Some Integrity

by Padraig Regan

Winner of the Clarissa Luard Prize 2021

In 'Minty', one of the typically charged and capacious poems in this eagerly-awaited debut collection, a mojito glass reflects:

whatever grid of bricks & wood makes up the room we
happen to be sitting in
is dilated & wrapped around a single focal-point; whatever
portion of the sky that happens

to be visible through the window becomes a convex bowl. The
weather also happens,
as it always does, & passes on, & brings those other places
where it falls into the orbit of the glass.

'To look up from Padraig Regan's words is to find oneself gently re-fitted into the world,' writes Vahni Capideo, praising Padraig Regan's 'awesome originality and honesty'. The poems of Some Integrity bring something new to the Irish lyric tradition. Queerness is a way of looking, a perspective, grounded in an awareness of the porous and provisional nature of our bodies. The book's social encounters and exchanges, its responses to the work of artists, its figures in a landscape, and its considerations of food and desire, work as capsule narratives and as an exhilarating extension of that lyric tradition.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Nonfiction, Queer

88 pages, Paperback

Published January 27, 2022

Reviews

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read and reread Regan's first two pamphlets, and was delighted to discover that they were publishing a full-length collection. Some Integrity builds on recurrent themes in their work: explorations of the body as something porous; how observing something changes it; landscape as a form of art; the space inhabited by the queer body. Regan examines these themes through studies of visual art, such as The Barberini Faun, or the queer film Pink Narcissus, by looking at food, and at the landscape of Northern Ireland. This collection also centres around a lyric essay, "Glitch", which uses a glitch within the original Pokémon games, that allowed players to enter an invisible but navigable world within the game, to explore queer being in the aftermath of the Pulse shooting. Part of the appeal of Regan's work, for me, is how esoteric it is: how the landscape of Pokémon can become a rich metaphor for the visibility and invisibility of queer lives and bodies; how a faked Vermeer painting is used to capture the journey towards seeing what is really there, rather than what we thinking is there ("He worked for seven months to get it right. / He took six years to learn to get it wrong."), how a pitcher plant can capture the eroticism of the mouth. Regan's subjects always appeal to me -- including how we change what we look at by the act of looking, the sensuousness of their explorations of food -- but I suspect that no matter their subject matter, I would be drawn into their work by their spare, clear style and their careful gaze. While their work is often populated by languorous fauns, olive oil and salmon, their poems feel as refreshing and as vital as a drink of clear water. Their work is full of philosophical depth, and yet each poems is astute, surprising, and visually rich, making them easy to read but full of gifts to be discovered. Though this collection is short, its scope is such that each poem feels expansive, and gives the reader a feeling of depth, like looking at paintings of light. I found this collection immensely pleasing and know I will return to it often.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

a reread today bc there is so much to learn from this one it is Put Together as imo the top 5 of the past five years.

one of the highest profile debut collections for a while and also one that I see being called robbed a lot . It's brilliant and amusing and sensual and queer all every cap. Taking notes from belovely Gertrude. They're one of the ones to be watching if you weren't already I'm up for whatever they have planned next.

(& so many teaching moments in here!)

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sensual poems in this debut collection are driven by curiosity, hunger and queer desire. Flora and foods are described as teasing mystery, with cheeky detail:

I’m thinking of how mushrooms will haunt a wet log like bulbous ghosts


The chicken is spatchcocked & nothing
like a book, but it lies open & creases
where its spine once was.


For as long as it take a single drop of condensation to roll its path
down the curve of a mojito glass before it’s lost in the bare wood of the table,
everything is held

in its hall of mirrors

An unusual devotion to ampersands; an erotic response to statuary, reminiscent of Richard Scott; alternating between bold sexuality and masochism to the point of not even wanting to exist; a central essay on the Orlando nightclub shooting and videogames – the book kept surprising me. I loved the fertile imagery, and appreciated Regan’s exploration of a nonbinary identity:

Often I envy the Scandinavians for their months of sun,
unpunctuated. I think I want some kind of salad. I want to feel like a real boy, sometimes.

