I haven’t struggled to read these poems in their dancing and/or jaywalking across and over ordinary direct lines, but have in feeling confident to be meaningful about what to say on them other than encourage the surprises of that reading outside the common pathways.

That said, I will write some early impressions, and these are more honest and real than waiting to shape a surer if probably anathema summary/gist. Before this I will just make a leap of some confidence that the following whole poem [which is wonderful] alludes perfectly to my current circuit with these poems:

In this, ‘only or another means’ and ‘pale light slipping through’ and ‘not to be/Shaken off’ seem to suggest my journey so far.

But to those first impressions – I like the celebration of chance and unknowing in these poems – as I see/read it – rooted in unexpected contexts [there you go] like a chance encounter with a ‘4 X 4’ in THE UNREADABLE RIDER that prompts [from ‘chance is…’]

A contextualisation note with the poem, as is the case with many, refers us to ‘Hotel Responsibility legislation linked to ‘fire raising’.

It is the caveat against preparing for the ‘hereafter’ which suggests the celebration in the here and now.

This sense of looking out for the unlookoutable is suggested in the book’s opening poem THE DRAGONFLY HAD NO BUSINESS

Maybe I mean/Dent means uncertainty and ambiguity rather than chance – for example, there is in ONCE REMOVED the line [from ‘only/By…’]

and in ANOTHER MIGRAINE there is the lyricism of expressing how the uncertainty is a kind of existential effect [from ‘a story…’]

To set out on your own jaywalking, get it here.