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The Art of Falling
Kim Moore, in her lively debut poetry collection, The Art of Falling, sets out her stall in the opening poems, firmly in the North amongst ‘My People’: “who swear without knowing they are swearing… scaffolders and plasterers and shoemakers and carers…”. ‘A Psalm for the Scaffolders’ is a hymn for her father’s profession.
The title poem riffs on the many sorts of falling “so close to failing or to falter or to fill”. The poet’s voice is direct, rhythmic, compelling. These are poems that confront the reader, steeped in realism, they are not designed to soothe or beguile. They are not designed with careful overlays of irony and although frequently clever, they are not pretentious but vigorously alive and often quite funny. In the first section there is: a visit to a Hartley street spiritualist, a train trip from Barrow to Sheffield, a Tuesday at Wetherspoons.
The author’s experience as a peripatetic brass teacher sparks several poems. The lives of others also feature throughout, including a quietly devastating central sequence, ‘How I abandoned My Body To His Keeping’: is the story of a woman embroiled in a relationship marked by coercion and violence. These are close-to-the-bone pieces, harrowing and exact.
The final section includes beautifully imagined character portraits of John Lennon and Wallace Hartley (the violinist on the Titanic), as well as Jazz trumpeter Chet Baker and the poet Shelley and other poems on: suffragettes, a tattoo inspired by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and a poetic letter addressed to a ‘Dear Mr Gove’.
The title poem riffs on the many sorts of falling “so close to failing or to falter or to fill”. The poet’s voice is direct, rhythmic, compelling. These are poems that confront the reader, steeped in realism, they are not designed to soothe or beguile. They are not designed with careful overlays of irony and although frequently clever, they are not pretentious but vigorously alive and often quite funny. In the first section there is: a visit to a Hartley street spiritualist, a train trip from Barrow to Sheffield, a Tuesday at Wetherspoons.
The author’s experience as a peripatetic brass teacher sparks several poems. The lives of others also feature throughout, including a quietly devastating central sequence, ‘How I abandoned My Body To His Keeping’: is the story of a woman embroiled in a relationship marked by coercion and violence. These are close-to-the-bone pieces, harrowing and exact.
The final section includes beautifully imagined character portraits of John Lennon and Wallace Hartley (the violinist on the Titanic), as well as Jazz trumpeter Chet Baker and the poet Shelley and other poems on: suffragettes, a tattoo inspired by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and a poetic letter addressed to a ‘Dear Mr Gove’.
- GenresPoetry
72 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2015
7 people are currently reading
176 people want to read
About the author
Kim Moore
9 books35 followersKim Moore lives in Barrow, Cumbria. She has a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University, and now works there as a Lecturer in Creative Writing.
Her poems have been published in the TLS, Poetry Review, Poetry London, and elsewhere. She regularly appears at festivals and events, her prize-winning pamphlet, If We Could Speak Like Wolves (Smith-Doorstop) was chosen as an Independent Book of the Year in 2012 and was shortlisted for other prizes. Moore won an Eric Gregory Award in 2011 and the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2010. In 2014 she won a Northern Promise award. She writes a thoughtful blog and has a wide social media following. The Art of Falling (Seren) is her debut collection. Her latest poetry collection All The Men I Never Married (Seren, 2021) won the Forward Prize for Best Collection. What The Trumpet Taught Me (Smith/Doorstop, 2022) is her first creative non-fiction book, followed by Are You Judging Me Yet? Poetry and Everyday Sexism (Seren, 2023).
Her poems have been published in the TLS, Poetry Review, Poetry London, and elsewhere. She regularly appears at festivals and events, her prize-winning pamphlet, If We Could Speak Like Wolves (Smith-Doorstop) was chosen as an Independent Book of the Year in 2012 and was shortlisted for other prizes. Moore won an Eric Gregory Award in 2011 and the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2010. In 2014 she won a Northern Promise award. She writes a thoughtful blog and has a wide social media following. The Art of Falling (Seren) is her debut collection. Her latest poetry collection All The Men I Never Married (Seren, 2021) won the Forward Prize for Best Collection. What The Trumpet Taught Me (Smith/Doorstop, 2022) is her first creative non-fiction book, followed by Are You Judging Me Yet? Poetry and Everyday Sexism (Seren, 2023).
