this island still - poetry

from Charlie Ulyatt

Book/Magazine

33 short and almost minimalist poems from Charlie Ulyatt, over three sections. Free UK postage.

'this island still' - review by Billy Mills - poet, editor, formerly literary journalist at guardian.co.uk

ellipticalmovements.wordpress.com

Charlie Ulyatt is what I think of as a dedicated minimalist (although he describes this island still as ‘almost minimalist’) who deploys apparently simple fragments of language using repetition and spacing to create musical structures of great subtlety and Zen-like clarity. There’s a clear announcement of intent on the first page of the book with a reference to Bashō’s most famous haiku:

listening

.

sound
of
water

sound
of
birds

sound
of
people

(but
not
much)

It is this quality of attending to the world that infuses all the work here. These poems invite us to see the world as it is, not as we would have it be, or as an Idealist projection. And the paring back of language is part of this process; the world we perceive is not made by language, language is our imperfect tool for capturing what we perceive:

whether
i
see
it

or
not

a
river
flows

a
cloud
forms

a
flower
grows

The world is not contingent on us, we are contingent on the world. And this is something we have learned to forget:

we have
become
good

at being

who we

are not

Ulyatt recognises this and uses language and the silence that surrounds it to bring the reader back to that still point where who we are is to be found. Take how the line and stanza breaks in this short extract move us past our expectations, lead us from what we think the poem means to how it means something else. This is poetry that you need to present rather than discuss; there is nothing to say about it that it doesn’t already say, it is ‘a/gift/of//grace’. Don’t read me writing about it, get it and read it yourself.