Nil Nil

by Don Paterson

"Nil Nil", Don Paterson's first volume of poetry, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 1993 and heralded the arrival of a major new talent. The book presented a new and urgent poetry of dream-life, mystery and music, sexual obsession and the consolations of drink - all delivered with great formal skill and imaginative daring.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1995

About the author

Don Paterson (b. 1963) is a Scottish poet and writer. He is the author of sixteen books of poetry, aphorism, criticism, memoir and poetic theory. His poetry has won many awards, including the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, three Forward Prizes, the T.S. Eliot Prize on two occasions, and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of St. Andrews, and for twenty-five years was Poetry Editor at Picador MacMillan. He has long had a parallel career as a jazz guitarist.

He lives in Kirriemuir, Angus.

Reviews

[Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Something of a very British life ..lemonade bottles, vinyl grooves, taxi ranks in the rain, high tower blocks. A nightshift somewhere clocking on in grey and a life lived in minor chords. What can't be said directly can be shown, and felt..a sense of slow failure we've all had at one 4am or another. Heavy eyes in a winter dawn that never quite becomes a day. Empty provincial train platforms, fumbling love in small hotels (in the shadow of Larkin), the moments in between captured like a 70s Polaroid..over exposed, too vivid..Dundee, Largs, Laphroaig (taste the peat smoke), slow cafe meditations on being a son, failing as a father, music, loss and verse itself.

[C. Varn · Rating 4 out of 5]

In many ways, Paterson's first collection is about decline in a way that feels very specific to British culture in the early 1990s. Ostensibly about the decline of a foot ball club, Peterson's highly deft and subtly formal verse, covers a lot of the ennui of early adulthood in the Britain. There are shades of Larkin in the ennui here, and the promise of Peterson's poetic career, which is still going now over twenty years later, is well-established in this volume.

[Boy Blue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reverence and Irreverence towards life in the same collection, and even the same poem.

The Alexandrian Library and Nil Nil are the best by a considerable margin. The former feels like a cognitive Sailing to Byzantium. A journey to the centre of the mind rather than the soul.

Here's a small taster. One of the shorter poems. Just so you can feel Paterson's deft touch.

Poem
(After Ladislaw Skala)

The ship pitched in the rough sea
and I could bear it no longer
so I closed my eyes
and imagine myself on a ship
in a rough sea-crossing.

The woman rose up below me
and I could bear it no longer
so I closed my eyes
and imagined myself making love
to the very same woman.

When I came into the world
I closed my eyes
and imagined my own birth
Still
I have not opened my eyes to this world.


His use of a quote from his French alter ego to start The Alexandrian Library poem almost had me wondering why I hadn't heard of such an insightful French philosophe. Maybe next time Mr Aussemain or should I say Paterson?

His sign off at the end of Nil Nil (both the poem and the book) is also brilliant and worked better than any cliff hanger in making me want to read more. It seems a return to the Alexandrian Library theme; chasing memory and thought to an infinitesimally small point.

In short, this is where you get off, reader; I'll continue alone, on foot, in the failing light, following the trail as it steadily fades into road-repairs, birdsong, the weather, nirvana, the plot thinning down to a point so refined not even the angels could dance on it. Goodbye.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favourites:

The Ferryman's Arms
Bedfellows
Graffito
Morning Prayer
Heliographer
An Elliptical Stylus ('I'd swing for him...')
Seed

Didn't like 'The Alexandrian Library' at all, nor the other instalments in the later collections.

Plenty of bite, witty, and quick-witted.

[David S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paterson is my current favourite poet. Love his style, choice of words, play on language. He does it in a way that makes readers appreciate poetry, and wonder: how did he do that?

Any readers out there scared of poetry. Wanting to enjoy a poem, not analyse the hell out of it just to get a slight gist. Look no further. If T.S. Eliot is Beethoven, Don Paterson is Pearl Jam.

Can't wait to read more. Currently, waiting for ordered copy of Rain.

5 Poetic Stars

[Sandra Saade · Rating 2 out of 5]

One day we will make our perfect journey-
the great train smashing through Dundee, Brooklyn
and off into the endless tundra,
the earth flattening out before us.

I follow your continuous arrival,
shedding veil after veil after veil-
the automatic doors wincing away
while you stagger back from the buffet

slopping Laphroaig and decent coffee
until you face me from that long enfilade
of glass, stretched to vanishing point
like facing mirrors, a lifetime of days.

[Steven Marciano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very hit-and-miss but I enjoyed a lot of the earlier poems

[Sarah Orr · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a banging poetry collection, no notes. Ferryman’s Arms and Nil Nil are two of my favourite poems ever written so shout out higher english and AP.

also particularly loved, Heredity, Fraud, and Dirty Weekend

[M- S__ · Rating 2 out of 5]

While competent at conveying grief in meaningful and new ways, most of this collection is about geography in some way or another and really drops the ball on it. It's incoherent and directionless in many places. There are catalogs and lists of other works or ~ literary ~ references that serve no real purpose. Just really clearly a freshman effort. Leans into its worst instincts and only shines when Paterson really feels what he's writing.

[Joseph Ernest · Rating 4 out of 5]

title poem and the one about the library are crackers. sometimes uses a bit too much words for me.

[Lawrence Pettener · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anything by Don P is well worth reading; this being an early collection it's trying hard and getting there most of the time too.

Much of the material here reminds me of his (and my) friend Michael Donaghy: arch, clever, having a laugh.

I hope to come back to this review and flesh it out more.

[Mark Friend · Rating 3 out of 5]

Personally, Paterson’s first collection included a few more misses than hits. Whilst full of great poetic language and imagery, a playfulness with structure and form, and plenty of personal allusion, Nil Nil has offered me less thematic connection, not speaking to my own necessity enough that I had feel sufficient skin in this game.

Hence I move through it a little faster than my usual practice.

Still enough pieces to grab my attention; Exeunt, Shhh, Dinosaurs, Nil Nil, and The Alexandrian Library - which was the reason I pursued this collection - so I could read part 1 having read the later parts in his other collections.

[Steve D'avis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent selection of poetry that meanders through all realms of the everyday to the astute observations of sport, nature & human foibles. I continue to enjoy Paterson's poetry - it's like sipping a glass of fine ale & realising how revelatory the small events in life can be.

[El · Rating 4 out of 5]

Making poetry out of the act of pissing... definitely a talented poet, and a highly readable collection.