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
August 5, 2018
When I made starting to read contemporary poetry one of my 'reading goals' for this year, this was exactly what I was hoping to find. Reading this collection was a tremendous experience from start to finish. I read it slowly, a poem at a time, taking the time to re-read lines over and over to get the full experience, and still I did not want it to end. I'll be coming back to these very soon, I believe.
Moore is a poet from my local area. Indeed, I discovered from recommendations from friends who have seen her live readings, including one who is a poet herself and is lucky enough to have Moore as a friend and mentor. The wonderful sense of place of many of Moore's poems blew me away. Is it possible to feel homesick for place I am currently living in right now and actually most of the time feel desperate to escape from? Somehow, Moore managed to bring up these emotions in me, particularly in the first of the three sections. The poems in this section touched on themes of family, growing up working class, and of the local area and its sense of home. Here are a few of my favourites from this first section:
- 'A Psalm for the Scaffolders' is a wonderful celebration of the workers and scaffolders, like the speaker's father. I love the feeling of movement and space and height that the poem's form allows.
- I clearly remember the subject of 'The Messiah, St. Bees Priory', the Cumbrian shootings of 2010. I honestly got chills at the moment, halfway through my first read of the poem, when I realised the poem's subject, remembering that time, "when villages, hardly talked about before / were the names on everybody's lips."
- I loved the personification of a house in the poem 'In Praise of Arguing', the chaos and again the movement that Moore seems to do so well.
- 'Barrow to Sheffield' a poem recounting a train journey, the character of the land and this area.
The second section recounts an abusive relationship, nearly chronologically, from the earlier poems seemingly written in the moment, to later in the section where the speaker is reminiscing and trying to make sense of the past. I ended this section in tears; it was exceedingly powerful and emotionally overwhelming. Here is an example of just one moment that really shook me, of which there were many, from 'Your Name' on p.41:
I can highly recommend Moore to absolutely anyone, even if you've not tried much poetry before; she writes in a wonderfully accessible way, but is still able to touch upon deep and powerful matters. Now here's hoping I can attend one of her poetry readings in the future. I'd love to hear her read some of these out herself!
Moore is a poet from my local area. Indeed, I discovered from recommendations from friends who have seen her live readings, including one who is a poet herself and is lucky enough to have Moore as a friend and mentor. The wonderful sense of place of many of Moore's poems blew me away. Is it possible to feel homesick for place I am currently living in right now and actually most of the time feel desperate to escape from? Somehow, Moore managed to bring up these emotions in me, particularly in the first of the three sections. The poems in this section touched on themes of family, growing up working class, and of the local area and its sense of home. Here are a few of my favourites from this first section:
- 'A Psalm for the Scaffolders' is a wonderful celebration of the workers and scaffolders, like the speaker's father. I love the feeling of movement and space and height that the poem's form allows.
- I clearly remember the subject of 'The Messiah, St. Bees Priory', the Cumbrian shootings of 2010. I honestly got chills at the moment, halfway through my first read of the poem, when I realised the poem's subject, remembering that time, "when villages, hardly talked about before / were the names on everybody's lips."
- I loved the personification of a house in the poem 'In Praise of Arguing', the chaos and again the movement that Moore seems to do so well.
- 'Barrow to Sheffield' a poem recounting a train journey, the character of the land and this area.
