Jigsaw

Jigsaw, David Underdown’s delightful and diverse new collection, comes together to offer fresh ways of looking at the world, always sane and at the same time quietly transcendent. Whether reflecting on an encounter in the natural world or on significant moments in the story of a human life, Underdown pays attention to those small things that turn out after all to matter most. With a light step, he approaches the delicate wreck of a robin, follows a treecreeper’s hunt for bugs, imagines what might go on inside the head of a tawny owl. Wordplay and understated humour enliven many of the poems, and the final section is a tender tribute to ‘ordinary’, but never really ordinary, lives. The jigsaw brings together darkness and light, questioning and consolation. Underdown pays attention to the large-scale dangers of these Anthropocene times; at the same time, the poems illuminate and honour the courage it takes to look ordinary life in the eye. — Alex Josephy