Originally from Greater Manchester, Ron Scowcroft has lived in the Lancaster area since 1985. After a career in teaching and academic research, he began writing poetry in 2006. He is the author of two previous collections: Moon Garden (Wayleave Press, 2014), and Second Glance (Oversteps Books, 2022). He gained first prize in the 2020 Frogmore competition and was awarded joint first prize in the 2013 McLellan competition. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, prize winners’ anthologies and literary websites. They have also featured in exhibitions by artists Jayne Simpson and John Morrison and been adapted for video by Morph Films. He is a founder member of April Poets based in Lancaster.

In the space of 18 poems, this pamphlet ranges across a variety of subject matter, real or imagined, drawing our attention for the most part to the small but necessary things that shape our everyday lives. In doing so, these quiet poems bring into sharp focus an eventful night of gazing at the stars, the spectacle of a builder dancing on a window ledge high above the ground, a night spent on board an aeroplane, bats in the loft and the fate of small creatures left as gifts at the door by a wily domestic animal.

These are all presented in the guise of passing moments, happening, as it were, as they were being written. What makes these poems so interesting is that Scowcroft leaves a portion of his narrative up to our imagination. For example, we are never told where the aeroplane has flown from - we only know that, at the time of writing, it is “twelve hours inbound” but again, no final destination is given. We are not told where the builder who is dancing on the parapet is located. We only know that he is “five floors up” what may or may not be a block of flats in an unknown setting. In the poem ‘Waking in Pine Woods’ we are surprised to find, by the time we reach the third stanza, that we are gazing out on the Adriatic. Scowcroft leaves us to ponder on its exact location. The domestic animal that leaves the corpses of other small animals at the door is not identified even though it is in all probability a cat.

Reviewing this collection I felt on at least two occasions that I was treading home ground. The first occasion was when I read the highly inventive poem about the fate of the Great Auk which is written in the style of a factual interview. This was immediately familiar to me because I had come across it before when reviewing the anthology Watch the Birdie edited by Rebecca Bilkau (Beautiful Dragons Collaborations, 2018) for an American journal back in 2020. The second occasion was sparked by Scowcroft’s poem ‘Loft Bats’ which begins with a quotation from the curious poem called ‘Croft’ by Stevie Smith. I always assumed that Croft was a soft toy but Scowcroft has made me think again:

 

     Stevie says

     I have bats in my loft,

     she’s seen them come and go,

     shown me where they drop their guano

     like quotation marks

     below the roost.

 

It may be that Stevie’s ‘Croft’ was a bat or, if he was a real person who was ‘soft’ he may have been ‘bats’ in the derogatory sense of someone who is eccentric or confused. I have long puzzled over Stevie’s poem and this has given me another insight to ponder on.

‘Night Flight’ was another poem that caught my attention. In a few lines, Scowcroft sets the scene with “the blear and hum of night, / cabin dimmed, penumbral, / the slow beat of the starboard light”. In the final stanza, the focus rests on a single observation of exquisite detail. It is as if the whole poem has been narrowing things down to this particular point:

 

     We are blanketed now,

     free from turbulent news.

     Centre aisle, a boy lies drowsed

     and squabbed against his mother’s arm.

     She taps a gentle pulse.

 

Note the use of the word ‘turbulent’, which is not very far removed from the word that is used to describe the motion that results from friction around the jet stream between slower and faster air. Note also the use of the word “squabbed” which is resonant with meaning here. It primarily means ‘cushioned’ as in the phrase ‘a squab seat’ but it may also be associated with the idea that when small children are tired they are more likely to squabble. Like the “turbulent new” that has temporarily ceased, a sense of restlessness has found its own repose.

These carefully crafted poems give us an opportunity to reflect on those fleeting moments that pass through the portals of our busy lives. 

 

Ron Scowcroft, Small and Necessary Lives, Wayleave, £6