The second section recounts an abusive relationship, nearly chronologically, from the earlier poems seemingly written in the moment, to later in the section where the speaker is reminiscing and trying to make sense of the past. I ended this section in tears; it was exceedingly powerful and emotionally overwhelming. Here is an example of just one moment that really shook me, of which there were many, from 'Your Name' on p.41:
Because they tried to make me say your name,In the final section, the standouts for me were 'The Dead Tree', in which a tree is struck by lightening, 'Suffragette', and the final poem of the collection 'New Year's Eve', a reminiscence of what has come before, while looking to the future.
the shame and blame and frame of it,
the dirty little game of it, the dark and distant
heart of it, the cannot be a part of it,
the bringing back the taste of it till I was changed
inside the flame of it, the cut and slap and shut
of it, the rut and fuck and muck of it,
the not-forgotten hurt of it, the syllable
stop-dead of it, the starting in the throat of it,
the ending at the teeth of it.
I can highly recommend Moore to absolutely anyone, even if you've not tried much poetry before; she writes in a wonderfully accessible way, but is still able to touch upon deep and powerful matters. Now here's hoping I can attend one of her poetry readings in the future. I'd love to hear her read some of these out herself!
May 11, 2016
'This is for falling which is so close to failing / or to falter or fill…'
The Art of Falling is an impressive debut from Kim Moore who has previously been published in TLS, Poetry Review, Poetry London and elsewhere. She has an MA from Manchester Metropolitan University and is already a winner of several awards, including the Independent Book of the year for her pamphlet, If We Could Speak Like Wolves, poems from which also make an appearance in this collection.
The Art of Falling is split into three parts, and though varied in style and subject, a central theme of falling does seem to thread through all of the poems. And the Soul, the first poem in the collection is inspired by a line from Plato in which Moore starts off, 'And the soul, if the she is to know herself / must look into the soul and find / what kind of beast is hiding.' The poem is lyrical, well structured and it struck me as a beautiful way of kicking the collection off, and it left me wondering, what kind of beast is hiding between Moore’s words? Poetry often renders painful memories into form, and in the poem, My People, she doesn’t evoke whimsical memories, but rather a more deliberately sardonic and realistic take on her people’s character and history. In the first part of the collection she covers many subjects, ranging from regret and wanting to turn back time, to learning an instrument, to the life of scaffolders, seeing a psychic, and finally to the poem that gave the collection its name. The Art of Falling, is a sublime poem which brilliantly plays off the theme of falling and showcases Moore’s ability with rhythm, line and form.
The second part of the collection entitled, How I Abandoned My Body To His Keeping, is themed around violence and hate, and the desperate desire to escape it. In these poems, Moore channels a desire to be more powerful and safe from the physical powers of a man. In the poem entitled, The World’s Smallest Man, such desires are best demonstrated in the lines, 'till you are less than a grain of salt / so small you are living on my skin. / And, once I breathe, I breathe you in.' These poems deal with raw emotions and of human frailty in the face of violence. In the title poem of this section I was impressed by the descriptive power and stark images evoked by such lines as, 'The birds could have fallen from the sky like stones and I wouldn’t have noticed.' Fittingly the section is finished off with a poem entitled, Human, in which Moore imagines the man who has nothing in his life but the words that were inspired by his own cruelty, 'I imagine you reading about yourself in the safety of your car,' in which Moore closes, 'I want you to read these words, I try to make you human.'
In the last section of the book we have the poem, If We Could Speak Like Wolves, in which Moore compares the complexities and simplicities of animal nature against those of human beings and marriage, 'if I could rub my scent along your shins to make / you mine.' The standout poem in this section for me was, The Dead Tree, in which Moore talks of a tree’s soul released by a final lightning strike, and the wonder of where that lost soul might end up, 'Here is the tree, struck by lightning / five terrible times and it survived / until the last, when it dropped / every leaf it had and would ever have / down to the ground in fright.' The last poem in the book is, New Year’s Eve, which is a wonderful way to end the collection, leaving the reader to reminisce about their own New Year’s Eve, and the renewed dreams and future hopes associated with that time of year, 'the waiting for midnight, talking to strangers / as what’s left of the year drags itself off.'
