'the light user scheme' (Smokestack, 2013)
Each poem in the light user scheme is a short, tight burst of narrative. They ask: what is happening beside you? What is going on over there? Allusive yet exact, formal and philosophical, the light user scheme works as a subtly interwoven series of oblique glances, condensed emotional intrigues and resonant images drawn from the lives we live now and the lives that go on all around us, just at the very edge of our awareness.
'the light user scheme shows an original imagination at work, and there is hardly one that does not impart some kind of frisson.' Christopher Reid 'I was interested in the way, even over a short space, they seem to evoke a strong mood. Skinner works for the larger design of the poem really powerfully.' Daljit Nagra 'Richard Skinner's poems of 6 and 7 lines, each presenting a compressed narrative that is never quite explicit or straightforward, remind me of Borges' remark in his essay The Wall And The Books about the imminence of a revelation that never in fact takes place being 'the aesthetic fact'. Throughout, we find ourselves witnessing from odd, obscured or sidelong viewpoints a parade of vignettes. Readers will find them inescapably moreish, or a tease that can only be read in short bursts, or too clever by half. But observe Skinner's virtuosity in ringing the changes, even within this miniscule form, on the scene built up in opening lines that might go anywhere, until the twist that redirects our attention to an unexpected detail, the revelation of sideways. It's this new viewpoint that often brings the whole into focus, like standing at a slant to see the anamorphic skull in Holbein's Ambassadors. My reaction was usually to reread immediately, and I'll be reading these again.' Alasdair Paterson, Stride magazine 'This interesting book of poems deals with excerpts and extracts that form the basis of ‘the secret springs of action’, as one of the pieces is entitled. People caught in mid-thought, mid-step, mid-dream, mid-loneliness: "the day after she left him, he lay on his bed" (lupus street); "the difference between what used to be and is no more" (muzique mechanique). The open and evocative language contains no mysteries for the inexperienced poetry reader to trip over, and yet in apparent simplicity there is depth, and sometimes a transcendent beauty: “He held his child and looked at her face/Cool and distant, like the moon from the earth” (calf). The book’s epigram is a quotation from the Russian writer and critic Viktor Shklovsky: 'Poets are more concerned with arranging images than with creating them'. Life is already there, waiting for the poet to snare it on the page. These poems must be remarkably difficult to write since - in haiku-esque style - they must encapsulate something of profound meaning in just a few lines each. Rather in the style of Hilda Doolittle (HD) and the Imagists, Skinner leaves himself no room for sketching in details of character or narrative development – the image has to do the work of all. “She sits watching the snow fall/silently on the mountains.” (the crush). A particular strength of this author is that he doesn’t fall into the trap of trying to “finish” the poems with punchline endings or exposition, but leaves the ending open to speculation and further imaginative input by the reader.' Frances Spurrier, Write Out Loud website 'I think the light user scheme is unusual in the way that it finds a way of getting a denseness and richness of language through narrative (which lyric poets tend to avoid like the plague because it usually requires exposition and that dreaded spectre information). But the striking ellipticalness of pieces which have novelistic characters in (ie more than just ciphers for some idea or other) gives the sense that there is indeed a story present, lingering in the fairly huge spaces between the imagistic or emotional fragments from which the poems are made. But the absence of the details or events of the narrative kind of throws us back to the characters, the results of the story, and so the emotional texture and impact. And the fact that there's this constant but subtle and irregular sound-patterning which pulls the fragmentary images and narrative idiosyncrasies into relation pleasingly reinforces this way of moving that the poems have, of delicately creating spaces in which David Foster Wallace's 'explosion of associate connections' can occur.' Joey Connolly, editor of Kaffeeklatsch magazine 'It's suffused, for me, with the Heian 'mono no aware' spirit, its images secured from the flux of transience ... a beautiful, memorable project.' Ranjit Hoskote, author of Central Time 'I love the conceit, the small but perfectly-formed prose poems, many of which work like extended haiku, they are so compressed and remind me of other poets / prose writers who are equally adept at saying a lot with very few words, such as Lydia Davis or Charles Simic. I really admire these pieces.' Tamar Yoseloff, author of Formerly 'The same sense of wonder as when I read The Mirror. the light user scheme is an amazing book! The poems are little worlds in themselves.' Ana Teresa Pereira, author of Fugue States 'Wonderful poems. Fresh and sharp with quick quirky insight and a candid wisdom.' Cristina Newton, author of Cry Wolf 'It made me think and feel differently.' Cathy Galvin, author of Black and Blue 'I found them rather interesting; I liked their spare, crystalline quality.' Helena Nelson, author of Plot and Counter-Plot 'Brief, intriguing and evocative poems, with subjects including Ingmar Bergman, jaundice and Judas.' Greg Freeman Write Out Loud 'Beautifully measured.' The Morning Star You can read 2 poems from the light user scheme here You can buy a copy of the light user scheme at Amazon here You can read more poems and buy a copy direct from Smokestack here |