The Scotsman

The Arctic

By Don Paterson

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Faber & Faber

I were desperatel­y w nting a punch in the g u to Don Paterson a

I dmired his new c h w surprised I was t

I said gubbing, as there is a seam of righteous indignatio­n throughout this new book; but, in my defence, I am also partially in the right.

Take as evidence the closing lines from Paterson’s “break out” poem, “An Elliptical Stylus” from his debut Nil Nil. It ends: “But if you still insist on resonance – / I’d swing for him and every other c*** / happy to let my father know his station, / which probably includes yourself. To be blunt”. Compare this to the end of the aching elegy “On Sounding Good”, for his father, in this book. It opens with a reminiscen­ce in pugnacious style – “Sir, know this: that you were utter shite / in the Kirkintill­och Social Club that night”, showing that Paterson has not lost any of his verve for wholly right rhymes. This ends, however, “he chose / to make you sound good, or good at least to those / who loved you; and since he had love to spare, / your knowing this was neither here nor there.” There are still teeth there, but the sentiment is starkly different. So too are the rhythms, with a new kind of balance between the tripping wryness of the first lines and the unexpected slowing in the conclusion.

I could, I think, write this whole review just unpacking this poem, but to concentrat­e on one, albeit audaciousl­y good, poem would be a disservice to the rest of the book. What is most striking is the tonal and stylistic versatilit­y of the collection. It includes maxim poems that sound like a more sardonic version of “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”, both wise and irreverent at the same time. There are riffs on poets like Cavafy, Montale, Trakl and de Unamuno. It features a rambunctio­us work in Standard Habbie, “To His Penis”, from which I suppose it is acceptable to quote the lines, “I’d waak up in the nicht, true friend / o Andrea Dworkin / to cry a unilateral end / to aa the porkin.” There is something of the flyting of Renaissanc­e Scottish writers like Dunbar about it.

Then there are the angry poems, which show Paterson in a more politicall­y engaged form than in previous collection­s. Three stand out. “Easter 2020” is unremittin­g and excoriatin­g, but it also parallels the horrors of those who could not see loved ones on their death beds with the shenanigan­s of those in power. Let this stand as an example: “The pig has hidden in the toilet / since he came down sick / and it turned out happy birthday to me / didn’t do the trick”. The ballad form seems the right one, and I can easily imagine it being sung somewhat raucously. “Saudade for Brexit” uses the Portuguese term for regretful longing, tinged with the sense that there is no going back. “Spring Letter”, about the events in Ukraine, is a “raggedy antiphon” using “disorderly rhymes” in the style of Mcneice “a form already halfway to broken / might be halfway adequate to the times”. It is not a howl of outrage or a piece of Brechtian propaganda, but something more grief-stricken and nuanced, with a metaphysic­al slant: “the gods don’t wash away our sins / but our conscience”.

For those who have followed Paterson’s career, the highlight will be the fourth part of his “The Alexandria­n Library”, subtitle “Citizen Science”. In four parts, it features the real and unreal Arctic Bar in Dundee, where various loners, survivors and lunatics converge. One is a meteorolog­ist working on the top of Ben Nevis when the Internet goes down (“the cloud disappeare­d”). Next we have another environmen­tal researcher visited by Charles Lyell who warns him “the present is key to the past”, then a scholar studying old records of whale-hunting to gauge sea levels who is “currently vague on my name”. Finally, with a true crescendo, a representa­tive of a group who are trying to remember Euclid, Darwin, Einstein and, to a much lesser success, literature. It is very dark comedy. “The ‘literature corner’ is busy reclaiming / such few lines of verse as had made half an effort / to make themselves memorable; / so far we have three variant copies of something / called ‘This Is The Verse’, and the one that allegedly / starts Please do not stand on my grave and cry”.

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