Thank you
for this chain of daisies to wear around my neck — it makes me look so pretty.

Highly recommended, especially to readers of Séan Hewitt and Stephen Sexton.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Alycia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that unfolds in five parts, Padraig Regan’s collection Some Integrity (Carcanet) has multiple centres, each casting a close lens on the work’s various interests ranging from food, desire, queerness and self, to legacy, landscape, visual art and art creation. Though technically separate, the borders between these parts are porous, providing a satisfying sense of cohesion as both subject matter and the author’s distinctive voice diffuse across. Ekphrastic poems in response to artists like Rembrandt and Vermeer intertwine with later poems that articulate objects as if they are still life paintings, embedded with the language of artistic practice.

Full review forthcoming in The Poetry Review

[Cambridge Spinecrackers · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection’s blurb describes the poems as being like ‘capsule narratives’. This is an accurate phrase which meticulously captures the essence of Regan’s writing; attention to minutiae is this poet’s strongest asset. This is complimented by honest imagery, and careful consideration for a poem’s form.

Common themes: Food, Art (still image, moving image, sculpture), Desire, Vulnerability, Significance

Favourite poems: Rehydrating Mushrooms, Ireland, The Meat-Shaped Stone, 50ml of India Ink, On The Principles Of Alchemy

[Grae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Regan carefully identifies the ways bodies and minds can stretch to accommodate what is not quite understood yet. Amid the isolation of knowing, or pain of not knowing, they are queer or trans, the speaker finds solace in ink which bleeds across a page or plants shaped like condoms which swell. While a few phrases were perhaps more convoluted than necessary and the prose poem "Glitch City" breaks the tone in perhaps a too jarring way, this collection is gentle, vulnerable therefore commanding.

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Confronted with this
immanent tonnage
taking the shape
of my desires,

there is very little
to prevent me
from inflicting
one more revision

on the disputed
& brutal text
that is his anatomy—
just this suspicion

that if he woke & saw
the way I gazed at him
he would break my neck
as soon as look at me.'

(from 'The Barberini Faun: A Partial Reconstruction', p44)

[Vanesa Pacheco · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ This collection was inspiring! Particularly, I was drawn to how the body, food, and emotions were stitched together to create sensual moments. A lot of poems made me do a double take. They were cheeky and playful, but also honest in showing our deep thoughts. The Pokémon references were *chef’s kiss* too! Exactly what I needed to read today.

[Naomi Mckeown · Rating 5 out of 5]

So glad I decided to read this again, it's such a neatly crafted collection. I can see lovely echoes of Ciaran Carson. The food poems in particular were very needed - they queer it in such an original way.

[Dara McWade · Rating 5 out of 5]

damn padraig is good

[Elisabeth Moss · Rating 5 out of 5]

so good!! padraig beautifully blends simple language with complex ideas. im a big fan of this. so many poems i'll remember down the road. loved having them as a workshop leader in class.

[Sophie Cathérine · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was boring and had no depth. Maybe I'm not the target audience here, this was this so bad, idk.

[Tracy Gaughan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classy.

[Cameron Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

really incredible stuff

[Mustafa Bilal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the descriptive poems on artwork and the poems on food.

[Jee Koh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable with surprising observations about the body and sharp turns of phrase, but as I read on, I had the feeling of a certain monotony in the subject matter and style.

[Reuben · Rating 4 out of 5]

a collection that takes the mundane and turns it into poetry (literally and figuratively) - ‘a grapefruit’ is sublime - but it also doesn’t always know what kind of collection it is

[Desirae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this, such rich language. One of the best anthologies that I've read in a really long time.

[Anna Baird-Hassell · Rating 4 out of 5]

[4.5] distortion and glitches and innards oh my