Don Paterson

When I was fitter and younger I’d always go to Ledbury Poetry Festival. I’d go through the programme, and try to find a day where it would be worth driving for 75 minutes, going to three or four events spaced out over the day, having a lunch in a pub garden, and driving back in he evening. Now that looks like hard work, and in any case I couldn’t find a day-full of evens. So I settled for the easy life, booking into a Don Paterson reading on zoom.

It was well worth it. He’s dry and entertaining, a thoughtful analyst of poems as well as a skilled and versatile practitioner, and by the time he’d finishd I knew I had to have his latest collection “The Arctic.” It’s a real mix, some music and impenetrable Scottish dialect, but also a powerful confrontation of contemporary themes - Brexit, Covid, climate change. Back in the day, I was often told that poetry shouldn’t try t deal with politics, but for some reason that isn’t the orthodoxy any more.

Even better, Paterson sometimes deals with the old currency - regular forms, short lines that rhyme, tight four-ling stanzas that build up steam. Jonathan Davidson, who was interviewing him at Ledbury, seemed to regard this as a lovable eccentricity, but to me it was a vindication of something I’ve always known. Of course, regular forms shouldn’t be compulsory, but you’d be crazy to ditch them altogether.