From the surface this is a very accessible collection of poems, yet Moore isn’t afraid to dip her feet into the colder subjects of the human condition, and many of her poems are deceptively deep. Her voice is direct, uncensored, and her observations of the world satisfyingly bleak and full of truths, though not free of hope. The mention of stones in a few of the poems in this collection made me think about falling and the weight of human emotion, a weight that gravity will always bring back to the earth, so falling therefore is perhaps a fate no one can escape. This is an impressive debut from Moore and one that begs repeated reading, for poetry of this quality should certainly rise, not fall.
I received this book for free in a goodreads giveaway, and this is my honest and unbiased review in compliance with FTC guidelines.
The Art of Falling is an impressive debut from Kim Moore who has previously been published in TLS, Poetry Review, Poetry London and elsewhere. She has an MA from Manchester Metropolitan University and is already a winner of several awards, including the Independent Book of the year for her pamphlet, If We Could Speak Like Wolves, poems from which also make an appearance in this collection.
The Art of Falling is split into three parts, and though varied in style and subject, a central theme of falling does seem to thread through all of the poems. And the Soul, the first poem in the collection is inspired by a line from Plato in which Moore starts off, 'And the soul, if the she is to know herself / must look into the soul and find / what kind of beast is hiding.' The poem is lyrical, well structured and it struck me as a beautiful way of kicking the collection off, and it left me wondering, what kind of beast is hiding between Moore’s words? Poetry often renders painful memories into form, and in the poem, My People, she doesn’t evoke whimsical memories, but rather a more deliberately sardonic and realistic take on her people’s character and history. In the first part of the collection she covers many subjects, ranging from regret and wanting to turn back time, to learning an instrument, to the life of scaffolders, seeing a psychic, and finally to the poem that gave the collection its name. The Art of Falling, is a sublime poem which brilliantly plays off the theme of falling and showcases Moore’s ability with rhythm, line and form.
The second part of the collection entitled, How I Abandoned My Body To His Keeping, is themed around violence and hate, and the desperate desire to escape it. In these poems, Moore channels a desire to be more powerful and safe from the physical powers of a man. In the poem entitled, The World’s Smallest Man, such desires are best demonstrated in the lines, 'till you are less than a grain of salt / so small you are living on my skin. / And, once I breathe, I breathe you in.' These poems deal with raw emotions and of human frailty in the face of violence. In the title poem of this section I was impressed by the descriptive power and stark images evoked by such lines as, 'The birds could have fallen from the sky like stones and I wouldn’t have noticed.' Fittingly the section is finished off with a poem entitled, Human, in which Moore imagines the man who has nothing in his life but the words that were inspired by his own cruelty, 'I imagine you reading about yourself in the safety of your car,' in which Moore closes, 'I want you to read these words, I try to make you human.'
In the last section of the book we have the poem, If We Could Speak Like Wolves, in which Moore compares the complexities and simplicities of animal nature against those of human beings and marriage, 'if I could rub my scent along your shins to make / you mine.' The standout poem in this section for me was, The Dead Tree, in which Moore talks of a tree’s soul released by a final lightning strike, and the wonder of where that lost soul might end up, 'Here is the tree, struck by lightning / five terrible times and it survived / until the last, when it dropped / every leaf it had and would ever have / down to the ground in fright.' The last poem in the book is, New Year’s Eve, which is a wonderful way to end the collection, leaving the reader to reminisce about their own New Year’s Eve, and the renewed dreams and future hopes associated with that time of year, 'the waiting for midnight, talking to strangers / as what’s left of the year drags itself off.'
From the surface this is a very accessible collection of poems, yet Moore isn’t afraid to dip her feet into the colder subjects of the human condition, and many of her poems are deceptively deep. Her voice is direct, uncensored, and her observations of the world satisfyingly bleak and full of truths, though not free of hope. The mention of stones in a few of the poems in this collection made me think about falling and the weight of human emotion, a weight that gravity will always bring back to the earth, so falling therefore is perhaps a fate no one can escape. This is an impressive debut from Moore and one that begs repeated reading, for poetry of this quality should certainly rise, not fall.
