{"id":2880,"date":"2025-07-04T16:34:30","date_gmt":"2025-07-04T16:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2880"},"modified":"2025-07-04T16:34:30","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T16:34:30","slug":"legwork-by-michael-vince","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=2880","title":{"rendered":"Legwork by Michael Vince"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Vince\u2019s generous, intelligently reflective Legwork<\/em> impressed me deeply. It\u2019s a book that repays careful reading and rereading. I\u2019ll try to say why by looking at some poems in the opening section, \u2018Around Greece\u2019.<\/p>\n

Poems in it recall short expeditions within Greece, exploring by bus or on foot. They present small incidents with a fullness of life that makes reading them an immersive delight. They make encounters and events we might normally think of as trivial shine with a kind of archetypal, even numinous light while remaining thoroughly grounded in the day to day realities of rural and insular Greek life. One side of this achievement, of course, is a matter of vision. The poet can see<\/em> this luminous significance in ordinary things. That involves generosity of feeling, intelligence, empathy and a selflessly receptive imagination.<\/p>\n

The other side is sheer technical skill of a kind that is both polished and modestly self-effacing. Vince\u2019s syntax and metre don\u2019t call attention to themselves but it\u2019s through their subtle and continuous work that we come to share his vision. Throughout the book, most poems are written in short lines and long sentences. The poet uses this combination to achieve a double effect. The continuity of the sentences makes us feel the interrelatedness of the poems\u2019 details and creates suspense as to what will come next. At the same time, by breaking the flow with line endings Vince frames individual details and emphasises words in a way that makes them shine out distinctly, not becoming subsumed within the larger movement. Complementing each other, these effects of suspense as to what will come and framing when it does give each detail a sense of emphasis.\u00a0 \u2018Lamb\u2019, for example, begins<\/p>\n

In an island village, high up,
\nhalf abandoned, where goats perch
\namong ruined houses, we walk
\nalong a winding street, watched by
\nsuspicious cats, greeted by
\nthe occasional dog acquainted
\nwith tourists. On a doorstep
\na young woman sits with her pet
\nseated beside her, a lamb
\nwith a lead and collar.<\/p>\n

How much more circumstantial could writing be? But a striking part of the total effect is how unlocalized the experience is. We never learn who\u2019s walking with the poet or which island they\u2019re on, let alone which village they\u2019re in. And so without losing their particularity the scenes and qualities Vince describes take on archetypal resonance and evocativeness, whether they be physical things like mountain, sea and sky, bread, animals or people; abstract but specifically named concepts like generosity, which is beautifully and playfully dramatized in the poem of that name; or still more abstract ideas tacitly suggested by the arc of the poem as a whole, as \u2018Lamb\u2019 suggests the ambiguity of our relation to the animal world by reminding us that the eating of lamb is a ritual of the Greek Easter.<\/p>\n

Currently, though, my very favourite poem in this section is the enchanting \u2018Spa Town\u2019, which combines longer, more undulating lines with freer imaginative play. After eleven lines describing a small spa town or village in the heat it focuses on one patient. I\u2019ll need quite a long quotation to suggest the delicate interweaving of tenderness, humour, irony and compassion as it does so:<\/p>\n

Here we watch one, an old man in pyjamas
\nstroll out unsteadily down a concrete pier
\ntowards the ocean, followed by a ginger cat,
\ntail up, pacing to keep company. The man
\nturns back several times and mutters,
\nexchanging nods with this attentive creature
\nwho hasn\u2019t come here for its health. They look
\nlike a couple out for a walk, taking the air
\non holiday. When they reach the end of the pier
\nperched above the waves, the cat sits
\nand grooms. The old man lights a cigarette,
\nand convinces himself that nobody can see,
\nwhile the ginger cat waits, much like a nurse,
\nor a child out with grandpa, who comes each year
\nfor coffee-less, wine-less days. The old man
\ngazes out, where the healing waters mingle
\nwith the bitter salt. He takes laboured breaths,
\nthen turns. He says the word, the cat agrees,
\nand they both begin their slow return to the shore.<\/p>\n

Such sensitively evocative observation expressed in simple language is a pleasure in itself. So much, for example, is implicit in the way the suggestion of ease in \u2018stroll out\u2019 is countered by \u2018unsteadily\u2019. Beyond that, there\u2019s a moral as well as aesthetic beauty in the way the poet effaces himself from the scene, letting the poem be completely filled by the old man and his situation. It almost feels as if we\u2019re seeing it and reacting to its emotional suggestions for ourselves, and this makes for a peculiarly intimate, lingering involvement. In fact, of course, all our impressions arise from the poet\u2019s choices about what to notice and focus on, and from the similes he floats. Successively comparing the cat to wife, nurse and grandchild brilliantly superimposes a series of easily visualised imaginary scenes on the actual one, each with its own emotional resonances, and in the actual scene our sense of the old man\u2019s fragility and self-consciousness is quietly heightened by contrast with the cat\u2019s self-containment and the graceful physical ease that the narrative seems to imply. Finally, in keeping with what I said earlier about the archetypal resonance of these poems, images like the bitter salt, the ocean and the shore seem fraught with symbolic suggestiveness, making us feel the old man\u2019s conscious closeness to death in a way that\u2019s the more haunting for being indefinite.<\/p>\n

