Review: Jackself by Jacob Polley

This is the kind of poetry collection that is best approached like a novel. Settle down in a comfy chair and read it from start to finish.
WINNER: Jacob Polley's TS Eliot Award-winning collection Jackself.WINNER: Jacob Polley's TS Eliot Award-winning collection Jackself.
WINNER: Jacob Polley's TS Eliot Award-winning collection Jackself.

It’s also worth noting that, unless you’re in a public place, the poems sound even better when read out loud. This feels like old-fashioned storytelling – the kind you find in nursery rhymes and fairytales – and the poems have the same kind of rhythmic, incantatory quality. The writing is at times muscular and visceral, at others playful and whimsical with well-crafted use of dialogue and a very nice line in wry humour. But there is nothing jolly or cosy about the poems, at the heart of many there is a darkness, as there is in many folk tales and fairy stories.

Like all good poetry, it bears re-reading. In the story of Jackself and his friend Jeremy Wren there are mysteries to be uncovered, puzzles to be solved.

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There are many highlights in the collection – the conjuring of Jack Sprat and Jack Frost are both outstanding – but Lessons will speak to anyone who grew up in the 1970s or 80s. The lines “he must ask the dinner-ladies’ forgiveness/for the cartilage stew and spreadable carrots/the flavour of warm steel tins” will transport the reader straight back to a primary school dining room.

This is poetry of the very highest order; Polley’s T S Eliot Award is well-deserved.

Published by Piacador, £9.99.