So Glad I'm Me

In his tenth collection, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2017, Roddy Lumsden returns to some familiar themes: the trials of oneness versus twoness, the seduction of small calamities, and vice versa. And the everyday mysteries of running water, salt and sugar, and roller-skates. There are also many `conflation poems' where Lumsden has knocked the square peg of one subject through the round hole of another, often music-related. There are poems here about many songs and musicians, ranging from cult artists like Alex Chilton and Robin Holcomb to big names like Elvis and Morrissey. As ever, he relishes unusual words (nestlecock, twofer, farnesol) and interesting, taut forms, alongside a new strand of mid-length, discursive pieces in the spirit of Chicagoan poets Albert Goldbarth and Marianne Boruch.