Reviews of Orbiting

From www.drfulminare.com

Richard Evans' debut, The Zoo Keeper, was the very first book released by Eggbox Publishing, who last year published Ben Borek's critically acclaimed mock-heroic novel-in-verse Donjong Heights. Though that's a kickstart to be proud of, it's something of a relief that Evans has taken a different route with this follow-up; Eggbox's current pastel green scheme wouldn't have suited him, and instead we get a sumptuous black soft-cover edition, replete with silver embossed lettering. Mmm.

He's repeated the trick, however, of bolstering his writing with the work of a talented illustrator. Where The Zoo Keeper featured the sharp and atmospheric photographs of Camilla Stapleton-Hibbert, Orbiting gives us drawings by Ed Boxall. They're moody and quirky in equal measure: a boy wandering, fascinated, through a forest of Greek-busts-cum-Easter-Island-statues; starkly black and white, vein-like trees threading over a cottage; scribbled nun figures entering a tiny church against a moonlit landscape.

Better yet, it suits the change in Evans' writing. He's still producing dark, gimlet-eyed monologues, his narrators positively riddled with secrets and obsessions, but there's an increasing focus on the music of the incidental. In the first poem, the moment a dead body is washed onto the shore, all the activity around it seems to stop:

"Then the volume is up again.
Each sound is switched in turn.
First the sea-churn, then slowly the sound
of children crying, of cars going by,
of seagulls."

It's an excellent description of an internal sensation being so powerful it seems to manifest itself externally. There's a similar physicality to mixed feelings of guilt and lust in Between Seminars, with the involuntary movement of the 'body's magnets':

"A field, or further skin

against which her legs lean, drawing
your metal all to one edge ..."

You can find other examples throughout the book, often connecting the body to a more supernatural plane, one of moons, ice, space, eggs and snow. Frequently, these aren't so much metaphors - not as I understand them - so much as they are crisp descriptions of another world, possibly a Moomin-esque one, if Love Letter to Tove Jansson is anything to go by.

The way some of his depictions of writing itself chime with the style of some of the illustrations is also a pleasure - "a skittish rant in biro", "a wriggling squit". The occasional Jesus reference or f-word feels a little heavy though, especially in the context of a collection so finely balanced on the edge between light and darkness.

Jon Stone

From Emma Lee's blogspot

Richard Evans has a wry look at the surprising within the ordinary. In the opening poem, “the sea coughs up a girl” and then,

“The world folds up
and everything anyone can see is her.
Even the skidding minds of children pause on this single form
as if the sand, ice-cream and heat refuse to mingle
with what has appeared
bloated on the stones.

Then the volume is up again.
Each sound is switched in turn…”

The poems ends with the image of men clambering down the beach “not knowing what they will do/ when they reach her.” It’s a powerful image, made so because all we know about the girl is that she’s a girl and “bloated”, allowing the reader to build their own image of the girl and try to put together her backstory.

Elsewhere, Richard Evans likes walking, offers “Seven Steps to Understanding Death”, plays games to kill time, looks for Jim Morrison in Paris, comments on the Literati, touches on religion and love with a letter to Tove Jansson (author of the “Moomintrolls” series of children’s books). In “Club Land” with an epigraph taken from Dante’s “Inferno” you’re in the night club with women,

“…luminous thin and dressed

to show it. Each midriff, a spectre
of hunger, is assessed when passing
with pursed lips or a round of laughter.”

later

“A camera rolls, watching their most

thrilling times with cold rebuke:
‘Is this all? Is all you have?
Just work and sleep and drink and puke?’

So every week they end up coming
here to show themselves they’re living,
but they’re not. We best keep going…”

There’s allusion to T S Eliot’s “The Waste Land” appropriately too as Eliot was influenced by Dante. Richard Evans knows what he’s doing: skilful poems that linger in the memory.

I don’t usually comment on production values as I’m not a printer and tend to value the contents of a book over the physically of the book. But “Orbiting” comes in a black jacket with silver title and orbit design. Throughout, the illustrations by Ed Boxall complement the poems without encroaching on the reader’s space.

Customer Reviews from Amazon

Having read Richard Evans first poetry collection, it was with baited breath that I waited for his latest book. I was not to be disappointed. The poems are thought provoking, sad, gentle, amusing and far more besides. This is not a book to be left on the shelf, but one to be read time and time again.I recommend this book to all poetry lovers.

A collection that is at once dangerously witty, seriously clever, and yet at the same time immensely moving, freighted with a sense of loss. There are maybe fewer linguistic fireworks here than his previous collection "The Zoo Keeper" but I prefer the sense of submerged emotion that pervades this work.
Ed Boxall's deceptively naieve illustrations are like dark, impossible dreams - They add to the uncanny feel of the book without ever trespassing on the world of the poems themselves.

This is a lovely book of poetry, from an extremely talented writer. Funny, profound, intelligent and deeply moving, it's is also beautifully illustrated. A collection to cherish and highly recommended.

This is a wonderful book, at times profound and at times extremely moving. The presentation and style of the book are unlike any other I own and it feels friendly, though some of the poems are certainly challenging. The illustrations add to the unique character of this book. I would recommend it wholeheartedly!

the zoo keeper