Ground Water

by Matthew Hollis

In this
sparkling debut, Matthew Hollis immerses us in the undercurrents of our
lives. Love and loss are buoyed by a house full of milk, an orchard
underwater, the laws of walking on water. Rainwater, floodwater, flux –
the liquid landscapes which shift relentlessly in Ground Water –
threaten and comfort by turns. Matthew Hollis's poems are brimming with
courage in adversity as well as the promise of renewal, culminating in a
powerful sequence about a father's struggle with terminal illness.
Matthew Hollis’s first collection Ground Water was shortlisted
for the Guardian First Book Award, Whitbread Poetry Award and Forward
Prize for Best First Collection. His second collection, Earth House, followed in 2023.

Genres: Poetry

61 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 2004

Reviews

[Isa]

Some I really liked, some I missed. Didn't all feel like it hung together in the same collection for me.

Some things I noted down:

'like time given back, offered again; // as if all the words they failed to say // were spilled out on the quay and claimed // like undelivered letter finding home; // as if // we'd tapped our own lost tongue' - The Orchard Underwater

'We came with cases packed full of ourselves' - Clerance

'Few of us will touch the landscape in that way' - The Fielder

The River Drivers - liked the last stanza

'What I see in you I cannot live to, // too much the perfect picture of myself. // So I will leave, and leave you // the fragments of the me I seem' - In you more than you

'a causeway made // of temporality and water's Isotasy

'This much is truth, in principle at least.' - Isotasy

"harwonder', a tern of no strict definition, // but intimately ours - // musical, made up of us; // where language was a kind of touch, a pull' - Harwonder

'This day was spinning king before you stirred' - Election

'the rain in our mouth, // where we leave // language behind' - Passing Place

One - I liked

[Carla]

this was lovely! i picked it up by chance and i really enjoyed it. it brings up some really lovely imaginery, and is generally very tender. the last chunk is probably the heaviest and most impactful, but i really enjoyed the lighter, dreamier vibe of the first section as well. here are two of my favorite poem bits:

"not even the leaves
can lay down with such gentleness
or be touched so lightly as by your touch

in which i am, very simply, uncurling
as a leaf uncurls in first spring, or
folded, unfolds in your opening palm"

-

"(...) because
you are my fingertips, my perfect sight,
an acre of wheat in a field of stone."