Unnatural Workings by David Smith (Quoin Publishing, 1£7.50) (From The Northern Echo)

Unnatural Workings by David Smith (Quoin Publishing, 1£7.50)

4:40pm Monday 12th December 2011 in Non-Fiction By Harry Mead, Columnist

MANY poets celebrate the countryside. Many might picture a barn – from the outside. But probably few would record its “corner gloom”, dimly revealing “a cobra of plough cord and/A set of harrows, crooked teeth grinning”.

And if any noted a roof-beam contrivance of “pulleys, rope and a bar”, they would surely struggle to guess its purpose: The crucifix waiting for The next pig and knowing The exact spot onto which the blood Would drip.

David Smith knows these things – in his bones. A long business career in international freight failed to suppress inherited farming genes, strengthened by David’s upbringing on the family’s Cleveland farm. In this notable collection, his second book of verse, he embraces these diverse worlds with great assurance, mixing poems that embody the real pith and thew of farm life with others mirroring his extensive travels.

Sometimes he marries the two. His business deals, he poetically informs us, involved “trying not to slip on oilslick lawyers”. But that cut little ice with his farming relatives near his hometown of Stokesley. Back from a business trip one day he was asked, from behind a copy of the Farmer’s Weekly: “Where’s thou been then?”

When he replied “Paris”, the response came “like a scythe through nettles”: He said “Saw Billy Wood from up t’dale Apparently lost a heifer down his well...

A shake of the paper I was dismissed.”

Smith writes with humour and compassion. A fine sequence of poems paints the human picture behind the “processing” of US immigrants on Ellis Island. Equally moving is a poem inspired by two letters in a German war memorial chapel – the first from a British veteran, apologising for killing a German and stealing his wallet, hereby returned, and the other a comforting reply from his victim’s daughter. David imaginatively amplifies her forgiveness: The wallet smells like my father, fits my hand Like his.

Some of his poems evoke childhood memories. He and his pals used to spit from a railway bridge on to a passing train. “Now, walking the tumuli of disused track/All that is left on briar, dogwood and willow/ Is this morning’s frog spit”. The Middlesbrough and England footballer Wilf Mannion – judged a genius by many who should know – is also remembered through the discovery of a cigarette card on a dusty workbench: The Prince of South Bank lies Underneath rawl-plug A button and a cup Arms akimbo, military square Shirt collar turned up To meet that golden flash of hair.

The frugal punctuation detracts little from the pleasure of Smith’s poems. Universal themes, especially love lost or rejected, yield some quietly compelling lines: “Keep in touch she said/Ideal for the purpose of letting him know/She was letting him go/Gently”. But across his whole canvas it is fascinating to see how the farming images virtually engraved in Smith’s consciousness, insinuate or assert themselves. Next time you experience latecomers at a theatre, think of Smith’s description – and smile: They plough furrows of annoyance Through programmed knees and settled feet.

Original – and perfect.

• Quoin Publishing, 17 North St, Middlesbrough, TS2 1JP. The book is available in Stokesley, Guisborough, Thirsk, or contact author, 2 Thirsk Road, Stokesley, N Yorks, TS9 5BW. Tel: 01642- 710378).