Arts & Entertainment

Cliff Ashby: beauty from a veteran’s pen

By team ⋅ March 29, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

The Scotsman, 15 March

‘Probably the most powerful spare poet of his generation; recognition of his genius cannot be much longer delayed’. It is now almost a quarter of a century since Martin Seymour-Smith pronounced this accolade in his Guide to Modern World Literature.

Born in 1919, Ashby is hardly yet a household name, but he ought to be, at least among those who care for poetry. He has just published what must be the most remarkable swansong offered by a writer in their 89th year – 16 new poems in a collection entitled A Few Late Lowers.

A good starting point with this collection is ‘It Being Lent’. This stands to demonstrate what makes Ashby good, verging towards natural surrealism. There are other poems as quirky and memorable, in particular ‘A Report for Ann’, where the poet addresses his dead wife.

Although an unpromising title, this small book could one day become a collector’s item. A sequence of original poems, it is a bittersweet distillation of a lifetime’s experience. Ashby’s themes are, in fact, the classics of love and death, but treated with a complete lack of fuss, much deep thought, and feeling packed into homely images.