Two reviews of Chris Emery’s The Departure
Read Catherine Edmunds on Goodreads:
I first read this book a week ago on the East Coast Mainline from Darlington to London Kings Cross (‘Look left, a cobbled lane and a crypt of hats’). I read it again from St Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord (‘above the summer marriage of grasses’), and again from Paris Montparnasse to Niort (‘All the forks, the platters, the cruet set: everything is dancing.’). I waited several days, and read it again, three times on the return journey; the last time, back to front so that I ended with ‘Snails’. Those snails! (‘Why are they all called Tony or Erasmus or King Nacre?’) I love this poem. It opens the book and encapsulates all that for me is so wonderful about Chris Emery’s poetry: the wit, the connections, the sheer joy in words and what they can do, the shock of unexpected juxtapositions, the extraordinary insight into the ordinary, the leap beyond the mundane into the terrifying, the ineffable logic – and Droylsden. Okay, Droylsden’s not actually mentioned in the snail poem, but does appear elsewhere, more than once. Read more …
Read Michelle Teasdale on Winning Words:
‘The Departure’ features many narrative poems, playful and vivid. Departures of one kind or another form the main theme. The poet departs for various places, from Manchester, to Kettle’s Yard House in Cambridge to a seedy motel room. Emery departs his own persona to inhabit those of various narrative voices, from Bukowski, a street brawler, and a porn-star stand-in (“mostly, I stare at tan fabrics and zebra hide”). We even visit the ultimate departure – death itself, examining the poet’s own death, and that of his brother (“I see your sightless tiny hands, that peculiar half-kiss / as my life draws in to your permanent night”). Read more …
