Regular readers of this blog will know that its intention is to promote debut poets. Sometimes, however, I come across a collection that is so impressive, so beautifully written, so engaging, that I cannot resist the urge to share my excitement and pleasure. Hence today I am reviewing Matthew Stewart’s impressive, well-received second collection Whatever you do, just don’t’ (Happenstance Press, 2023). It consists of four parts: Británico, Starting Eleven, Family Matters and Retracing Steps. Linking them are the notions of change, adjustment and belonging.
In the first section the poems focus on life in Spain. The poet has moved his family permanently to a country where life is very different. He has to learn a different way of living, a different way of being: ‘You’ve taught me to sip a cafe solo, / to let its bitterness seep through my gums/ and mark the end of our tapas and wine,/ just as you’ve taught me to relish silence/ in the slow, shared sliding by of minutes’ (Los Domingos). The pace is slower, the verb ‘relish’ suggesting something satisfying and fulfilling. Yet the reference to ‘bitterness’ creates a tension in the stanza, a tension that is developed in the poem that follows, Vámonos. Here we see the frustrations of living in a community where there is a lack of urgency, that allows ‘the minute hand’ to wander past the ‘scheduled time for departure’ and that culminates in the annoyance at ‘another Sunday slamming shut.’
Such a change in lifestyle necessitates adjustments which are not easy. In Calor we find the poet struggling to tolerate the intense, hostile heat (‘slaps of sunlight’); in Rolling my ‘r’s we see him trying to perfect his Spanish pronunciation, yet ‘falling short of the perfect roll’; in Driving Lesson he struggles to get used to a right-hand drive car, his hand banging against the car door as he reaches for the gear stick, ‘forgetting which country’ he is in. This process is perhaps symbolised in the poem Renovation Project which describes the refurbishment of their home. It involves ‘stripping’ back the flaky plaster, the discovery of a ‘blocked-up side entrance’, and giving the building a new appearance and a new life: ‘the building’s lost stories//finding a voice again,/ blending old plots with new.’ The construction of a new life in Spain is an act of discovery of how to blend two ways of life (‘blending old plots with new’), but it also involves gutting the old life in order to move on. As a consequence we find in this section a sense of loss. In Carnet de Conducir Stewart talks of ‘// two lives// poised for decades/ between countries// now reduced to one.’ With a poet, so precise in his use of language, the deployment of the verb, ‘reduced’ is significant, and the spacing in the poem gives additional emphasis to the idea that something has been lost in the move. This something it would appear in David is a sense of belonging. The poem takes the form of an apology to his son. Stewart describes how he had ‘agonised’ over choosing a name for him. He settled on David because he thought it would make him a ‘native of both countries’. However, ‘Instead,’ he confesses, ‘you’ve ended up being labelled English in Spain and Spanish in England,/ neither of us belonging anywhere.’
The second section consists of a sequence of twelve poems celebrating the players and supporters of Aldershot Football Club. The first eleven are pen-portraits of players. As he describes them parallels emerge between the experiences of the footballers and the poet: all are engaged in trying to find where they belong. For example, players such as Tony Lange, Dale Banton, Ian McDonald move away from Aldershot to become members of different, more prestigious teams. Adjusting, however, is problematic: none of them find exactly what they are looking for: Tony Lange plays ‘the first three games’ for Wolves, ‘making consecutive clangers,/ then ‘spends three seasons on their bench’; Dale Banton six years after being picked up by York, finds himself back at Aldershot, but this time ‘his legs have gone’; and Ian McDonald ‘smashed his ankle in the second game/ after Shankly signed him for Liverpool.’ Though the team changes over time the club endures, bringing together spectators, such as Stewart, and making them feel part of something. Throughout this sequence we find repeated use of the pronouns ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’: Paul Shrub is ‘One of us.; Tony Lange ‘prowls our goalmouth’; ‘We love’ Ian McDonald’s ‘knack for bringing long punts down/ from shoulder height and playing passes blind.’ This creates a sense of a community that is developed and vividly realised in the poem that concludes this section, The Twelfth Man. In the final stanzathere is a sense of a common identity in the shared euphoria when ‘all of us erupt’ as a goal is scored.
