Not All Honey

By Roddy Lumsden

Two words, hope and doubt, dominate Not All Honey, the seventh full collection by Roddy Lumsden. These awkward cousins appear repeatedly as the poet 'fathoms the ingredient for happy' despite a tendency for the 'terrific melancholy' which named his last book. Roddy Lumsden is one of the most inventive poets writing today, always keen to explore and invent forms and to challenge the musical limits of language. The collection veers between sequence and stand-alone poems, the recurring subjects including viscous liquids, popular music, folkloric beasts and relationships and friendships with younger people. This book also reproduces Lumsden's acclaimed limited edition short collection The Bells of Hope which, in 51 short and exuberant 'kernel poems', records the poet's first ever year lived alone. 'There is a level of talent that will ransom any project in any school. On the one hand, it will be interesting to see where Lumsden goes next; on the other, he's so good that it hardly matters' – D.H. Tracy, Poetry. 'One of the best poets writing in English on the planet today' – Don Share, Squandermania. 'Although the verse is hopping with linguistic antics, the foci of the language are music and rhetoric and, whip-smart as these poems are, they tend to resist chin-stroking analysis...the rhymes, the larks, the brutal punch-lines tug Lumsden's poems off the page and into the living context they describe' – Matthew Smith, Verse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Oct 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781780372075

Roddy Lumsden

Roddy Lumsden’s first book Yeah Yeah Yeah (1997) was shortlisted for Forward and Saltire prizes. His second collection The Book of Love (2000), a Poetry Book Society Choice, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Mischief Night: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2004) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. His latest collections are Third Wish Wasted (2009), Terrific Melancholy (2011), Not All Honey (2014), which was shortlisted for the Saltire Society's Scottish Poetry Book of the Year Award, and So Glad I'm Me (2017). His anthology Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poets was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2010. He is a freelance writer, specialising in quizzes and word puzzles, and has represented Scotland twice on BBC Radio 4's Round Britain Quiz. He has held several residencies, including ones with the City of Aberdeen, St Andrews Bay Hotel, and as “poet-in-residence” to the music industry when he co-wrote The Message, a book on poetry and pop music (Poetry Society, 1999). His other books include Vitamin Q: a temple of trivia, lists and curious words (Chambers Harrap, 2004). Born in St Andrews, he lived in Edinburgh for many years before moving to London.

Book preview

RODDY LUMSDEN

NOT ALL HONEY

Two words, hope and doubt, dominate Not All Honey, the seventh full collection by Roddy Lumsden. These awkward cousins appear repeatedly as the poet ‘fathoms the ingredient for happy’ despite a tendency for the ‘terrific melancholy’ which named his last book.

Roddy Lumsden is one of the most inventive poets writing today, always keen to explore and invent forms and to challenge the musical limits of language. The collection veers between sequence and stand-alone poems, the recurring subjects including viscous liquids, popular music, folkloric beasts and relationships and friendships with younger people. This book also reproduces Lumsden’s acclaimed limited edition short collection The Bells of Hope which, in 51 short and exuberant ‘kernel poems’, records the poet’s first ever year lived alone.

‘There is a level of talent that will ransom any project in any school. On the one hand, it will be interesting to see where Lumsden goes next; on the other, he’s so good that it hardly matters’ – D.H. Tracy, Poetry.

‘One of the best poets writing in English on the planet today’ – Don Share, Squandermania.

‘Although the verse is hopping with linguistic antics, the foci of the language are music and rhetoric and, whip-smart as these poems are, they tend to resist chin-stroking analysis…the rhymes, the larks, the brutal punch-lines tug Lumsden’s poems off the page and into the living context they describe’ – Matthew Smith, Verse.

COVER PHOTOGRAPH

The Imperial Embrace of the Male.

Alva and Psyche on the Point of a Tickle

by Alva Bernadine (1984)

RODDY LUMSDEN

NOT ALL HONEY

for Isabelle Boyer,

The Princess of Burma, always

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Acknowledgements are due to the following publications and websites where some of the poems were published: The Great British Bard Off, Edinburgh Review, Gutter, Magma, Oxford Poetry, Poems in Which, Poetry International, Poetry Proper, Poetry School.

Thanks to ABJ as ever for his thoughts and to Amy Key and Heidi Seppälä for loving friendship and support during difficult times.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Farewell to Bread

HOPE VERSUS DOUBT

Hope

Stockholm Syndrome

Self, Rising

Kir Royale

Firebirds

Women in Paintings

Calumet

Epithalamion

To James Brookes at 25

Photograph of Emily Hasler Napping

For Charlotte

On First Meeting Margot

Shanties of Tinie Hope

Myokymia / Carrie Fisher

The Tao of Amy Key

Paul Risi

At Whitby Abbey

Fear of Ice Cream

A Small Photograph of the World Changing

Bella

Farewell to Couscous

REDUCTIONS

Farewell to Conchiglie

DOUBT VERSUS HOPE

Doubt

Halfway Through the Year of the Rabbit

Bad Players

All You Philosophers

Towns You Only Pass Through

Tact

Jambhala’s Mongoose

Fear of Lions

Fantigue

Solutomaattimittaamotulos

A Mixed Grill

Halfway Through the Year of the Dragon

Poem in Which I Stand Next to an Emperor

Goodbye John

Unknown Pleasures

Miss Martindale in the Outback

Tranquil Vale

Lines on a Young Lady’s Facebook Album

The Last Hour of Her Teens

Brutal

Halfway Through the Year of the Snake

Farewell to Dumplings

THE BELLS OF HOPE

GLOSSARY

NOTES

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Copyright

Farewell to Bread

The papers said that I was thinner.

In another life, I was a commissionaire

or caricaturing tourists in some difficult city.

I was thinking Venice was a no.

I shouldn’t have grumped on Annie, but

I didn’t know her dog had died.

As I’ve said before, no one should cover ‘Life on Mars’.

I was trying to figure a way of putting

an epigraph before an epigraph.

I was a cipher in my own petty system of abandon.

I was wondering how long we’d have to wait for

Gill-and-Alex, which seems inevitable.

I was wondering how much of this could make it into Latin.

I thought of Sinéad asleep. Her sneeze.

I had bidden farewell to bread.

By ‘the papers’ I mean whichever papers.

I recalled what Imo said about size and attraction and felt it

like a gun quite close to my head, by which I mean cold and true.

I was tired of people westering at me,

gimping over their phones.

I regretted promising Greg new winklepickers.

I felt uncomfortable that someone might ask

which of the younger poets I found most attractive.

I was hung and drawn.

When I argued internally, it was generally with you, friend.

I was fond of the Conroys.

I was fond of my own blood, its cameo appearances.

I worried that people called Geier Gaier and Faycal Faisal.

I tried to remember the last time I had said ‘no’ to anything.

I thought of when I hugged Charlie and she said,

‘but