To the Moon, in Seven Easy Steps

Scott Hamilton

Scott Hamilton's first collection is a voyage, that's true, but not to the moon. We discover the earth, and the people who live on it. The poems excel with all of Scott's strengths -- energy, humanity, humour, intensity of purpose, his "all-too-human"-ness! -- while To the Moon, in Seven Easy Steps offers an approach to the unrolling century, and to writing itself.

These poems and prose passages focus upon various subjects -- a legendary intellectual of the British Left, the astonishing details of an exceptional life or death, the historical, the archived, or the everyday. They are never afraid to expose (to the eye, to our criticism) the treatment of experience through the creative mind that brought about such compositions of words.

And so, if To the Moon, in Seven Easy Steps is a 'take' on space, time and experience, if behind the evident versatility and ability of its author one can sense a vision (ontological, literary and political), it is also a revelation of the creating 'self' moving and working among millions of others.

And are you going to find that in much contemporary English-language poetry?