Books

Review by Francis Sheppard

I was helpless with laughter. As a reader in his seventh decade there seems to me less self-depreciation than before, but here it is in spadeloads. Probably it’s useless to take Willis out of context, but if you see the listed range of topics that come under this poet’s unsteady gaze – Food, Sport, Love, Beasts and Cautionary Tales – you may have an inkling of its explosive, irreverent ‘take’ on the commonplace. Willis does not flinch from telling things ‘as they are’. I shall send a copy of the Notebook to my son for his 40th, but hope he doesn’t read it aloud to his son! For all that, the rhymes and impeccable rhythms are beguiling – would stop any child in its tracks. The consistent polished diction and cadence indicate the quantity of work that makes this collection a tour de force; though to repeat the cliché that art is the concealment of art, you could open it and think it was some old bloke’s hapless musings. That is, until you find yourself grinning and shaking and quite unable to say why.