Airports and other wasted days Kevin Ireland (Hazard Press, 2007) 70pp, ISBN 978-1-877393-34-1

Bernard Gadd

This is a collection of light and often chatty poems on more or less any topic that crosses the writer's mind. It's an old fashioned looking cover, and the lines of most poems are tidily penned into regular stanzas. The language is modernist - relaxed but not colloquial. The first section is the title section and includes some observations which any traveler can relate to:

Airports are trick mirrors. You step through
and discover yourself in another airport -

               (The true alternative to airports)

Or about travel brochures:
Yet the word that really glues my jaws
is exotic

            (Air Exotica)

Although sometimes:

It cannot be believed. Sets like this
are pure show business.

               (Kennedy Airport)

The rest of the book is on a huge range of topics, though not much to do with the sub-title's ‘wasted days'. Ireland says it himself:

 

This is the thirteenth poem,
I have written since I set out
on a new Journey to nowhere

in particular.

               (A thirteenth poem)

Among poems I enjoyed were ‘Starting the day':

You start today with a declaration.
It is something the birds
shall always believe in.
...
I am new to this thing.
My hands cling to the wind.
I am blown away.

and ‘This is Goodbye'

The man with the white glove
holds the corner of a handkerchief
at one eye.
 
A grain of dust has blinded him.
He is furious that we will think
he is going to cry.

There are several on poetry or poets, including ‘A literary confession':

painting is obviously for rough diamonds,
and writing is for gentlefolks.

 

There is only this curious literary problem
of where the smells keep coming form.
And the sordid bloodstains on the carpet.
And the sinister laughter. Sometimes, after
a bout of writing, I don't feel at all well.

But further into the collection there is a sense that the language is becoming garrulous;

We are all nourished by force-fed slabs
of rant and bluster buttered with
 
verbal goo and gutturals.

               (Much talk)

 

and a feeling of writing being done to fill up pages to make a publishable collection. But it picks up at the end, and concludes light-heartedly with blokes swapping trade secrets till the poet confessed "and they had not reckoned on anyone/taking on a dirty dangerous job like that".

 

 

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