The word 'spiritual', on the blurb of William Oxley's new collection, Sunlight in a Champagne Glass, initially made me uneasy. However, as I read through this collection and Danielle Hope's Giraffe Under a Grey Sky, I began to feel that 'spiritual' might describe both books.
Perhaps Oxley's descriptions of the Devonshire landscape where he lives most successfully link reflection to observation. In an implicit manifesto for his kind of spirituality, he ends one poem: 'Noticing may not be believing, but it's a start'. The poem's strength of detail – 'papery yachts/that cross the horizon like pop-up ducks' is offset by the rather vague 'secret life of which all are a part'. The perennial problem for any poet attempting to articulate spiritual insight is that the ineffable becomes inane or banal. I sometimes wished that Oxley had allowed the perception to speak for itself and resisted explanation.
The moment of epiphany is more successfully presented in 'Nude Man Running', despite some odd grammar in the last line of the first stanza.
Nevertheless, the poet's struggle for truth shines through all his poems. Being a full-time poet can be difficult to justify, as Oxley recognises in the poem 'So you write poetry?' The slightly superior tone is reflected in the last stanza: 'In fact, it's a waste of time and that's harmful for time's money and time's life and neither should be wasted,' he concluded turning on the television.
While agreeing that we need time to notice and to reflect on what we notice whether pursuing spirituality or poetry, I dislike the notion that poetry and spirituality are the privilege of the 'poetical classes'.
The poet addresses this issue in 'The Man from Somerset' when he meets a genuine worker, a shoepacker and ex-miner with a strong local burr. There is an exchange of conversation but not a meeting of minds; when the poet discloses his occupation it brings 'a quick end to [their] talk', but leaves him feeling that the encounter 'somehow mattered'.
There are some moving poems about the poet's father. I particularly liked 'Memory, Snowflakes' and also 'The Unwinding Room', from a sequence of poems about rooms. This sequence is rich with noticing though again there is sometimes too much striving after meaningfulness. This substantial collection from a prolific poet has some very good poems but they risk being overwhelmed by numbers.
Danielle Hope is also a poet who notices, combining observation with humanity and an eye for social injustice. She does not need to explain what she sees; sensual details bring us heightened awareness and understanding. 'Lincoln's Inn Fields' contrasts spring and an imposing location, 'Evening sun and cherry blossom pattern pavements/ inside and outside Law Court doors', with the shabby poverty of the homeless. The poet describes sound, 'plastic bags rustling', and smells, 'hot spiced soup mingled with after-rain-damp and tired human sweat'. The openness of her sensibility allows Danielle Hope to move between the social and the personal, urban and natural without forfeiting our trust. She sometimes falters when attempting humour, whether political satire or the surreally comical. 'For Aneurin Bevan', which deplores what is happening in the NHS, begins as a parody of Wordsworth's sonnet 'Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour' but Hope's sonnet disintegrates, not even managing to get to line 14. The form reinforces the content but is not entirely convincing. The title poem, about a surreal giraffe, is a touch whimsical. However, I was increasingly impressed by the Mrs Uomo poems. Mrs Uomo allows the poet to explore the strangeness of the world, where the Hadron Collider coexists with fruit shortcake and the individual struggles against bureaucracy to retain her dreams. The poems are so crammed with physical and tactile detail that Mrs Uomo becomes real:
The sky is like the inside of Mrs Uomo's blue eggshell mixing bowl veined with the thin white cracks of aeroplane trails already fading.
The last poem in the sequence where Mrs Uomo discovers Monopoly and is corrupted by capitalism reflects Hope's political framework within which more personal poems find their place.
Finally, 'The Heart' acknowledges the scientific and the material but declares that it is not enough. The whole poem is printed below. If the concept of a 'spiritual poetry for our time' has any meaning, start here.
Kathleen McPhilemy teaches English at Oxford FE College. Her latest poetry collection is The Lion in the Forest (Katabasis, London 2004).
Books under review: Sunlight in a Champagne Glass by William Oxley, Rockingham Press (Ware 2009), 112 pages, £7.99, ISBN: 9781904851295; Giraffe under a Grey Sky by Danielle Hope, Rockingham Press (Ware 2009), 64 pages, £7.99, ISBN 9781904851349.