Annie Fisher reviews Words of Mercury by Alasdair Paterson (Shearsman Books, 2024)
You can almost see the twinkle in Alasdair Paterson’s eye as you read these poems – the twinkle of wit, of mischief and, just occasionally, the twinkle of a tear. Not that he permits overt emotion or self-indulgence. You’ll find no plaudits from poet friends on the blurb; instead, Paterson has written spoof ‘critical responses’ to his own work. He had me smiling before I even opened the book.
Words of Mercury is Paterson’s fourth collection from Shearsman. It’s in four sections. The first recalls childhood; the second consists of nature-related poems; the third is a five-page poem where, in Paterson’s words, “the great Russian literary tradition is alphabetically disrespected”; the fourth section deals mostly with ageing and mortality. There’s reflection, satire, wordplay, elegy, and philosophy presented in a variety of poetic forms. He covers a lot of ground!
There’s reflection, satire, wordplay, elegy, and philosophy presented in a variety of poetic forms. He covers a lot of ground!
Paterson grew up in the Leith area of Edinburgh, “a city of lips pursed over afternoon tea, of icing sugar dusting puffs of disapproval”, where the adults who raised and educated him were “not inclined to stand for nonsense”. The first group of poems, entitled ‘In the Dark’, looks, with retrospective puzzlement, at a fifties’ childhood where ghosts seemed to hover around the “bomb sites and coal fires” and where the (clearly precocious) young Paterson often found himself in the dark, both literally and figuratively. This is from the poem ‘Lochend’:
Mum’s friend lives up a dark stair
and gives me lemonade and biscuits,
a grown-up book with pictures.
Their quiet talk’s not for my ears.
When daylight goes it’s time for home.
On the way Mum asks what did I think.
I say her friend was nice and the biscuits
were nice and I liked the old lady too.
This seems to be the wrong answer.
The friend’s mother had not long since
died. I still try not to think about it.
I was particularly struck by the poem ‘Window-cleaners’ which recalls a tragic incident at primary school. The form of the poem perfectly reflects the way children so often “keep calm and carry on” in the face of terrible events (or are given no option to do otherwise). The poem opens with two stark lines:
A man fell from the window ledge
We painted our papier-mâché castle
Each subsequent stanza is framed by repetitions of those first two lines, but more detail is included each time as the story emerges. This is third of five stanzas:
A man fell from the window ledge
He was cleaning glass our sky came through
The teacher had his grave news face
Our new project was Robert the Bruce
All gaunt raw-boned perpendiculars, our primary
Stairwell echoes, high instructive windows
It doled out world, pasteurised like milk
After school a second cleaner fell
We painted our papier-mâché castle
The child-like, matter-of-fact language is just right. I particularly like the line, “It doled out world, pasteurised like milk”. So much is condensed (unintended milk-pun!) in that one line. And “doled” is so well-chosen – a perfect word to describe a time when children were fed institutionally agreed, carefully edited versions of the world, dished up like rice pudding. And in that word ‘doled’ we hear echoes of words like ‘doleful’, ‘dolorous’, ‘dour’, ‘dollop’. Paterson is adept at haiku, and the haiku-writer’s skills of concision, precision and evocation are evident throughout the book.
Paterson is adept at haiku, and the haiku-writer’s skills of concision, precision and evocation are evident throughout the book
The second section, ‘Nature Boy’, consists of brief prose poems in which Paterson uses animals and plants as his jumping-off point for quiet reflections on ageing, bereavement, and the fast-disappearing natural world. This is from the poem, ‘Crows’:
They’ll soon have me persuaded that
black is the new black. One day, when they open their beaks to
croak, the world will fall silent. I’m noticing their plague doctor
masks.
The tricksy spirit of Mercury is never far away in these poems, eager to hijack Paterson’s thoughts even when they start off melancholic. It’s as if a no-nonsense, stoic voice in his head is telling him no-one is interested in his sadness, and he needs to brighten up. In the poem ‘Oak’, Paterson is listening to some plainsong and daydreaming. The poem begins: “I’m listening to a wash of Gregorian chant and now in my mind there’s an oak avenue leading up to buildings that are austere but have good acoustics.” It then meanders, stream-of consciousness style, through various thoughts including thoughts of disease and death, but ending up with wordplay in the form of an anagram: “Then for some reason a pair of pangolins, launchpad suspects for the virus, scamper up the oak avenue. Why? […] It takes me a while to work it out. But of course: pangolins is an anagram of plainsong.”
The five-page poem that comprises the third section is an ingenious abecedary (alphabet poem) which plays with the tropes and stereotypes found in classic Russian literature. Alasdair Paterson knows Russia and its culture well and must have had great fun writing this. If I’d read more Russian novels than I have, I’d have got a lot more out of this poem, but even so I found it hilarious.
The final section, ‘Words of Mercury’, opens with ‘Hop’, a spritely, age-defying poem, which has also been published in Candlestick Press’s Ten Poems series. It’s pure delight and you can find it summarised here: Ten Poems about Getting Older – ‘Instead of a card’ poetry pamphlets (candlestickpress.co.uk) The feisty tone of ‘Hop’ is maintained in several other poems. ‘In sickness and in limbo’ finds Paterson, in A&E for undisclosed reasons, speaking sternly to the imagined ghosts of Anna Akhmatova, William Wordsworth and John Donne, who are whispering in his ear that he ought to write about this experience. And in the final poem, ‘Shuggy’, he decides that since Death keeps popping up in his life he might as well befriend it:
I find that when I take a whisky these days
you’ll come sit in the lamplight, companionable.
I’m wondering if you have a first name, if maybe
I can call you Shuggy. No, we don’t need to talk.
I wasn’t familiar with Shuggy as a name, but it seems to be a Scottish nickname for ‘Hugh’. I was almost envious of Shuggy, having his wee fireside dram with Alasdair Paterson. ‘Words of Mercury’ is a sparkling collection written with tremendous skill. I enjoyed it enormously.
Annie Fisher’s background is in primary education, initially as a teacher and later as an English adviser. Now semi-retired she writes poetry for both adults and children and sometimes works as a storyteller in schools. She has had two pamphlets published with HappenStance Press: Infinite in all Perfections (2016) and The Deal (2020). She is a member of Fire River Poets, Taunton.
