I need to start by apologising for my lack of proper critical language. I did do A level English and you’d think, being a poet myself, that I would be au fait with the necessary words to describe prosody (that’s one I googled) but my relationship with poetry is on an emotional level and my responses to it tend to be on that foot (ooh, another one). To summarise, I think I spent  English lessons passing notes to my mate Helen and ogling Wayne Gilmartin, who loved the Smiths and was ‘double fit’.

Norman’s most recent collection hit me like a thwack from  a cycle socket set. I loved his last collection ‘Stinging the Sepia’ and was dead chuffed to be asked to review this, so I amiably opened the book and sat curled up to enjoy. I did enjoy it, but there was a nagging sense of not just being able to enjoy it but formulate some kind of cerebral discussion on ‘why?’ too. In the end it was easy, this collection is a joy to read. I love the subject matter, being an outdoorsy kinda person myself, though I am way more sedentary than Norman and prefer to stroll slowly round the countryside having lots of fag-breaks and sits down where he tears around on 2 wheels or hangs off bits of rope, it was great therefore to get a different perspective, the dramatic nature of Norman’s relationship with Nature is faster paced, more sharp-edged and altogether more dangerous than mine. This shows.

Although the collection is symbiotically intertwined with nature and the outdoors and beautiful landscapes, it is far from flowery. The poems have a natural masculine edge to them, Norman’s scientific background shines through in his observations and I admire the meaty nature of the poetry. This is visceral not fluffy stuff. He doesn’t shy away from the big issues, God is there, beauty is there, humour in bucketloads ‘The Right Simile’, ‘Domestic Insulation’ and ‘(I’ve got) Norwegian Wood’ but all dealt with in fine style, laugh out loud funny but still delicate.

Norman’s collection is beautiful to look at and simply hold, the cover picture is witty and the sub-headings informative and apt. I am a lazy reader and often find when reading poetry by ‘clever’ people, I need a ‘Duffer’s Guide to Intelligent References’ beside me, Norman does make reference to a couple of people I hadn’t ‘met’ before: Eratosthenes and Democritus, but the eponymous poems in which they appear were startlingly easy to digest and I didn’t find that off-putting. This is also where the book shows its fine craftsmanship, the accompanying images are appropriate and striking and add to the richness of the reading experience and the footnotes and explanations are never bready doorsteps to lie heavy on the stomach but amuses bouches to add flavour and complement the wordy main course.

 What shines through this collection is the gentle but persistent ‘Green’ theme going on, this is obvious given Norman’s love of the outdoors, I suppose, but there’s a cyclic (if you’ll excuse the pun) theme running through the whole, whether he is dealing with Memory, Relationships or  Landscape, the theme keeps popping up. One of the most obvious ways he expresses this is in the recurring theme of eating. In ‘Wormfood’, the whole of life is here, nature red in tooth and claw observed and expressed in the digestive act, this appears also in ‘Starlings’ where although a similar image is used, that of disappearing, being consumed, it is less terrifying and terminal than merely cyclic and natural.

Food as fuel comes into play within other poems, the ecological theme implicit in the School commissioned environmental sonnets, on the descriptive pieces on cycling, recycling- fuel-food and even in his very touching ‘My Stake in the 23^rd Century’, ‘All flesh is grass,/All this will pass’

The imagery in this collection is solid but beautiful, you really feel the heft of these poems, he applies clever word play to great effect…’ Naming of Parts’, the landscape is echoed in ‘To His Mistress, Blencathra, Going to Bed’ by using styles, devices and words both ancient and timeless. Physicality comes into the poetry on a number of occasions too, but deftly done, in ‘Ice Geese’ two images in particular made me breathless,

‘the indigo my eiderdown/and creak of larch my lullaby…’

And ‘a chevronned honk…wedged the autumn dusk ajar’

In imbuing nature with a solid physical presence, Norman shifts the reader’s perception gently but indelibly as also in this wonderful line from ‘Derwent Skater’

‘Locked in jigsaw-morticed packs…’

That’s not to imply that the poetry is turgid, though very solid, it employs music, the language is liquid, it falls and scurries, it plays with the reader, whether rhymed or not.

It is a difficult thing to attempt to writ small the vastness of Landscape, Relationships, The Circle of Life but Norman manages this beautifully, subtly and strongly in this collection, I was aware of a sleight of hand throughout the book, a gentle but firm will managing to change my perceptions, done not at all manipulatively but joyously, as it is Norman’s own joyful engagement with his subject matter which shines out of every line, I smiled broadly at the most beautiful idea found in the section Among Ancient Stones; along with the personification and anthropomorphism (does this apply to minerals?) of the landscape, (notably beautiful Blen Cathra), that the Castlerigg Stones (which is one of my favourite places on earth) are a mimic of the mountain landscape behind them. The poet says this is too beautiful an idea to be true, but somehow, gently and imperceptibly, he makes the reader believe it is the case…

 To end then, I arrived at the back of the book replete as after a well made meal. This collection is Meat and Drink, and so full of real, authentic flavours, warmly wrought that it will satisfy any palette, fill you with music, emotion, beauty. Hopefully we’ll all have our appetites back ready for next year’s collection.

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Norman Hadley is a poet from Garstang who also dabbles in prose. He has completed three and a half poetry collections, one of them being both diminutive and collaborative. The most recent, full-sized collection is “A Whoop Above the Dust”, September 2010, available here.

When things refuse to rhyme, he writes prose – usually short, but including a couple of novel-length stories, The Lucky Krab and The Last Munro - the latter for children.

He is not yet quite reconciled to the fact that the quickest way to the truth is to make stuff up. But he’s slowly getting there.

In his day job, he designs heavy-duty diesel engines for ships and trains. The engines are considerably larger than the poems.

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Rachel McGladdery is a performance poet based in rural Lancs with her 4 children and 2 and a half cats.. She has performed at many North West venues during the 2 years she has been performing and last year won the NXNW Slam and The Liverpool Lennon competition. She has poetry published at the pygmy giant, in Word Soup Year One, The Mental Arts Virus, Preston is my Paris Literary edition, Dragonheart press Winter Poetry and When you Speak to me of Love, a Forward press anthology. She was Poetry Kit’s featured poet #72 in the series Caught In The Net and has a regular monthly poetry slot in MIF magazine and no that’s not a typo, it stands for Made In Fleetwood!

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