The poems in Damian Walford Davies' first full collection are fascinated by 'serations of light', 'parodies of shadow', and all shades in between. The bare flesh of a 1951 boxing match, luminous shirts in a country lane, surreal urban attire and the scales of a dying fish illuminate the volume with suits of lights. This collection doesn't shy away from the disturbing and violent.

Casgliad cyflawn cyntaf o gerddi Damian Walford Davies. Trigain o dudalennau o gerddi amrywiol eu natur, sy'n talu sylw i wahanol liwiau.

That this is Damian Walford Davies’s first published collection came as something of a surprise as his poetry has appeared widely, he is a well known authority on poets of both Welsh traditions and his co-authored collection, Whiteout received much acclaim.

Suit of Lights eloquently displays his fine eye for the telling detail, his ability vividly and wittily to recreate the look and feel of the past and also his lyrical, sometimes quirky response to the world and other artists. The sequence based on odd extracts from Kivert’s famous diary exemplifies many of these qualities – the precision of breaking ‘ice/crust delicately as a brûlée’; his capturing the humour of half-aware Victorian sensuality; and his repeated use (perhaps sometimes over-use) of the line break to sever a word for effect.

As the title implies, it is a collection whose language is saturated in the nuances of light and shade from that subtle ‘flesh-light’ and the delicate changes of a drying pebble (in ‘High Wind’) to the ‘halogen bloody day’ of his apocalyptic ‘Nightharvester’.

He cuts loose in the sequence ‘Aerial’ – recreating a flight over ancient landscapes – the verse patterning the page like cloud-shadows. Yet in ‘September Song’ (translation and homage to Waldo Williams) he shows he can turn an exquisite lyric. In ‘Strumble Head’ he launches into rollicking historical farce but his humour too can range from the lightest to the very black. Startling images stay in the mind: ‘red-ball . . . handgrips’ on the Underground recall plague-boils and pineapples are ‘burning heads/ on . . . green harpoons’.

This is a collection which displays many facets of a poet up to now known as a scholar or an interpreter of other Welsh artists. While these aspects are evident, the collection presents a wider talent: tender, shocking, playful, sharp-eyed – a suitable sparkling performance.

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.