THIS BEING EDEN by Roger Caldwell,
63pp, £7.95, Peterloo
DON MARCELINO’S DAUGHTER by Tim Cunningham,
68pp, £7.95, Peterloo
THE ECHO AND THE BREATH by Gary Bills,
66pp, £7.95, Peterloo Poets, The Old Chapel, Sand Lane, Calstock, Cornwall PL18 9QX

In their different ways these three volumes have a feel of maturity about their author’s work, but a maturity that, for whatever reason, has found it hard to attain first collection status earlier. That Peterloo has now picked them up is commendable in doing what is the first duty of any poetry publisher, namely to give new poets a proper public hearing, provided the quality is there.

Of the three poets, Roger Caldwell is most a poet of ideas – doubtless as a consequence of being, perhaps, the first poet ever to have been driven out of the arms of the Muse and into the more rarified world of philosophy. And for the most extraordinary of reasons, which is tantalisingly explained on the book’s cover. The volume itself opens with an almost mellifluous series of couplets in which Adam answers God back, point for point, about the expulsion from Eden. A good poem. I enjoyed many of the others, like ‘Leaving for Lambarene’ about Albert Schweitzer, for their unconventional ‘take’ on their various subjects. While feeling – that ultimate litmus test of any true poem – gets round the ideas from time to time in a poem like ‘To Joe, from Another Country’: ‘Joe, / you turned aside enquiries with a joke, / met death midday with an unfinished glass’ and [we] ‘in glaring sun, go out to join the slow cortége / to a place you would not grant existed.’

Tim Cunningham is one of those Irishmen who can move easily from wit to feeling. ‘Errata’ has affinities with Roger Caldwell’s poetry of ideas, but is funnier:

On the evening of the seventh day
Some ass sat on the button and annihilated
Man. God winced a little having told
The press this guy was made in His own image.

But while wit, satire and irony demand a due authorial distancing to be effective, a greater tact still is needed to convey movingly that which you feel emotionally about. In two poems that centre on the poet’s father, ‘The Corbally Plot’ and, especially, ‘Hallowe’en’ human warmth is liberated:

My father’s absence was always there
At Christmas, birthdays and hallowe’en
. . . how would Leonardo paint
A candle hurting for its flame?

Gary Bills is trailed in his blurb as something of a haiku expert and known for ‘his minimalist poems’. And while there are some real ‘shorties’ in the book, including the exquisite ‘Winter Blues’: I am / not sad – / my tears / are snowflakes / melting on a lash,’, his volume contains the longest piece of any of the three poets. It is called ‘Fantasia on “The Dream of the Rood”’ which, actually, if my memory is not too much at fault, seems a pretty good translation of the Dream itself.

Frequently the most studiedly formal of the poets, Bills goes in for everything from ballads to odes. There is a very powerful ‘Ode to Lorca’, but I will conclude this brief survey of three new voices by quoting in full his homage to an even greater poet because it shows Bills’ formal strength and is a good example of the traditional way he organises his material:

SHAKESPEARE

There is an antique statue in this wood
Which comes to life at daybreak, turning rhymes
Of such unearthly grace that men go mad,
The wise maintain, to hear this beauty whispered.

For Nature once so loved a poet’s words
That he was born again, though born of rock,
And given space, as long as stone can weather,
To greet the timid sun with charming lines.

Denied a lasting death, his mind rebelled
And tumbled out an upstart truth, with odd
Expressions, mocking crippled fantasies;
Until the wind and rain dissolved his eyes.

Bees stumble from his lips, and whistling feathers
Brush his face at night. He does not flinch,
But names the universal from his passion,
And finds a humbler voice, to shout at God.

Proof-reading in the books is not perfect; and some might feel that the overall presentation of the volumes is a little dull. But let not such quibbles distract from the fact of three readable first collections.