It is 1961. Aldous Huxley and his wife Laura flee the Hollywood Hills as a devastating wildfire rips through one of the most affluent areas of Los Angeles. What can they save of their lives? This is the dramatic opening to the latest collection from Welsh-born teacher, novelist, editor and poet Tony Curtis. 

In his first poetry collection since From the Fortunate Isles: New and Selected Poems (2016), Curtis draws together poems that take us from California to Carmarthen, medieval Ireland, Italy and France. Several poems such as ‘Of Barnacles, Geese and other Wonders,’ ‘The Trials of Anne James’ and ‘Events at Carmarthen: 18th September 1829’ are written in the form of historical narratives. The commemorative sequence of poems ‘Aberfan Voices’ was written in 2016 as a collaborative bi-lingual project with Grahame Davies in response to photographs by Chuck Rapoport, who was one of the first photographers on the scene 50 years before. Black and white photographs accompany the poems. In ‘Delivery’ the horror of what happened is carried as a physical burden by a coalman: 

 

     Bent double under that sack

     He could be Hercules carrying the bull,

 

     Atlas holding the whole weight

     Of the endless heavens, stars grown dark …

 

The same sense of tragedy is worked out in powerful lines from ‘He Being Dead Yet Speaketh’:

 

     Was there ever a sermon dug so deep

     From the heart of a preacher?

     He gave his son …

     Loudly, through our tears we sang for all of them.

 

Several poems are inspired by art and photography. ‘Caroline Gerbola on Conchita’ is from Peter Lavery’s exhibition of circus photographs, ‘At the G6 Face’ is an ekphrastic response to a painting by Jack Crabtree in the University of South Wales collection, and ‘Claude and Choucou at le Moulleau, 1916’ is a response to a poignant photograph of Claude Debussy and his daughter Claude-Emma, fondly known as ‘Choucou’, taken a few years before their demise.  ‘Commedia del Goalie’ was written in response to a painting by Alan Salisbury and his retrospective exhibition at the University of South Wales. There is also a sequence of poems written for the Welsh-born painter, printmaker and teacher Hanlyn Davies who now lives and works in the US. The poems were written as a contribution to the publication ‘The Vein of Lice: Paintings and Works on Paper 1976-2016’, a consideration of the artist’s work published in the US in 2018.

A few poems draw their inspiration from music. ‘The Song Prize’ relates to the Cardiff Singer of the World competition which was held in St. David’s Hall in 2019. A sequence of poems, ‘Jazz Suite’, celebrates some of the world’s greatest jazz musicians: jazz and swing singer Billie Holiday, double-bassist Scott LaFaro, saxophonists Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker and Stan Getz and pianist and composer Dave Brubeck. Curtis heard Brubeck play in Cardiff in 2003. In the opening stanza of ‘Brubeck at St David’s Hall, Cardiff’ Curtis conveys something of the atmosphere of that occasion:

 

     An old man walks slowly across the stage,

     So stiff and tired that it seems

     He will not make it to the Steinway.

     The hall is so quiet: it takes an age.

 

One or two poems reference writers who have influenced Curtis down the years, in particular, Dannie Abse, Vernon Watkins and Michael Longley. The opening and closing stanzas of ‘Longley’s Work’ satisfy us with their connecting imagery:

 

     Your books I keep

     on the shelf beside my pillow;

     slim and strong stalks full

     of sap and bearing flowers…

….

     Still, I’ll open at a random page

     this morning, as I do,

     splashing the sleep from my face

     with the cold, peaty water of your words.

 

This wide-ranging collection sees Curtis writing at the height of his powers and confirms his position as one of Wales’s leading poets.

 

Tony Curtis, Leaving the Hills, Seren, £10.99