I received this book for free in a goodreads giveaway, and this is my honest and unbiased review in compliance with FTC guidelines.
February 26, 2023
Reflections and lessons learned:
“ …give her strength to push the life back in it,
to follow it through the city streets to the museum,
where more books about women live
than on any other subject in the world”
Trains and pubs, and work and families, and music and teaching, and health and nature… life and living all broken down with reflections from a character that feels really familiar without properly knowing them
“ …give her strength to push the life back in it,
to follow it through the city streets to the museum,
where more books about women live
than on any other subject in the world”
Trains and pubs, and work and families, and music and teaching, and health and nature… life and living all broken down with reflections from a character that feels really familiar without properly knowing them
August 19, 2020
Not bad, but it didn't really reach me
August 27, 2015
An excellently ordered collection. From the entrancing opening poem ‘And the Soul’, through an exploration of the North and its people into the darkly intriguing poetic sequence ‘How I Abandoned My Body To His Keeping’ Moore displays a talent for language that is not afraid to toe the line with the darkness.
There are poems in this collection which simply sing. The titular poem ‘The Art of Falling’ being just one amongst many that really gripped me. This would have reached 5 stars save for the what I have come to think of as the ‘Brass’ poems. They didn’t seem to reach me as well as the others.
I liked the wolves that kept realising odd mournful howls here and there – often at the end of a poem, often unexpected. At first they seemed a little peculiar – like an image that should have been cropped out when the rest of its imagery disappeared in an earlier draft. Yet as the collection gathered pace they started to make sense, to be something that I searched for.
I read this collection through in one go = something I rarely choose to do with poetry. It felt like a fast read, perhaps propelled along by the shape of the poems and their irregular punctuation. I’ll definitely return to it to analyse and enjoy it further but even from that first read through some phrases have already stuck with me: ‘two ghosts disintegrating on the lens’, ‘thoughts that took over the day like weather’ and ‘I knew you, then I didn’t, then I stopped.’
There are poems in this collection which simply sing. The titular poem ‘The Art of Falling’ being just one amongst many that really gripped me. This would have reached 5 stars save for the what I have come to think of as the ‘Brass’ poems. They didn’t seem to reach me as well as the others.
I liked the wolves that kept realising odd mournful howls here and there – often at the end of a poem, often unexpected. At first they seemed a little peculiar – like an image that should have been cropped out when the rest of its imagery disappeared in an earlier draft. Yet as the collection gathered pace they started to make sense, to be something that I searched for.
I read this collection through in one go = something I rarely choose to do with poetry. It felt like a fast read, perhaps propelled along by the shape of the poems and their irregular punctuation. I’ll definitely return to it to analyse and enjoy it further but even from that first read through some phrases have already stuck with me: ‘two ghosts disintegrating on the lens’, ‘thoughts that took over the day like weather’ and ‘I knew you, then I didn’t, then I stopped.’
October 14, 2015
I love these poems. Highly recommended. She's also an incredible reader--so grateful that I got to see her live (and read alongside her at that!!).
May 1, 2016
Some truly spectacular poems in here, particularly the title series and some of the list poems.