The book is divided into four sections, \u2018Around Greece\u2019, \u2018Fish\u2019, \u2018Visiting Relation Can Be Difficult\u2019 and \u2018Far Shore\u2019 \u2013 titles which in themselves suggest how the poet interleaves gravity with quirky humour. Although I\u2019ve concentrated on the Greek poems that dominate the first section and the beginning of the second, the book covers a range of subjects and approaches them in different ways. I\u2019ve remarked on Vince\u2019s obvious intelligence. Often this appears as a shimmer of implicit reflections on the physical scene the poet presents. Sometimes it takes a more cerebral, conceptual form. \u2018Fish\u2019, \u2018Legwork\u2019 and \u2018New Boots\u2019 explore abstract concepts by developing a single comparison. \u2018Legwork\u2019 is of particular interest as it\u2019s the title poem. In fact I read it as among other things a description of the book\u2019s approach to writing. It begins<\/p>\n

Going over the same rough ground
\nseeking an answer, it\u2019s a matter
\nof setting things out, finding the route,
\nas a distance walker first lays out
\nmaps, and fetches from the loft
\nboots and sleeping bag, makes lists
\nof food to take, buses to catch,
\nglances at the weather forecast. What
\nwill happen along the way this time\u2026?<\/p>\n

The fact that the poet sees walking as exploration and looks forward to surprises even on familiar ground reflects the openness of mind that I like so much in his work. Far from considering such openness as at odds with thought and deliberate technique, the poet presents planning and care as conditions of the discoveries he hopes to make. In the end, after an arduous climb his allegorical walker must<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 follow that gradual descent
\nshaped by long past laborious days,
\nnow that an ache in calf and thigh
\nembodies the process of legwork.<\/p>\n

The way the poem redeems \u2018embodies\u2019 from clich\u00e9 is a joy in itself, and points to something fundamental about the procedures of the whole book. Even in developing explicit abstract concepts or exploring elusive ripples of reflection, all these poems embody the experiences and ideas they present in densely, vividly and grittily concrete images. At the same time, to go back to what I said earlier about how often his images have an archetypal resonance, although only a small number of poems explicitly focus on pursuing elusive ripples of reflection, they nearly all have a tendency to expand into them. \u2018Burning\u2019, for example, vividly describes how the poet and his companion laughed when they realised that what they thought was a catastrophic blaze was only the moon rising behind a hill; then describes how his father saw the Crystal Palace burn and how people called the disaster \u2018the end of an era<\/em>\u2019, not wanting to see it as \u2018the first step into a new one\u2019. The poem ends<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Later,
\nin a country not very far away
\nand of which we knew a great deal,
\nfiremen looked on but did nothing
\nas the synagogues flamed; Kristallnacht,
\na warning beacon for the coming terror
\nof bombers in the dark high up
\nguided from below by the burning.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard not to see this as speaking to the current instability of the international order. And it seems significant that Vince describes the burning of the Crystal Palace as the first step into<\/em> a new era, rather than merely the beginning<\/em> of one. Hovering behind and uniting all the poems of Legwork<\/em> is the ancient metaphor of life as a journey. It becomes explicit in \u2018New Boots\u2019, which takes stock of the wearing out of old habits and even friendships, ending<\/p>\n

Places and people, cushioned
\nat the raw edges, blistered,
\nhow they ache to hobble back
\nas worn manageable shapes
\nwhen it\u2019s all too late, and boots
\nonce loved are dropped down
\nheavily, with a painful sound,
\ninto the bin. Then it\u2019s barefoot
\nthat a new journey of self begins.<\/p>\n

Am I letting ripples of suggestion carry me too far in hearing a faint echo of the famous \u2018Lyke Wake Dirge\u2019 beginning \u2018This ae night, this ae night\u2019 at this point?<\/p>\n

Legwork<\/em> by Michael Vince. \u00a310. Mica Press. ISBN: 978-1-869848-38-5. Reviewed by Edmund Prestwich<\/p>\n

I would like to thank David Cooke for permission to repost this piece, originally written for\u00a0 The High Window<\/a>. You can see reviews of other books by other people by following the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Vince\u2019s generous, intelligently reflective Legwork impressed me deeply. It\u2019s a book that repays careful reading and rereading. I\u2019ll try to say why by looking at some poems in the opening section, \u2018Around Greece\u2019. Poems in it recall short expeditions within Greece, exploring by bus or on foot. They present small incidents with a fullness […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-michael-vince"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2880"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2883,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2880\/revisions\/2883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}