A collection of poetry by the poet, critic and editor Sam Adams. Wrtten over a number of years the poems reflect his interests in literature and the arts, history and the natural world, people and places and, above all, family.

Casgliad o gerddi gan y bardd, y beirniad a'r golygydd Sam Adams. Ysgrifennodd dros nifer o flynyddoedd ac mae'r cerddi yn adlewyrchu ei ddiddordeb mewn llenyddiaeth, y celfyddydau, hanes, y byd naturiol, pobl a lleoedd, a theulu yn bennaf.

Popular Glamorgan poet, Sam Adams, issues a third collection of poems here. These acquaint us with an idiosyncratic mix of stories and characters spanning many years and several continents.

There is a cluster of tender and delicate family poems: his mother's serenity in ‘Cats' Cradle’; the title poem's lament for happiness unshared with his father; the ‘Triptych’ of memories of his recently dead older sister. Many of the other poems concern artists of various kinds but tend to adopt an eccentric angle – two poems celebrate the great printer, Baskerville: one his edition of Milton; the other his (unexplained) disinterment and the melting of his coffin so that ‘Somewhere a line of type is spaced with lead/That held the head of Baskerville’.

Two poems work over the same material on Jean Cocteau's wartime experiences. His elegies can be wonderfully affectionate (as for Edward Lear in ‘The Topographical Artist’) or positively waspish as in ‘Fitzrovia Follies’:

‘These two made another art of scrounging,
Cohabiting with squalor, entertained
Their friends, heedless of the price they paid
In work gone soft, not done, and bitter ends.’

These also illustrate his light touch with half and internal rhyme.

His humorous stories range from 1950's Aberystwyth digs to awful American Motels; from wartime childhood memories of shrapnel-hunting to recent wars with jackdaws in his chimney – each entertaining anecdote carrying a strand of sadness or unease. The collection is a lively and varied gathering of tales and tributes but one is left with an awareness that this is a time of farewells for the poet. As he says of his American hostess: ‘She is gone. As the adage has it, art survives,/But, when nights draw in, it will not ward off loneliness.’

Caroline Clark

It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.

Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.