Late as I am discovering this collection, the fact that it won the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award probably says more than I can about its quality.

[More:]

Corpus by Michael Symmons Roberts, paperback, pp84, Cape Poetry

Late as I am discovering this collection, the fact that it won the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award probably says more than I can about its quality.

The title hints at the religious theme of the collection. But that shouldn't put atheists off, because this is religion explored in a way most people have probably never come across before. Roberts examines the deep questions of life, the universe and everything in an unpretentious way with some fantastic unusual yet apt imagery. Most of all, he looks at them in a way that surprises, as in the opening stanza of the first poem Pelt:

“I found the world's pelt
“nailed to the picture-rail
“of a box-room in a cheap hotel.”

As much as religion, these poems deal with life, death, faith and genetics. In Mapping The Genome, the geneticist is a coupé driver, who covers all sorts of terrain and “miles of dead code” in a bid to find out:

“why the human heart still slows
“when divers break the surface,
“why mermaids still swim in our dreams.”

Elsewhere we have the world as flesh giving birth to an island (Flesh) or the human heart and death as star fish whose “five-toothed cogs” or “turbines” have stopped turning (A Wreck):

“human hearts will be like these
“tight windmills with a carapace...
“...Death will be a pulled plug,
“five blades slowing to a cold star.”

But these are just a few extracts, a pale summing up. This is a collection which has to be read to be properly enjoyed, then reread and enjoyed even more.