Following Neck of the Woods, the second Isobar book by Peter Makin. Tre Paesi: Three wanderings in compacted time and space, through North Kyoto, Cumbria and Lincolnshire : moving without pause and without announcement between past and present, this season and the next. It is an old man’s poem, mainly about regret for what he did not live up to . The speaker is one who tends to think his thoughts through what he sees : one who might admire Caliban’s knowledge of what’s in front of his nose, his ability to identify with its movements.
Ian Brinton‘s marvellous review of Peter Makin‘s Tre Paesi and other Poems – ‘this new collection of remarkable poetry’ – has been published in Litter Magazine. Click here to read the review.
Billy Mills has posted his latest report on his recent reading, including a fine review of Tre Paesi and Other Poems. He stresses the ecological concerns of the poems, and comments that “Makin’s perceptions of place are conveyed through an acute focus on detail” and that his use of language “evokes both Pound and Bashō” in that “details are presented not as metaphor but as a means of understanding the world”. He concludes: “These poems are a vital addition to the long tradition of bringing together English-language modernism and Japanese haiku. An essential read.“ You can read the whole review here if you scroll down a little.
Praise for previous work by Peter Makin
Mary de Rachewiltz on Ato : The elegance ! The sheer stark black on white elegance – that such precision could hold so much sorrow – a wonder….
Robert Creeley on ‘Hagoromo’ (included in Neck of the Woods): Its scale, its pace, its articulate detailing, literally its feeling, are all to me very, very effective. It’s a solid and beautiful piece of work, intimate and ageless.
Timothy Harris ( in PN Review ) on Neck of the Woods : I am not convinced that language, or any artistic medium, is transparent in the way Ford, Pound, and Bunting seem to have hoped it was, but what surely can be transmitted by the kind of verse they advocate is, as Makin suggests, not so much the world itself as an attentiveness to it, an attentiveness that because it is reticent and resolutely unsentimental can … be profoundly moving. It is the quality of attention in Makin’s poems that makes them so good.
August Kleinzahler on Neck of the Woods: Peter Makin’s precision in describing natural settings and phenomena, from the coast of Lincolnshire to Kyoto, either with the breadth of distance or as if through a magnifying glass, is remarkable in itself; but in the selection, ordering and juxtaposition of subject matter Makin manages to combine the eye of the scientist, the compositional acumen of the Zen-inspired painters of the Sengoku era and the sensibility of a traditional Japanese poet of tanka and haiku.… This is very moving poetry.
February 2023. 52 pages. 8.5 x 5.5/216 x 140 mm. ISBN 978-4-907359-42-3 (paperback).
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