Tim Hopkins

Wittgenstein's Football Tactics Tim Hopkins

Poetry anthologies, by definition, will feature a variety of styles, themes and approaches. The possible disadvantages are that we find old favourites time and time again, which are undoubtedly worth including. But we may come to seethem too often. It's also possible that the constant switches from older verses to newer ones, and from traditional verses to experimental, may leave the reader with a mild case of poetic indigestion. With a single-poet volume, like this one, the issue is a question of taste: the reader will very soon know if the poet is to their liking or not. This is particularly the case where a poet has a narrow outlook in terms of style and subject matter. Readers may be discomfited by a constant adherence to Political Correctness, or by an undisguised affiliation. The hope with this volume is that the poet's catholicity when it comes to technique and subject matter will avoid the problem mentioned above. A lack of certainty or dogmatism is healthy for a poet in that the imagination may work more freely, thus eschewing the limitations of a fixed view of the world. If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then even a casual glance at the poems in this collection will reveal breadth rather than narrowness of outlook. There are very short poems, and some longer ones; there are serious verses as well as humorous ones; there are verses formal in structure alongside those without such constraints. But ultimately what counts is the pleasure afforded to readers. In this respect, it is to be hoped that this volume will succeed in pleasing those who turn its pages.