What do you think?
Rate this book
On Purpose
Laird's debut collection, To a Fault (2005), signalled the arrival of a significant new talent, 'doing more, in its range and ambition,' wrote Deryn Rees-Jones in the Independent, 'than any first collection I can think of in at least the last ten years.' On Purpose confirms the promise of that first book and shows the author hitting new and yet more athletic strides.
Blending tones of assurance and delicacy, of confidence and vulnerability, On Purpose is a collection of poems that takes care and consideration in examining the often brutal arena of human relations, concluding with a mercurial and affecting sequence about a marriage, which takes, as its point of departure, that most influential of military treatise, The Art of War.
Blending tones of assurance and delicacy, of confidence and vulnerability, On Purpose is a collection of poems that takes care and consideration in examining the often brutal arena of human relations, concluding with a mercurial and affecting sequence about a marriage, which takes, as its point of departure, that most influential of military treatise, The Art of War.
- GenresPoetry
65 pages, Paperback
First published August 16, 2007
2 people are currently reading
106 people want to read
About the author
Nick Laird
32 books109 followersNick Laird was born in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland in 1975. He read English Literature at Cambridge University, and then worked for several years as a lawyer specializing in international litigation.
He is the author of two novels, Utterly Monkey and Glover's Mistake, and two collections of poetry, To A Fault and On Purpose. A new volume of poetry, Go Giants, is forthcoming from Faber in January 2013.
Laird has won many awards for his fiction and poetry, including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize, the Betty Trask Prize, the Rupert and Eithne Strong award, a Somerset Maugham award, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He has published poetry and essays in many journals including the New Yorker, the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books, and wrote a column on poetry for two years for the Guardian newspaper.
He has taught at Columbia University, Manchester University and Barnard College.
He is the author of two novels, Utterly Monkey and Glover's Mistake, and two collections of poetry, To A Fault and On Purpose. A new volume of poetry, Go Giants, is forthcoming from Faber in January 2013.
Laird has won many awards for his fiction and poetry, including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize, the Betty Trask Prize, the Rupert and Eithne Strong award, a Somerset Maugham award, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He has published poetry and essays in many journals including the New Yorker, the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books, and wrote a column on poetry for two years for the Guardian newspaper.
He has taught at Columbia University, Manchester University and Barnard College.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 16, 2014
This inventive collection won the Somerset Maugham Award, which is awarded to a writer under the age of 35. The poems in this collection are often personal and detail the hardships of relationships.
Nick Laird is probably most well-known for being the husband of Zadie Smith. If literary stars were like Hollywood celebrities, this power couple might be like Brangelina. They just need a clever name. Zadick. That kind of has a ring to it.
Overall, I found these poems virile and clever. Laird’s kindness is evident, but he doesn’t shy away from an innate struggle with anger and aggression. I actually like that you can feel the testosterone in these. As a man that reads poetry, there’s an undeniable inner life in Laird that I can relate to.
There were a few poems that seemed a bit distant to me, however. The more I read poetry, the less interested I become in decoding meaning. It’s like being on the outside of an inside joke. Even when the language was striking, I was still held at a distance.
Below was my favorite poem:
Leaving the Scene of an Accident
Stalagmites of bird-lime
under traffic lights and statues
the unrumbled railway bridges.
Books obsolesce in lockers.
A stork in April makes a nest
in the second reactor’s tower.
Like a deep foundation crack,
A single strand of ivy climbs
the gable of the courthouse.
*
In the eastern suburbs deer appear.
Brushed by waist-high silver steppe grass
and the lighter strokes of barley stalks,
elegant as one might half-expect
the grazing self to be, except her grace
is one complicit in departure.
At the snap and flutter of a shopping bag
snagged in branches, she will break,
and overtake her shadow in the café window
*
A wolf, one afternoon in August,
sauntered through the old town square.
By dawn a score were there,
parading past the main post office,
splashing in the People’s Fountain,
drinking from it, basking, snarling.
After the storms of autumn pass
black sturgeon ripple, in their turn,
the perfectly circular cooling ponds.
Nick Laird is probably most well-known for being the husband of Zadie Smith. If literary stars were like Hollywood celebrities, this power couple might be like Brangelina. They just need a clever name. Zadick. That kind of has a ring to it.
Overall, I found these poems virile and clever. Laird’s kindness is evident, but he doesn’t shy away from an innate struggle with anger and aggression. I actually like that you can feel the testosterone in these. As a man that reads poetry, there’s an undeniable inner life in Laird that I can relate to.
There were a few poems that seemed a bit distant to me, however. The more I read poetry, the less interested I become in decoding meaning. It’s like being on the outside of an inside joke. Even when the language was striking, I was still held at a distance.
Below was my favorite poem:
Leaving the Scene of an Accident
Stalagmites of bird-lime
under traffic lights and statues
the unrumbled railway bridges.
