Why Does It Feel So Late?

About Why Does It Feel So Late?

In his remarkably assured debut, Simon Thompson shows us the place where he lives, where everything inevitably comes back to the centre. The predominant impression is of a man, sometimes seen from a long way off, moving indecisively towards some overwhelming question. The poems are driven by images of the north: the wealth of rivers, the sodium lights of long winters, the broken concrete foundations of abandoned mills; these are the things that are the source of the poet's ideas. Having said that, the poems lie beyond an easy theoretical grasp; the world itself is too wild, too unruly to be contained by theory. The poems seem to say nothing but the energy contained within themselves is permanent; everything else is temporary, subject to erosion.