In the third and fourth sections, as their titles suggest, Family Matters and Retracing Steps, Stewart reflects upon his roots in the UK and their impact upon him: namely his family and the places where he formerly lived. The strength of family bonds and their influence are plain to see. In Full Circle he is surprised to find himself ‘singing the same jingles/ and terrace chants’ as his father, ‘imitating his tone, adopting his cadence.’ He is in some way becoming his father without realising it. In Touch-Typing he describes his mother at the kitchen table ‘in a secretarial stance,/ shoulders spirit-level straight’ as ‘her fingers danced to rhythms/ of rattles and pings’. There is an elegance and beauty here in the way he describes her. His love for her is clear, feelings that are clearly reciprocated for he tells us that when he ‘upped and left for uni,/ her routines were dismantled’ . When he leaves the family home. life changes for her: she is lost and struggles to adapt and find her place in a changing world. As we saw in David belonging means we cannot act independently, our actions have implications for others.
In Heading for the Airport, this closeness, the poet admits is rather taken for granted. The poem tells of the last time he saw his mother alive and this is Stewart at the height of his powers: direct, accessible, resonant and profoundly moving. Anxious about the late arrival of his taxi and the danger of missing his flight, the poet fails to notice the frailty of his mother. The signs are there that she is in ill-health in her ghostly or saintly appearance as she looks down on him as he gets in the taxi (‘your dressing-gowned silhouette/ hovering on the balcony/ with a halo of wispy hair.’). Yet he is so wrapped up in the urgency of the moment and his desire to get to Spain, he is oblivious to the fact, and is driven off forgetting their ‘goodbye wave’. The poet’s grief and regret are palpable when he realises the significance of this moment: ‘If only/ that cab had left me behind,/ longing for Spain. No way to know/ I’d never see you alive again.’
Touch-Typing and Heading for the Airport remind us that nothing is forever and that grief is an inevitable consequence of close family bonds, of belonging. In ‘The Aristocrat of Pipe Tobacco’ Stewart shows how we move on, adapting to new circumstances, symbolised in his description of the changing usage of his grandfather’s old tobacco tin, an heirloom passed on from generation to generation within his family. Whilst the original use was to store tobacco, Stewart’s father used it to contain ‘discarded Allen keys,/ rigid lumps of Blu Tack, dried out biros’, and he now uses it to store ‘memory sticks’. No doubt his son, David who is ‘eyeing it up already’ will have his own use for this treasured possession. Each generation finds its own way forward.
It’s no coincidence that Stewart chooses to keep memory sticks in the tin. In doing so he would appear to be directing us towards the role of memory in a changing world: memories need to be ‘stored’, preserved, for they keep the past alive as he shows in the final section of the collection. Recalling his wedding day, his son at the river side, face and fingers covered in melted ice cream, and his mother and father queuing at their local shop clearly gives him pleasure. Yet such memories also prompt him to compare the present with the past. When he does, he discovers his experiences are not exceptional. Much is basically similar today: any differences are largely cosmetic. For example, in Shortheath Road he recognises ‘The fresh elderly’ who ‘form a neat queue,/ updated versions of my Mum and Dad/ Damart trousers, Dannimacs, sturdy shoes.’ There is continuity, the shared experiences of generations, but perceptions change. Brexit, for example, alters the way he is seen by others of his former community. Stewart’s passport says he is British, yet his intonation and gestures may lead others to conclude he is a foreigner and a threat (‘Are you afraid of me?’, Foreigner). This idea is developed in the poem concluding the collection, Sussex by the Sea. He returns to a beach he visited 42 years before. He now sees it as a place of decay and decline: the pubs are boarded up, street signs graffiti-ed, the prom is crumbling into the foreshore. There is a sense of alienation in the description of the current landscape that contrasts with the more positive childhood memory, prompting him to reflect: ‘How much has/ really changed? How much have I?’ The questions are left unresolved. They are universal questions that reverberate long after we have put the collection down.
When reading Whatever you do, just don’t. I was reminded of Adrian’s Mitchell’s assertion that ‘Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.’ Stewart’s collection shows what can be achieved when a poet doesn’t ignore most people: when a poet engages with universal concerns in poems that are apparently artless yet finely crafted, in poems that are ambitious yet always accessible, relatable and meaningful. There is no doubt that this is a very special collection that left me envious of the talent that produced it.
Matthew Stewart works in the Spanish wine trade and lives between Extremadura and West Sussex. His second full collection, Whatever You Do, Just Don’t, has recently been chosen by the Poetry Society as one of their Books of the Year.”
Whatever You Do, Just Don’t is available for purchase at the HappenStance Press website via the following link:
Nigel Kent - Poet and Reviewer 