Books obsolesce in lockers.
A stork in April makes a nest
in the second reactor’s tower.
Like a deep foundation crack,
A single strand of ivy climbs
the gable of the courthouse.
*
In the eastern suburbs deer appear.
Brushed by waist-high silver steppe grass
and the lighter strokes of barley stalks,
elegant as one might half-expect
the grazing self to be, except her grace
is one complicit in departure.
At the snap and flutter of a shopping bag
snagged in branches, she will break,
and overtake her shadow in the café window
*
A wolf, one afternoon in August,
sauntered through the old town square.
By dawn a score were there,
parading past the main post office,
splashing in the People’s Fountain,
drinking from it, basking, snarling.
After the storms of autumn pass
black sturgeon ripple, in their turn,
the perfectly circular cooling ponds.
May 17, 2025
"Make each gesture just ambiguous enough to be taken as offensive."
November 11, 2012
There is in Laird's poetry a keen ear for the sudden rhyme or half-rhyme, a discipline in the form, and a vibrating tautness of line that pleases me greatly. It sets the stage for his reflections on human nature and relationships, which in a lesser poet might turn histrionic or bitter, but in Laird are always a synthesis of ironic detachment and fierce honesty. His lipstick screams, his patron saint of elsewhere, his apotheosis-by-home-improvement: these will remain with me for a while. In the meantime, I hope to get my hands on his first collection.
July 17, 2025
I enjoyed many of the poems in this book. There was a quality about them that felt real in terms of the language; the rhythm and rhymes felt sound and pleasing.
In some though I was happily carried by the train of thought, only to have a final line buffer my progress, and this felt jarring: it's like thinking you know someone's mind only to have that security whipped out from under your feet. This is something I find with poetry, and perhaps it's me and my mind and how I think. Which means I guess it's time for another poetry course to get myself tuned into the schema that inhabit the minds of 0thers!
In some though I was happily carried by the train of thought, only to have a final line buffer my progress, and this felt jarring: it's like thinking you know someone's mind only to have that security whipped out from under your feet. This is something I find with poetry, and perhaps it's me and my mind and how I think. Which means I guess it's time for another poetry course to get myself tuned into the schema that inhabit the minds of 0thers!
April 7, 2018
An ambitious book of poetry, rich with description, detail, and careful word choice. A mix of themes and inscrutable analysis of minutiae ending with a sweeping collection of poems about love starting with the classic military text The Art of War as its frame. The result is a strong book that takes the reader on a roller coaster of feelings and beautiful language.
September 6, 2021
A personal note more than a review.
‘On Purpose’ was a pleasure to peruse, exploring aspects of the human nature, the ambiguity of communication and relationships, and the struggle within our internal selves.
I found the poems in this collection immediately accessible and moving / provoking me into thought and appreciation as I sat with each of them, in deeper reflection.
Some of my favourite poems that really grab my attention upon this initial reading were: Conversation, The Happiness of Banging a Nail In, The Present Writer, The Immigration Form , Dissent, Leaving the Scene of an Accident, Appraisal, Estimates, Variation in Tactics, and The Hall of Medium Harmony.
I’m definitely looking forward to the next Nick Laird collection I’ll pick up.
‘On Purpose’ was a pleasure to peruse, exploring aspects of the human nature, the ambiguity of communication and relationships, and the struggle within our internal selves.
I found the poems in this collection immediately accessible and moving / provoking me into thought and appreciation as I sat with each of them, in deeper reflection.
Some of my favourite poems that really grab my attention upon this initial reading were: Conversation, The Happiness of Banging a Nail In, The Present Writer, The Immigration Form , Dissent, Leaving the Scene of an Accident, Appraisal, Estimates, Variation in Tactics, and The Hall of Medium Harmony.
I’m definitely looking forward to the next Nick Laird collection I’ll pick up.
September 12, 2009
I found this book while browsing in a bookstore in Pioneer Square. I jotted down the title on a scrap of paper which I found about a month later, wondering what the heck it referred to. Somehow I remembered and put it on hold. I really liked the poems; not too long, not too abstract or depressing. If I had the book beside me I'd quote it.
February 26, 2012
I liked it. It has been a long time since I have read any poetry books. Some of the poems I understood better than others. My favorites were The Underwood No. Four, Appraisal, and The No in November. Overall a good start to begin again to exercise my poetry mind.
November 2, 2009
"Their minds may shine with language..."
November 30, 2010
This book is like the author's pug: ugly and mean, compact and a little cute sometimes. The poems are all kind of earth-toned. I liked it.
January 10, 2013
In general, I think Laird hides behind his words. A lot of flash and little substance. Two stars, because there were a handful of poems that really were luminous.
January 7, 2017
There's a few really excellent pieces in here. But lots that I couldn't connect with or understand at all.
December 28, 2012
Some memorable poems. Left a good taste in my mouth.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews