That Stranger, The Blues
In "That Stranger, The Blues", James Keery's first book of poems, there is an extraordinary fusion between a poetry of landscapes, indebted to Edward Thomas and Robert Frost, and the radical strategies of the poets of the New York and Cambridge schools. Understated, like watercolours in an age of gaudy acrylics, his lyric poems and his longer "narratives" explore
language and their subjects with passionate fidelity. Limiting himself to the verifiable and perceptible, his poems grow resonant with unaggressive clarities.
As a critic, Keery is a lucid interpreter of writing from various apparently exclusive groups, camps or movements. His poetry is characterised by an equal openness. There is nothing imitative or
magpie-ish in his gathering of energy and resource from the work of Michael Haslam, W. S. Graham, Philip Larkin or J. H. Prynne: it is simply that he refuses to subscribe to the general view of unbreachable divisions – of geography, gender or poetics – within our culture. Claiming access to the widest poetic territory, he brings an unusual discipline and an unusual freedom into play in his work.
language and their subjects with passionate fidelity. Limiting himself to the verifiable and perceptible, his poems grow resonant with unaggressive clarities.
As a critic, Keery is a lucid interpreter of writing from various apparently exclusive groups, camps or movements. His poetry is characterised by an equal openness. There is nothing imitative or
magpie-ish in his gathering of energy and resource from the work of Michael Haslam, W. S. Graham, Philip Larkin or J. H. Prynne: it is simply that he refuses to subscribe to the general view of unbreachable divisions – of geography, gender or poetics – within our culture. Claiming access to the widest poetic territory, he brings an unusual discipline and an unusual freedom into play in his work.
About the author
James Keery lives in Culcheth and teaches English at Fred Longworth High School in Tyldesley. Carcanet published "That Stranger, The Blues" in 1996 and his new edition of Burns Singer's "Collected Poems" in 2001. He is currently writing on J. H. Prynne (for Jacket) as well as on the Apocalypse and a couple of the poets in between.