Skip to main content

Review ~ Paul Chambers

This Single Thread
Paul Chambers

£10 available from the author and Alba Publishing 

things I have witnessed/ but failed to notice until/ this moment, here, now


I have seen them in the orchard’s long grass – contour, flight, down – from magpies or wood pigeons, and once, the tawny remains of a buzzard. I have slipped them in my pocket or frozen them in a photograph. But now I am watching them move in my memory as dusk begins to shift towards night:

evening wind
a feather trembles
in the grass 
(p.11)

And on those late train journeys home from London, lights from the back windows of terraced houses glittering past, wafers of smoky clouds shifting across the night sky: 

overnight train
a handprint
smears the moon
(p.68)

Paul Chambers talks about haiku as ‘the art of noticing’ and each haiku in this collection is a quiet and precise record of the small moments that are common to us all. Or, if not common, convincingly true:  

pylon hum
the twitch of fibres
in a horse’s shoulder
(p.27)

Our lives are, naturally, a tangle of threads. We are all pulled in multiple directions: work and family, obligations and responsibilities. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by complications, contradictions and challenges. Sometimes it’s difficult to find a level terrain, one that makes sense, provides a plateau of calm. But moments of smooth connection do exist; moments when we feel the beauty of travelling along a single harmonious thread. This collection reminds me of that. Reminds me too, to quote another poet:

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

(William Wordsworth, from ‘Leisure’.)

My life is richer for Paul Chambers noticing:

white mist
the wing and the wave
almost touching
(p.90)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Consolidation & Simplification

Since January 2020 all my work - haiku writing, poetry, prose, imaginative and non-fiction writing - has been posted on my website   Lynne Rees .  Please feel free to share anything from this archive, or my main site, but I'd be grateful if you could credit me as the writer and link back to the source.  Thank you 🙏 Lynne 

haibun ~ Playing Lego Minecraft with Morgan

There’s only a portal of black obsidian between the zombies and lava in The Dimension of The Nether and The Overworld where Steve is standing and I am counting his sheep, cows and pigs. But we really shouldn’t be hanging around when night is about to fall and mob attacks are imminent: Blazes and Creepers, Spiders from The Cave, all ready to descend on The Farm.  autism spectrum my nephew names all the monsters It’s time to lock up the animals, he says, time to close doors and windows, so I turn Steve around and notice he’s clutching a tiny baguette, something that fills me with unaccountable joy: that in this world of sharp edges and danger a boy has placed Bread in a man’s hands and they are carrying it home.  Presence 63,  March 2019

haiku commentary

deeper shadows where the walls meet... autumn rain – Mark E. Brager, The Heron's Nest, Volume XXI, Number 3 (2019) I imagine a corner, two walls meeting at right angles. I can see the depth of shadow there. If I reach out, I am sure the surface – rough brick or smooth masonry – will be cooler; perhaps because the autumn rain I now notice has started to fall. The places where people meet are more emotionally complex, stepping, as we may have to, from the comfort of the familiar to the challenge of the unfamiliar. Those “deeper shadows” may be rich with empathy and gratitude. Eshadows in corners Photograph by Steven Castledinequally, they may be fraught with conflict and umbrage. Brager’s haiku shifts me from inanimate objects to human experience. I sense loss through the image of “autumn rain,” or at least an understanding, or acceptance, of inevitable change that results in something being left behind. Perhaps change, even for the better, always leaves a