A collection of 57 diverse personal poems about childhood and family, journeys of reality and the imagination, including a series of poems entitled 'Book of Milan'.

Casgliad o 57 o gerddi personol amrywiol am blentyndod a theulu, teithiau go iawn a theithiau yn y dychymyg, yn cynnwys cyfres o gerddi dan y teitl 'Book of Milan'.

Robert Seatter works from small things. His poetry takes everyday material – grounded in experiences of clothes, sex, language, or family – and makes it luminous. In this sense, Travelling to the Fish Orchards seems to be a very contemporary sort of collection. It does not try to offer grand statements; instead, it presents minor epiphanies that emerge from the study of ordinariness.

Admittedly, the collection opens with the distinctly unusual – a wedding conducted on a tightrope. Similarly, it goes beyond the ordinary in its occasional references to the classical world (Penelope, Icarus) and to folklore (Little Boy Blue, the Pied Piper). But ‘The Tightrope Walkers’ Wedding’ is ultimately more concerned with touch and human connection than it is with its unusual circumstances. Likewise, ‘Penelope’ is finally to do with domesticity and the construction of a relationship, whilst ‘Icarus Writes Home’ is driven by issues of family and communication. In short, even Seatter’s unusual is rooted in a concern with the usual.

But it is what Seatter does with his commonplace concerns that makes much of this collection compelling. For example, in the poem ‘My Father’s Wedding Gloves’, a pair of gloves becomes emblematic of the relationship between the speaker and his father. By the end of the poem, the ‘Fine, leather gloves, soft, neatly sewn’ that the father wore on his wedding-day have been lost on a train; but the poem’s speaker is searching for his father’s fingers through their image. The gloves consequently become far more than themselves, as they capture a son’s yearning for connection with his father. An object from normal life, in other words, expands beyond itself. Similarly, in ‘Family Affair’, different families’ different ways of living become objects of longing and a cause for celebration, as Seatter invests the chaotic life of one family and the elegant quietness of another with an emotional significance that, precisely, extends them beyond themselves.

In this fresh, uncluttered poetry, then, no great moments of insight are offered. Instead, everyday things become important. Actual transcendence may not be possible – but a kind of luminous immanence certainly is.

Matthew Jarvis

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.