Selected Poems by John Glenday
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John Glenday is a Scottish poet. In his recently published Selected Poems, he draws on thirty years of his best work, including poems from The Apple Ghost (Peterloo Poets, 1989); Undark (Peterloo Poets, 1995); Grain (Picador, 2009) and The Golden Mean (Picador, 2015), poems from his uncollected works and from mira, a limited edition pamphlet published by artist and poet Maria Isakiva Bennett. This much anticipated book features poems that are decidedly of themselves – mature, elegiac, wise but without being arch, replete with settled and unsettling truths.
The poems in the first section of the book are from Glenday’s earliest collection The Apple Ghost. The opening poem ‘The Rise of Icarus’ plays on the myth in the telling of a father and son’s early relationship.
My father brought a German flying
helmet home form the war. The summer I started
school I wore it constantly
(‘The Rise of Icarus’)
This pilot’s helmet acts as a buffer against the son hearing or heeding his father’s guidance. The speaker tells of his dream where he ‘pedalled a tiny plane/across our lawn; the tin propeller hoisted/me through the angled joists of air’, whilst beneath him, his father issued warnings he could not hear. ‘So I watched him waving upwards soundlessly//as the swelling sun beat down upon my wings.’ Too often it is in retrospect that we consider our parents’ wisdom, counselling us not to fly too close to the sun, yet Icarus’ father also advised his son against flying too low, lest the sea choke his wings. Glenday, who also worked as a psychiatric nurse, would be aware that the Icarus story is used in a therapeutic context to illustrate the euphoric highs and depressive lows in some psychiatric disorders.
In his poems, Glenday seeks to describe that insistent, indefinable element that begets all living things. In so doing, he concerns himself with absences - of meaning, of light, of place, of loved ones long gone. ‘Concerning the Atoms of the Soul’, (from Undark) tackles the puzzle, the enormity of existence. In five short verses, Glenday couples the notion that we consist of atoms ‘falling towards the centre//of whatever everything is’, with the transcendent belief that atoms, having hooks, ‘is why in early love, we sometimes/feel the tug of the heart snapping against another’s heart’, in order to prepare for his conclusion that the atoms of the soul are ‘perfect spheres’ with
no means of holding on to the world
or perhaps no need for holding on,
and so they fall through our lives catching
against nothing, like perfect rain
(‘Concerning the Atoms of the Soul’)
Another striking example of how Glenday describes the ineffable, by describing what defines it, is to be found in his poem ‘A Difficult Colour’ (from The Apple Ghost). In eleven lines, Glenday creates a scene that produces motion, stillness, sights and smells, and understanding. After ‘you have drawn/the boat up on the shingle for the night’, the difficult colour is imagined not by looking at the scene ‘on the fall hill’ but by watching the invented scene, distorted a second time, trembling in the reflections in the water. Perhaps appreciating that it is in fact ambiance the narrator is trying to describe, you find yourself agreeing, yes, ‘it’s that sort of colour’.
‘Yesterday’s Noise’ is another haunting description of absence. This poem is in the final section of the book, as part of the Uncollected Poems, and first appeared as a filmpoem by Alaistair Cook. It refers obliquely to the controversial history of the Greenock Sugar Sheds at Inverclyde.
Now, when you eyes settle to the dark in here, you’ll see better:
look, she’s more of an interference with the light than ghost
(‘Yesterday’s Noise’)
The depth and solemnity of much of this work is balanced by a number of humourous poems; droll, but still with a bit of a bite. ‘Tin’ (from Grain) is one such example. This poem is reminiscent of Carol Ann Duffy’s poem ‘Valentine’
When you asked me for a love poem,
(another love poem) my thoughts
were immediately drawn to the early days
of the food canning industry –
(‘Tin’)
The epigraph to this poem reads ‘(the can opener was invented forty-eight/years after the tin can)’.
Though always sparing and restrained, Glenday’s language is like sonar; returning an echo after plumbing the depths. ‘Amber’ (from The Golden Meani) is an exquisitely delicate poem, even if the subject matter is on the hardening of resolve and un-forgiveness. Using amber as a metaphor for the wound hurt brings, is masterful.
Some wounds weep precious through the generations.
They glaze and harden, heal themselves into history.
What was mere sap matures like blood in air to darken
and burnish. To change into something useful, almost.
(‘Amber’)
Glenday’s poems have a quiet assuredness, his use of pronouns creates a conversational tone, that never raises its voice to rage or rant at the reader. Each poem is a scrutiny, that adds, I feel, to one’s understanding, or lack thereof, of the world, and enriches the world they seek to explain.
The final poem in the book, ‘For My Wife, Reading in Bed’, is a love poem to his wife Erika, and is as enigmatic as any other poem in the Selected.
What else do we have but words and their absences
to bind and unfasten the knotwork of the heart;
to remind us how mutual and alone we are, how tiny
and insignificant?
(‘For My Wife, Reading in Bed’)
John Glenday’s Selected Poems represents a body of work by one of the finest lyric poets writing today. His poems will, as they weigh upon the edges of language and silence in poetry, stand as exemplars of the form; his poems are beautiful, curious, mysterious things.
The poems in the first section of the book are from Glenday’s earliest collection The Apple Ghost. The opening poem ‘The Rise of Icarus’ plays on the myth in the telling of a father and son’s early relationship.