September 28, 2022
Recently the Poetry Foundation published an essay entitled “Expanding the Political” by Kim Moore. On a whim, I read it and found myself taken with it. On the strength of Dr. Moore’s thought-provoking prose, I proceeded to buy her collection The Art of Falling. I felt I was due to read another poetry collection. Here is a sample from the poem "Barrow to Sheffield."
still I love the train, its sheer unstoppability
its relentless pressing on, and the way the track
stretches its limb across the estuary
as the sheep eat greedily at the salty grass,
and thinking that if the sheep aren’t rounded up
will they stand and let the tide come in…
Many of the poems focus on occupation, from boxers to scaffolders. Generally, the poems are accessible on a first read, though there is much more to discover with second and third reads. I noticed early on how an image might carry over from one poem to the next. Of course, the central image of falling plays out with the greatest prominence. Other images recur as well: tides, trees, sheep, dogs, insects, and the moon to name a few. For me, reading the entire collection in a day, it felt like I learned a vocabulary in the first third of the book which allowed the second set of poems to hit with full effect.
Moore uses devices like rhyme and enjambment to great effect, tucking a rhyme in the middle of line but making it unmistakable with punctuation. I enjoyed how she employed technique to heighten meaning without beating me over the head. Many of the poems drive toward a strong conclusion, exhibiting meaning and climax of images in motion. When the underlying themes and meaning are heavy and dissembling, the artistry makes them easier to digest.
The final third of the book felt less engrossing to me. Admittedly, the day was growing long, and my mind was ready to call it a night. Many poems serve as homage or portraits for real-life poets or musicians. Her poem titled "Wallace Hartley," after the violinist who played aboard the Titanic as it sank, pays a poignant tribute, touching in its straightforwardness and succinctness. And this can be said of so many of these poems, whose deeply personal and painful undertones become apparent while reading the collection.
I highly recommend The Art of Falling—one of the most satisfying and worthwhile collections I have read.
still I love the train, its sheer unstoppability
its relentless pressing on, and the way the track
stretches its limb across the estuary
as the sheep eat greedily at the salty grass,
and thinking that if the sheep aren’t rounded up
will they stand and let the tide come in…
Many of the poems focus on occupation, from boxers to scaffolders. Generally, the poems are accessible on a first read, though there is much more to discover with second and third reads. I noticed early on how an image might carry over from one poem to the next. Of course, the central image of falling plays out with the greatest prominence. Other images recur as well: tides, trees, sheep, dogs, insects, and the moon to name a few. For me, reading the entire collection in a day, it felt like I learned a vocabulary in the first third of the book which allowed the second set of poems to hit with full effect.
Moore uses devices like rhyme and enjambment to great effect, tucking a rhyme in the middle of line but making it unmistakable with punctuation. I enjoyed how she employed technique to heighten meaning without beating me over the head. Many of the poems drive toward a strong conclusion, exhibiting meaning and climax of images in motion. When the underlying themes and meaning are heavy and dissembling, the artistry makes them easier to digest.
The final third of the book felt less engrossing to me. Admittedly, the day was growing long, and my mind was ready to call it a night. Many poems serve as homage or portraits for real-life poets or musicians. Her poem titled "Wallace Hartley," after the violinist who played aboard the Titanic as it sank, pays a poignant tribute, touching in its straightforwardness and succinctness. And this can be said of so many of these poems, whose deeply personal and painful undertones become apparent while reading the collection.
I highly recommend The Art of Falling—one of the most satisfying and worthwhile collections I have read.
December 30, 2024
I enjoyed reading Moore’s blog posts for “16 Days of Action Against Domestic Violence” which explain the process of each of the 16 poems in the sequence of the second section. It deepened my understanding of each poem and revealed the beautiful/harrowing intricacies within.
I didn’t find the 3rd section as strong as the first two.
I didn’t find the 3rd section as strong as the first two.
June 16, 2019
I heard Kim Moore recite ' And In This Year ' on radio 4 a while back. She had me totally mesmerized. Ben a fan ever since. An outstanding poet and wordsmith 💟📚😄
October 10, 2019
Poems with passion, depth and raw emotion, written elegantly and knowingly.
January 21, 2023
A fine poet who writes real and wonderfully well written poems.
July 4, 2025
Trigger warning for the II part, it can be both a healer and a breaker
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April 17, 2017A great collection of poetry with a feminist edge - gave a copy to my cousin who is studying English Lit
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