A Year in the New Life

by Jack Underwood

This new book of poems finds fresh ways of navigating a time of continual surprise and uncertainty.

Jack Underwood’s debut collection, Happiness (2015), was celebrated for its unconventional and daring ‘conversational, arresting . . . weird, singular’ ( Guardian ). Such qualities are on accomplished display in this anticipated new collection, as the poems mature and move on to a wide range of preoccupations, including imminent societal collapse and current riots; the limits of masculinity and complexities of fatherhood; as well as uncanny, often amusing scenarios, such as serving drinks to a gathering of fifteen babies or group kissing in Empathy Class. Throughout, incongruous and domestic subjects re-align in skewed lyrics and thought experiments, all presented with a generosity and tenderness that makes the poet so unmistakable – and indispensable for the strange times in which we live.

Genres: Poetry

56 pages, Paperback

First published August 3, 2021

Reviews

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘I’m a very tough architect.
Don’t fuck with my angles. I am precise and I sell
tenderness every day.’

The first half was very much a 4 for me, but the second half catapulted it all to a 5 (and beyond). There are some poems in Underwood’s new collection that got me completely mesmerised at first read, but there are also a few that lost me after a few lines. I think I am just not a clever enough reader for some of the poems. But I simply like what I like. And I just happen to like a lot of what this collection has to offer. I have a slight preference for the ones with whales, sharks (and all other deep-sea creatures), ghosts, and blood. My favourite one is ‘Blood Clot in a Winter Landscape’ for sure. If you ask me why, I wouldn’t know the right answer, but I can only say that I like how it makes me feel. That particular poem reminds me of Thomas Hardy’s poems about ‘Emma’ (a collection I hold dear to heart, mostly for sentimental reasons, but what other reasons would/could one do such a thing for). That almost gothic, but ultimately tender and cosy vibes. Ah, yes, pump all that into my bloodstreams please.

‘Twice in the night I woke and warned
the ghosts, Your surveillance had better be kind.
But they know my uglies,
my egg whites, how I glow in autumn,
comparatively, as the world dies about me…’

I was slightly surprised with how visually pleasing some of these poems look. I love the composition and style of Underwood’s new poems. Also, I do believe that these poems are meant to be read aloud for a better experience. The poems reflect and include mostly very mundane, ordinary things and matters – but they also stretch to wider/other concerns/troubles like the political climate of the UK; and the general sense of unease in that world we live in at the moment. I do enjoy the playful, almost childlike, and unapologetically angry tones of the poems. Sincerely angry, but never violently. Underwood’s poems are like strange bouquets. They smell unusual and weird, but they grow on you, and then when they do, you'd pray for them to stay forever (even if you're not particularly religious, you would). I love the very passionate and/but precise use of profanity in the poems. I do love it when a writer/poet use ‘fuck’ effectively. When done brilliantly, it’s always gloriously sublime.

‘I don’t know how the aperture works.
If there’s a foyer or waiting room, or if
you go straight off. It doesn’t trouble me
that I didn’t fuck around or win
a haunted heirloom from the panel;
didn’t curate my time to reach beyond
the remit of apologetic monologues;
didn’t kill any fash like Grandpa, nor
suck my soup through a straw following
a goodly crash; didn’t liken my light
to kindness, my kindness to a light,
nor see much fair reply in those terms,
when I gave away more than I wanted…’

Happiness didn’t resonate with me very much even though I could and still can clearly see that it was and still is a very well composed collection. But with this new collection, I was so quick to love. Ever since I got my copy of it, I’ve kept it on my bedside table, on top of my old but very precious copy of The Journals of Sylvia Plath. And/but Mishima’s tetralogy is just sitting pretty by them like a true outsider, wildly charming as expected, but still unread, so let’s not talk about that. Instead, let’s revert our attention to Underwood’s Not Even This: Poetry, parenthood and living uncertainlywhich for me is still the best fucking thing that Underwood has ever written. It’s still my favourite, and/but I think it complements this new collection very well as I do believe that they were both written at the same time. When I first read the line ‘relief, my favourite emotion’ in his poem, ‘Big Shout Out’, I almost roll my eyes and say, ‘yes, I already know’, because he has written about that in Not Even This: Poetry, parenthood and living uncertainly. I’ve certainly enjoyed Underwood’s latest collection of poems; and I can only imagine myself loving them more and more as I re-visit them again and again, later on.

‘Are you struggling? I admit I have been sick
since we met, pursuing this love-wound
like a moon beyond the windscreen.’

[Oliver Shrouder · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the style of Underwood, especially so in Happiness, but I feel his topics get lost in his poetry more often than not, and I find myself reading into a poem expecting a title and motif that I don’t end up finding - Errata, the opening poem, is a good example of this, where I find myself lost in the words by the halfway point, and I wonder what I was expecting going into it. That being said, Underwood does provide a handful of shimmering anecdotes of our “trying times” and those moments are absolutely where his writing shines

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Only a matter of time
before an empire falls
into the hands of an idiot
and there are more ways of saying things
than things worth saying;
only a matter of love to steer the wind,
which batters us daily, this only life
that climbs beyond unfashionable
beginnings, leaving us leaving it,
breathless software, a bite taken out
of the grand old narrative,
while our ghosts refuel mid-air.'

