What Was That?

Turnbull, Tim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0954198344 ISBN 13: 9780954198343

Publisher: Donut Press, 2004

From the bars of Prague and London’s docklands to the mountains of Afghanistan and the makeshift picture-house of a ramshackle Laurel & Hardy museum, the poems which make up What was that? cast a sharp eye on contemporary life and culture while glancing back at a fast-receding century. Whether exploring art or love, contemplating the fallout of recent world events or eulogising the Austin 1800, Tim Turnbull shows great insight and dexterity coupled with an irresistible, earthy, comic touch.

From the Inside Flap:

Even for those of us who are fans of Tim Turnbull’s earlier work, this is an astonishingly good collection. There is a common perception that well-crafted rhyming poetry is rare these days, except for the "light verse" of poets such as Wendy Cope and Sophie Hannah, but whilst Turnbull may be comic he is by no means "light". There are serious, disturbing, heartbreaking poems in this pocket-book - from the car crash scene of ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’ to the staggering ‘9/11’, where the disaster is first heard of in a butcher’s shop. Everywhere in What was that? we come across remarkable daring - Laurel and Hardy are juxtaposed with the U.S. Marines at My Lai, whilst in Turnbull’s bold response to Larkin, ‘Not the Whitsun Weddings’, the train fills up with bawdy "Stags" and "Hennies" heading north in the wake of the Potters Bar rail disaster. From the vicious satire of ‘Revolutionary Art’ to the darkly humorous love lyric ‘Succubus’, where love "is two parts terror to one part despair," Turnbull continually surprises. This an authentic and original vision of a world where lasses and Loaded rub shoulders with high culture and high tragedy. Plus he rhymes Tony Blair with oily hair. Read on and enjoy. - Clare Pollard