My father brought a German flying
helmet home form the war. The summer I started
school I wore it constantly
(‘The Rise of Icarus’)
This pilot’s helmet acts as a buffer against the son hearing or heeding his father’s guidance. The speaker tells of his dream where he ‘pedalled a tiny plane/across our lawn; the tin propeller hoisted/me through the angled joists of air’, whilst beneath him, his father issued warnings he could not hear. ‘So I watched him waving upwards soundlessly//as the swelling sun beat down upon my wings.’ Too often it is in retrospect that we consider our parents’ wisdom, counselling us not to fly too close to the sun, yet Icarus’ father also advised his son against flying too low, lest the sea choke his wings. Glenday, who also worked as a psychiatric nurse, would be aware that the Icarus story is used in a therapeutic context to illustrate the euphoric highs and depressive lows in some psychiatric disorders.
In his poems, Glenday seeks to describe that insistent, indefinable element that begets all living things. In so doing, he concerns himself with absences - of meaning, of light, of place, of loved ones long gone. ‘Concerning the Atoms of the Soul’, (from Undark) tackles the puzzle, the enormity of existence. In five short verses, Glenday couples the notion that we consist of atoms ‘falling towards the centre//of whatever everything is’, with the transcendent belief that atoms, having hooks, ‘is why in early love, we sometimes/feel the tug of the heart snapping against another’s heart’, in order to prepare for his conclusion that the atoms of the soul are ‘perfect spheres’ with
no means of holding on to the world
or perhaps no need for holding on,
and so they fall through our lives catching
against nothing, like perfect rain
(‘Concerning the Atoms of the Soul’)
Another striking example of how Glenday describes the ineffable, by describing what defines it, is to be found in his poem ‘A Difficult Colour’ (from The Apple Ghost). In eleven lines, Glenday creates a scene that produces motion, stillness, sights and smells, and understanding. After ‘you have drawn/the boat up on the shingle for the night’, the difficult colour is imagined not by looking at the scene ‘on the fall hill’ but by watching the invented scene, distorted a second time, trembling in the reflections in the water. Perhaps appreciating that it is in fact ambiance the narrator is trying to describe, you find yourself agreeing, yes, ‘it’s that sort of colour’.
‘Yesterday’s Noise’ is another haunting description of absence. This poem is in the final section of the book, as part of the Uncollected Poems, and first appeared as a filmpoem by Alaistair Cook. It refers obliquely to the controversial history of the Greenock Sugar Sheds at Inverclyde.
Now, when you eyes settle to the dark in here, you’ll see better:
look, she’s more of an interference with the light than ghost
(‘Yesterday’s Noise’)
The depth and solemnity of much of this work is balanced by a number of humourous poems; droll, but still with a bit of a bite. ‘Tin’ (from Grain) is one such example. This poem is reminiscent of Carol Ann Duffy’s poem ‘Valentine’
When you asked me for a love poem,
(another love poem) my thoughts
were immediately drawn to the early days
of the food canning industry –
(‘Tin’)
The epigraph to this poem reads ‘(the can opener was invented forty-eight/years after the tin can)’.
Though always sparing and restrained, Glenday’s language is like sonar; returning an echo after plumbing the depths. ‘Amber’ (from The Golden Meani) is an exquisitely delicate poem, even if the subject matter is on the hardening of resolve and un-forgiveness. Using amber as a metaphor for the wound hurt brings, is masterful.
Some wounds weep precious through the generations.
They glaze and harden, heal themselves into history.
What was mere sap matures like blood in air to darken
and burnish. To change into something useful, almost.
(‘Amber’)
Glenday’s poems have a quiet assuredness, his use of pronouns creates a conversational tone, that never raises its voice to rage or rant at the reader. Each poem is a scrutiny, that adds, I feel, to one’s understanding, or lack thereof, of the world, and enriches the world they seek to explain.
The final poem in the book, ‘For My Wife, Reading in Bed’, is a love poem to his wife Erika, and is as enigmatic as any other poem in the Selected.
What else do we have but words and their absences
to bind and unfasten the knotwork of the heart;
to remind us how mutual and alone we are, how tiny
and insignificant?
(‘For My Wife, Reading in Bed’)
John Glenday’s Selected Poems represents a body of work by one of the finest lyric poets writing today. His poems will, as they weigh upon the edges of language and silence in poetry, stand as exemplars of the form; his poems are beautiful, curious, mysterious things.
The reviewer:
Eleanor Hooker holds an MPhil (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin. She has published two collections with Dedalus Press, The Shadow Owner’s Companion (2012) shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award for Best First Irish Collection, and A Tug of Blue (2016). Her third collection plus two chapbooks are due for publication in 2021. Her poems have appeared in literary journals worldwide. Eleanor’s poem ‘Through the Ears of a Fish’ (Poetry magazine), is shortlisted for Listowel Writers’ Week, Irish Poem of the Year 2020. Eleanor is a helm and Press Officer for Lough Derg RNLI Lifeboat. She is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London.
Eleanor Hooker holds an MPhil (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin. She has published two collections with Dedalus Press, The Shadow Owner’s Companion (2012) shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award for Best First Irish Collection, and A Tug of Blue (2016). Her third collection plus two chapbooks are due for publication in 2021. Her poems have appeared in literary journals worldwide. Eleanor’s poem ‘Through the Ears of a Fish’ (Poetry magazine), is shortlisted for Listowel Writers’ Week, Irish Poem of the Year 2020. Eleanor is a helm and Press Officer for Lough Derg RNLI Lifeboat. She is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London.
