Meanwhile, Trees

This book by Mark Waldron is the first book of poetry I've ever bought purely because of its title. I am trying to read more poetry, but aside from the obvious span of classic or well-renowned names, it's hard to discover new ones - so in my last jaunt past a local bookshop I simply browsed the shelf of poets for any titles that sprung out at me, and obviously something about Meanwhile, Trees did the trick. And as haphazard and noncommittal as that sounds (and if it sounds so it's because it is), I actually very much enjoyed this book. Mark Waldron's poems have a darkly kind of twisted character to them, but also a bizarre and often verging on surreal current of playfulness, weirdness, irony and levity. The blurb proclaims, 'these poems may pretend they're joking but they never really are' - and that comes across; one can find oneself laughing out loud at a turn of phrase throwing a stanza headlong into absurdity only for the following lines to drag it back into a larger grimmer picture of, well, still absurdity. Would recommend to poetry-readers with a stomach for visceral imagery and shapeshifting ennui.