Meanwhile, Trees

By Mark Waldron

These poems may sometimes pretend they're joking but they never really are. And what is it they're not joking about? Death for one thing, and the fact that we don't actually know who we are, and the fact that we don't truly know who our loved ones are, or what art is, or anything else for that matter.

Sometimes it feels as though someone has run off with meaning. It's no longer to be found where we could once expect to find it, perhaps in religion or in nature or in art, and these poems set off in search of it. Their aim is to see if there's a way of looking and a way of using language that can bring some meaning back to the world, because without it, we're lost.

Meanwhile, Trees is Mark Waldron's third collection, following The Brand New Dark (2008) and The Itchy Sea (2011), both published by Salt.

'Mark Waldron is the most striking and unusual new voice to have emerged in British poetry for some time. His offbeat observations and surreal imaginings are set off by a precise management of tone and mordant sense of humour. There is much black comedy in these poems but at the same time it becomes evident that a deeply humane sensibility is at work. His great gift is to face two ways at once: to our received culture, traditional and popular, and towards odd new ways of imagining ourselves. He brings to bear a sharp ear for the absurd coupled with a sure footed clarity and grace of speech. This enables him to write unforeseeable wordplays and images. In this way, his work captures exactly the uncertain mix of what it is to be a person living today – I really cannot recommend it highly enough.' – John Stammers

'Every so often you forget just how good Mark Waldron is. Then you read a random poem and end up hissing “damn” like a thwarted villain.' – Kirsten Irving

'One poet… who, above all others, cries out to reach an American audience… Waldron has been busy forging a new language of deadpan, twenty-first century surreal, as receptive to John Berryman's influence as anything written in the wake of The Dream Songs, as sceptical of the lyric self as anything in John Ashbery, and usually a lot funnier.' – Dai George, The Boston Review.

'The post-Beckettian self-inquisition offered up by Mark Waldron (a poet, incidentally, writing consistently better than virtually any other at the moment).' – Ahren Warner, Best British Poetry 2013

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: May 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781780372976

Mark Waldron

Mark Waldron was born in New York in 1960 and grew up in London. He works in advertising and lives in East London with his wife and son. He began writing poetry in his early 40s. He published two collections with Salt, The Brand New Dark (2008) and The Itchy Sea (2011), and two with Bloodaxe, Meanwhile, Trees (2016) and Sweet, like Rinky-Dink (2019).

Book preview

MARK WALDRON

MEANWHILE, TREES

These poems may sometimes pretend they’re joking but they never really are. And what is it they’re not joking about? Death for one thing, and the fact that we don’t actually know who we are, and the fact that we don’t truly know who our loved ones are, or what art is, or anything else for that matter.

Sometimes it feels as though someone has run off with meaning. It’s no longer to be found where we could once expect to find it, perhaps in religion or in nature or in art, and these poems set off in search of it. Their aim is to see if there’s a way of looking and a way of using language that can bring some meaning back to the world, because without it, we’re lost.

Meanwhile, Trees is Mark Waldron’s third collection, following The Brand New Dark (2008) and The Itchy Sea (2011), both published by Salt.

‘Mark Waldron is the most striking and unusual new voice to have emerged in British poetry for some time.’ – John Stammers

‘Waldron has been busy forging a new language of deadpan, twenty-first century surreal, as receptive to John Berryman’s influence as anything written in the wake of The Dream Songs, as sceptical of the lyric self as anything in John Ashbery, and usually a lot funnier.’ – Dai George, The Boston Review

‘The post-Beckettian self-inquisition offered up by Mark Waldron (a poet, incidentally, writing consistently better than virtually any other at the moment).’ – Ahren Warner, Best British Poetry

Cover artwork: Meanwhile, trees, from Abtei im Eichwald (1809-10) by Caspar David Friedrich

Mark Waldron

Meanwhile, Trees

For my mum and dad

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Some of these poems, or versions of them, have appeared in Blue of Noon, Kaffeeklatsch, Magma, The Morning Star, Poetry London, Ploughshares, Poetry Wales, Rising, The Quietus and Transom Journal. ‘So I hid my song’ was commissioned by Rachel Whiteread for her 2013 show at Gagosian in London. ‘Denmark Brochure’ and ‘All my poems are advertisements for me’ were published in Follow the Trail of Moths published by Sidekick Books. ‘The Decline of the Long s’, was written for Likestarlings in an exchange of poems with Jena Osman; ‘The Sea’ was commissioned by Jackie Saphra and Kate Potts for Somewhere in Particular; and ‘A cat called Orangey was in a number of movies’ was published by Sidekick Books in Lives Beyond Us. ‘Collaboration’ appears in Best British Poetry 2013, ‘First off appears’ in Best British Poetry 2014, and ‘I am lordly, puce and done’ appears in Best British Poetry 2015, all published by Salt.

I’d like to thank Roddy Lumsden, John Stammers, Ahren Warner and my wife, Julie Hill, for their advice and suggestions on these poems.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

So I hid my song

You know when you drop

All My Poems Are Advertisements for Me

Meanwhile, Trees

So I was at home doing the washing up

The Sea

The Madding Wind

When You Come in, Poppet

A train, pale white in colour,

Look at Our Faces – How Dead We’re Going to Be!

The Shoes of a Clown

A cat called Orangey was in a number of movies,

The Uncertainty Principle

You know that intermingled time of night and day

The Fire

Uh-Oh Sweet Wife

As Though We Hoped to Be Forgiven

A Glib

Yes I admit that I have ate

King Richard I

Confessional Poem

The Meeting