The Bell Club - Paul Martell

'George Winters died suddenly of Mondays' As this opening zinger suggests, The Bell Club is a lively debut collection of poems assembled with wit and warmth, suggestive of the gentle absurdities and sensibilities of local and personal memory. Many are shaped by the author's experiences growing up in Norwich and around the Norfolk coast, but in striking and poignant ways, they move seamlessly from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to Maggie Smith and crocodiles in Vietnam. There is a spareness to the description and a lightness to the emotion, which allow the reader space for their own responses. At times, this restraint creates a very moving effect. The poems are at their best when combining the confessional with a lyric form of observational analysis and when focused on the detail of small moments to create striking, precise imagesA gift for portraiture is also revealed in the poems: the Franco-American couple, the chip shop owner, the trombone player. If your requirements for a modern poetry collection include modest but engaging elements of surprise, haunting - by the dead remembered, by romantic memories and by missed opportunities - though never indulgent or morose, and a combining of the confessional with a lyrical take on history and culture, then Martell's The Bell Club is your new favourite.
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