(from 'Alpha Step', p46)

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quick reread !!! He holds up mwah

[ciel · Rating 5 out of 5]

had a cry, a lovely cry & a good old giggle about Mrs God having a sandwich

[ambs! · Rating 3 out of 5]

i didn’t get all of it, but the poem Prolactin made me start crying in public in-front of skater boys so do w that what u will

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to Jack Underwood read this collection whilst I read along, which is the best way to use audiobooks for me. You can't drift off that way. It also really helps you to 'get' the rhythm of a poem. A good example here was The Landing (for Nancy Agnes) which I was almost chanting along with by the end.

I have said before that although I read a lot of poetry I'm not sure I have the technical knowledge to explain what it is I like - or don't like - about a poem. Sometimes I'm not even sure I understand what a poem is trying to say but I like it because it works on some level I don't understand. Like a spell. I found that with a few of Jack Underwood's poems. I was entrapped by the language even when I struggled with the meaning. Some of these poems I will have to come back to.

And, to be honest, I don't think that is a bad thing. Not everything needs to open itself up straight away. There is a joy in cracking something you have let bubble away in your mind. Sometimes you might never understand it. Again, that doesn't make it bad. Somethings are elusive.

A number of the poems in the collection begin with lines from other poets that he then picks up and runs with. I enjoyed those a lot.

I loved "Fifteen Babies in My Garden", "Blood Clot in a Winter Landscape", "The Novel", "Empathy Class", "This time", "A Greyhound Levitates across the Street", "There is a Supermassive Black Hole Four Million Times the Mass of the Sun at the Centre of Our Galaxy and You are Pregnant with Our Daughter", "Alpha Step ", and "Breckland."

When I read other people's reviews of poetry collections - often written by other poets - I feel like a bear of very little brain. They see things that I cannot see. For fear - or hope? - of sounding like them what I do think Jack Underwood does is look at the normal/ordinary road and give it a twist. Like one of those 'this is the picture of an everyday object, but can you tell what it is' quizzes. Where they take a photo of a stapler from a strange angle. Once you know what it is then it is obvious. I think Jack Underwood does that with people, events and emotions.

His poems about the impending birth of his child are interesting because they're not straightforward. The same can be said of love.

"...Love has always been a loss
of risklessness, like a new sky installed,
huge and ceramic, an orchestral silence
behind each door..."
from Breckland (p47)

I don't know if I've done this collection justice, but I do know that I'm interested to read his first collection, 'Happiness' and that I look forward to re-visiting this one.

Sometimes I wonder if these are even reviews.

[Siobhan · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Lying on the floor of the supermarket' was my favourite.

[Leeza]

favs: alpha step, lying on the floor of the supermarket, this time, big shout out, instead of bad news about a person i love, the novel, my name is zonal coordinator, please and thank you, a year in the new life, an envelope

concentrated towards the end - when it works he’s so brilliant eg instead of bad news, but otherwise don’t resonate with it. kind of like john berryman in that sense - lots of weird metaphor and juxtaposition in both

[Mark Friend · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Arguments I won in my head lost direction when formed out loud’

I initially grabbed this collection - A Year in the New Life - after seeing a YouTube interview with Jack Underwood which sparked my curiosity. I think there may have been some stylistic reference / comparison to John Ashbury too?

Whilst I found some of the collection a little hit and miss, I had understood from the interview that Underwood tried to push the poems into the elusive and ambiguous - to create space to process and interpret. Hence, I really connected with numerous pieces and gained great pleasure mulling over these poems. However, a few others left me not really scratching my head, but little disengaged. Maybe I had struggled to find my own way into these poems on my initial approach

I particularly love the “Poems Beginning with a Line…” series. These bounce off the lines of another poem as their starting point and then follow their own thread.

There were numerous other poems to also grab and sustained my attention: A Year in the New Life, Please and Thank You, Whatever I have done that was good I have done at the bidding of my voices, What Happened Here?, Blood Clot in the Winter Landscape, The Situation, The Novel, But I know what I like, and This time.

[Charlotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like, the best thing I’ve read all year

[Julia]

I don’t know if any if the poems will stay with me but I did enjoy most of them.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quirky, funny, bold poetry. Really easy to read.

[Jo]

"It is natural to be overwhelmed. Sometimes the summer needs a snow day."

A-fucking-men.

[Goodreeds User · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short and sweet collection with some fun and some touching poems

[Emily Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.4, I enjoyed it but I felt like his work feels really formulaic and in that way, repetitive, after a while. ‘Poetry weird’ pairings of adjectives against a big noun, swear word, irreverence for irreverence sake. That’s a Jack Underwood poem in a nutshell. I preferred the pieces that were more intimate and less showy.

[Cooch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good poems

Some of these poems are brilliantly illuminating in unexpected ways. Some of them try too hard and end up feeling weird for weird's sake or are too personal to understand in their own context.

[Sayantan Ghosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's my short review of the book in Jack Underwood's own words: "I don't think I've ever liked a poem because I felt that I understood it."

Here are my favourite lines from this book: "It is natural to be overwhelmed.
Love can be both the train and the silence
that follows it down the track."

[Serge ♆ Neptune · Rating 5 out of 5]

favourites: The Landing, What Happened Here?, Blood Clot in a Winter Landscape

[David Kuhnlein · Rating 1 out of 5]

The voice of Underwood's A Year in the New Life echoes sterilely, academic dressage.

Here's a sad cocoon of Jack's imagistic silk:

Antifa angels bathed their eyes in milk