Praise and Poems

This new version of Nicholas Johnson’s Cleave is notable for its apposition of the darknesses of modern rural life with a quality of light, that springs from a deep interest in people and a respect for the healing power of love. The structure is almost musical. I for one am reminded of the quirkiness of a Havergal Brian symphony, or indeed Shostakovich.
Fred Beake

On Cleave, First Edition (etruscan books, 2002)

These poems cut through the world of political expediency with a sure understanding of the pragmatics of destruction. They also hold close a register of loss which is all the more forceful for being embedded in a known world.
Ian Brinton

Cleave is a large scale serious work with well-advised variety for such a major undertaking. The tone is about right – hard always in the case of bad things
Bill Griffiths

Cleave

All March day the birds do sing
as if sauterelles on a zither
not as if and neither like
for they’ve become so.
Wind unveils a sediment
the white in smoke signifies flesh
maketh
fields appear flatter
Saline in
the cockerel water

the pheasant
left pecking.

Contiguous
Fencing
the motif birds of spring that make the song