Here on Earth
We are still here on earth, and with a troubled sense of wonder Jeffrey Wainwright's new collection acknowledges life's sufficiency. The poems evoke Ruskin as writer and artist, his insistence on precision, the thing seen in fullness rather than the seer, the object rather than the subject in the foreground. Ruskin: "the best drawing-masters are the woods and hills".
The poet addresses old friends, with whom he's grown up and then old. He engages them in meditations which include their past, the worlds in which they were taking shape – a shape that is now them, old men rich in language and in heart. They have not lost direction but fare forward, eyes focused on what's there.
These are not "the other poem" which goes too far. "The sea is close by/as it says in the other poem – /but here it is really true". The poet in small things, in the indefinite article, finds a pattern; he still looks for the plan, if there is one, which he cannot quite give up believing in. Here on Earth ends with a poem on his father's experience of growing old, and a "Seascape from Holly's Photograph": Holly, his daughter, in Australia, another world to which he has entry, but only as a visitor. Time foreshortens prospects, but while there's breath, eyesight, language and imagination, there is also conscience, fear, thought, and – still – desire. We are at a beginning.
The poet addresses old friends, with whom he's grown up and then old. He engages them in meditations which include their past, the worlds in which they were taking shape – a shape that is now them, old men rich in language and in heart. They have not lost direction but fare forward, eyes focused on what's there.
These are not "the other poem" which goes too far. "The sea is close by/as it says in the other poem – /but here it is really true". The poet in small things, in the indefinite article, finds a pattern; he still looks for the plan, if there is one, which he cannot quite give up believing in. Here on Earth ends with a poem on his father's experience of growing old, and a "Seascape from Holly's Photograph": Holly, his daughter, in Australia, another world to which he has entry, but only as a visitor. Time foreshortens prospects, but while there's breath, eyesight, language and imagination, there is also conscience, fear, thought, and – still – desire. We are at a beginning.
About the author
Jeffrey Wainwright was born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1944 and was educated locally and at the University of Leeds. He has taught at the University of Wales, Long Island University in Brooklyn and for many years at the Manchester Metropolitan University where he was Professor in the Department of English and its Writing School until 2008.
His first poetry collection was published by Northern House in 1971 and first full book, "Heart's Desire", by Carcanet in 1978. Carcanet Press also publish his "Selected Poems" (1985), "The Red-Headed Pupil" (1994), "Out of the Air" (1999) and "Clarity or Death!" (2008). He has translated plays by Peguy, Claudel and Corneille for BBC Radio 3 and his version of Bernard-Marie Koltes' In the Silence of Cotton Fields was broadcast in March 1999. The play has subsequently been performed by the Actors Touring Company and published by Methuen.
Jeffrey Wainwright has published widely on poetry, including Poetry: "The Basics" (Routledge 2004) and his book on the poetry of Geoffrey Hill, "Acceptable Words" (Manchester University Press, 2005).
His first poetry collection was published by Northern House in 1971 and first full book, "Heart's Desire", by Carcanet in 1978. Carcanet Press also publish his "Selected Poems" (1985), "The Red-Headed Pupil" (1994), "Out of the Air" (1999) and "Clarity or Death!" (2008). He has translated plays by Peguy, Claudel and Corneille for BBC Radio 3 and his version of Bernard-Marie Koltes' In the Silence of Cotton Fields was broadcast in March 1999. The play has subsequently been performed by the Actors Touring Company and published by Methuen.
Jeffrey Wainwright has published widely on poetry, including Poetry: "The Basics" (Routledge 2004) and his book on the poetry of Geoffrey Hill, "Acceptable Words" (Manchester University Press, 2005).