Random Self and Other Poems is the third collection from the Bedfordshire poet Paul Eric Howlett, and follows his two previous collections, The Bedfordshire Boy and OneBody and Other Poems, both also with Waterloo Press. One of the true inheritors of the Geoffrey Hill tradition – and with lyrics to rival the master – the poems here retain a firm home-base in the author’s home county yet are characteristically broad in their historical scope. Alongside the core of this haunting collection – a meditation on selfhood following a near fatal heart attack – are ‘list poems’ which address such subjects as White and Silence, poems of love, a selection of witty aperçus, as well as the autobiographical couplets of ‘Seven Ways to View the Poet’.

As ever, the question being asked is the connection between experience and memory, and the ability of the poet to penetrate to the truth of it all. This is poetry at the edge of perception – spare, lean, and spikier than before.

The whole collection is a further demonstration of the evolution of the poet’s style and deserves a wide readership.

MANSHEAD HISTORY

Dew on dew

sun details warning to / the hare

plashes / light running flew

element into air

Pool to pool

reserves / a nineteenth-century

parish of itself / rule

our partial livery

Brook in brook

mud-isle mallard / reed bayonets

riddle No Man’s Land / soak

soil sprained side-effects

Stream by stream

grey greensand ideas / gem-snatch

raw men cast zzt zzt / dream

a slower treatment catch

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Cover image – with thanks and kind permissions, licenced from Tate Images:

Title: In the Hold

Date: c.1913-14