To a Fault
Nick Laird
In this impressive debut, Nick Laird explores the sharp edge of relationships, from the intimacy of lovers to the brutality of political violence. Journeying between his native Ulster and his adopted London, he balances ideas of home and flight, the need for belonging and the need to remain outside. Formally deft, rhetorically fresh, these poems never shy from difficult choices, exploring cruelty and vengeance wherever they may be found: in love, in work and against political backdrops. But these are brave, resolute writings that resist despair at all times, affirming instead the need to rebuild and to right oneself, to dust down and carry on.
Done
We’ve come to bag the evidence.
This might be the scene of a murder.
Dustsheets and silence and blame.
The flat empties its stomach into the hall.
We have given back letters and eaten our words.
You wrote off the Volvo.
I gave you verrucas.
And like the window of a jeweller’s after closing
the shelves in the study offer up nothing.
I slowly take the steps down one by one,
and for the first time maybe,
notice the chaos,
the smouldering traffic,
the litter,
bystanders,
The Times
To a Fault by Nick Laird
reviewed by RACHEL CAMPBELL-JOHNSTON
Monarch of the clouds
Being a poet, Nick Laird writes, is a bit like opening his eyes when everyone else is praying. “Moon-eyed, unforgetting,” he hears his father’s breathing, sees his “mother’s limestone-fingered steeple”, his sister’s “tiny fidgets”. But then, he says, “the oak doors flapping slowly open to let us out,/ like some great injured bird trying to take flight”. The image echoes that of Charles Baudelaire in his famous Albatross. “The poet is like this monarch of the clouds/ riding the storm above the marksman’s range,” Baudelaire writes, but “exiled on the ground, hooted and jeered/ he cannot walk because of his great wings.” Laird never quite gets off the ground. And yet this is not the weakness, but the strength of his vision. His work leads the reader out into a sort of no-man’s land of the mind. It explores those spaces — so inscrutable and yet so instinctively sensed — that stretch between what is present and what is possible, what is earthbound and what can soar............................ more @ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-1461-1449106-1461,00.html
The Telegraph
A writer's life: Nick Laird
With his debut works of poetry and fiction, this author will escape the shadow of his famous wife, predicts Sam Leith
How to introduce Nick Laird? Faber & Faber is publishing his debut collection of poetry, Fourth Estate snapped up his first novel in a spectacular two-book deal – but still the main thing he is known for so far is being married to Zadie Smith...................................... more @ http://arts.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/01/23/bolaird.xml
tinglealley.com
My, we are gossipy today. One sign: I just read through this profile of Nick Laird — a writer who has two books forthcoming but (let’s be honest) is known now principally for being the husband of Zadie Smith — and my eyes skimmed right past the news of his lovely poetry collection (baka baka impressive baka whimsically complex baka) to the revelation that the whirlpool bath story of yesteryear was a sham:
[Laird and Smith’s] Kilburn house was doorstepped by reporters for three days over a report that the noise from their whirlpool bath was disturbing their neighbours: “We have an ordinary bath. It was completely made up, that story, from start to finish. It’s absolutely remarkable.” (Via Bookslut.)
source - http://www.tinglealley.com/index.php?p=616
