Impspired Title

THE SHEDDING GATE

by ROBIN HOLMES

In this debut collection, Robin Holmes brings into sharp focus the landscapes and lifeways of rural Northern Ireland. Whether ‘the Rawhide men’ herding sheep from high pastures down to the accordion swing of the shedding gate, turfcutters with spade and grape poised to cut ‘the black, carboniferous bog cake’ or a host of primroses ‘glittering/like Van Gogh’s chandeliered stars’, these are poems that evoke human endeavours and natural environments in vivid detail. Across sequences about wild birds, sports figures, musicians, and day-to-day objects (a banana, a bar of Pears soap), Holmes displays striking similes and metaphors that will leave readers seeing the world from inventive, invigorating angles. The collection features a selection of the poet’s own black and white photographs, their rich tones and textures a visual complement to the poems’ moods and preoccupations. Kathleen McCracken, poet and former Lecturer in Creative Writing at Ulster University A collection which--like the landscape it inhabits and expresses—fills the spirit, feeds the senses. It brings powerfully to bear the constant cycle of seasons unceasing, evoking the lives and loves of its people, touching all of us in the process. A sensual, sensory reality prevails in poems like ‘Slieve Donard and the Clouds’, or ‘The Broadstone’ which captures the poet’s ‘in-tuneness’ with time in a single place. Black and white photographs often crystallize, in an image, what Robin Holmes conjures up and amplifies with a constellation of perfectly chosen words. Do not miss his social awareness, as in the title poem, his call to human conscience and to our need for global vigilance, (‘Roasted Earth’). And do not miss his sharpened wit and self-amusement, his playful intelligence. There is music here. This poet gazes at primroses—‘They have peppered/for endless miles/the verges and hedgerows/their petaline beauty glittering/like Van Gogh’s chandeliered stars’—detecting an otherness, far reaching, an infinity of echoing; the acoustic ghost of John Clare come again among us. Tom Adair, former book critic for The Irish Times, The Scotsman and The Observer In ‘The shedding Gate’ Robin Holmes has produced a gem of a book. The poems are precious and delicate, as fine, fresh and sparkling as a morning in spring. We are taken on a journey of exploration through worlds we thought we knew but which suddenly are seen from a new perspective. The familiar becomes wonderful. And we cannot rush through, we must stop, examine, consider and reconsider. The poems have a deeply felt reverence for nature - smell it, taste it, touch it and suddenly be surprised by an unexpected metaphor that perfectly captures the essence of a tree, a flower, a bird in flight. There is an intimacy and delicacy to his observations that captures the underlying nature of his subject, all recorded in precise and meticulous detail. But there are warnings too, for this world is a fragile place and we must treat it with care. These poems need to be read and re-read. Each reading will reveal new rewards and insight for the reader. And beneath is an underlying spirituality never overtly mentioned but hinted at in the petal of a flower, a leaf on a tree and the song of a bird. Jimmy Milliken, Writer, Poet and author of Cracking The Air , Impspired Press, 2022.