The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile, by Alice Oswald

Alice Oswald: successful British poet. Her most recent collection is 'A Sleepwalk on the Severn', I think published earlier this year or late 2010. Gap-Stone Stile was her first collection, from years ago. I know she's a well-respected poet but this was the first of her work I have read.

I quite enjoyed it actually. Some of the stuff just didn't do it for me - some of the Sea Sonnets, for example, to my poetic ear just didn't 'sing', and there were aspects of certain poems that irritated me a little - some just didn't ring true, sounded a bit pretentious. But in all I really liked the collection and I can understand why Oswald is as well-respected as she is. I'm sure her later collections are much more fully-formed.

My favourite poems were The Melon Grower, about a man who neglects his family as he cares for his melon plants (I have grown melons myself, and became quite attached to them, so I could sympathise with his predicament!), one about owls in which there was the lovely line 'an owl about the size of a vicar' - loved it. That line really stood out for me, the incongruity of its humour in a poem with a more serious tone - and a couple of poems addressed to the only-just tolerated nextdoor neighbour. For me it was the flashes of humour in the collection, and the human stories that shone, rather than the soliloquising about water and gardens and nature, which is what Oswald is particularly known for. No - those weren't bad, but they didn't move me. Personally, I feel that a nature poem has to absolutely convey a sense of sheer wonder, and the ones in this collection didn't communicate that to me. However, Oswald's softly-spoken but sharp observations of humanity were brilliant.

At the end of the collection is a long poem about three men from the village of Gotham who go to try and catch the moon in a net (and its title is similarly self-explanatory). Strange. Some of the language was interesting, but it didn't speak to me. The poet's message or whatever it was she wanted to communicate went over my head. It seemed to be long and pretentious for the sake of being long and pretentious, and mostly lacked Oswald's otherwise frequent and clever use of half-rhyme. Didn't get it, although I found the explanation of the ideas behind the poem very entertaining and interesting, and intend to research Gotham - and its strange antic disposition - a little further.

In all, an interesting collection, but one that I sometimes found too serious, and occasionally a little obscure and pretentious. However, there were some lovely lyrical lines and the flashes of human lives and humour were a joy to read. I will read this collection again at some point, and I definitely want to read some of Alice Oswald's later works. A 5 or 6 out of 10 for me, but an intriguing and encouraging one.