single poem which I think is representative of many of the poems in the book. Here’s the poem in full:
Larch
The larch has been felled
Phytophthera ramorum
let’s drive the different route 17 miles
cattle grids
empty feedbags
strung like scarecrows
Railway at times runs parallel
ballast plumb line straight
Our single track
Passing place
Signal stagnant
inactivity
signpost navigation GPS
unnamed road
follow the quietness
valley emptyit looks like a bomb’s gone off
toward the estate there is cover
thirty five years ago
we took this drivetracks remain
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