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Reviewed by:
  • Sweet Nothings by Rory Waterman
  • Andrew Neilson (bio)
Rory Waterman, Sweet Nothings (Carcanet, 2020), 62 pp.

Early in this ingenious collection we find ourselves reading a series of poems about Dr. Bob Pintle, a character who first appeared at the close of [End Page 628] Rory Waterman's previous book, Sarajevo Roses. Pintle, "Senior Lecturer in Professional Creativity, Peterborough University," may or may not bear a resemblance to Rory Waterman, Senior Lecturer in English at Nottingham Trent University. The inspiration for these poems is that of the campus novel but given the verse setting, one thinks less of Kingsley Amis and Lucky Jim, and more of Amis's confederate in crime, the Philip Larkin of "Posterity." Pintle's gripes are not quite those of Jake Balokowsky, but the tyranny of tenure afflicts both characters. Here is the opening stanza of Waterman's "Curriculum Refresh":

The "Equality and Inclusion" process didn't go so well    for Pintle, when his reading list was scanned.They said "The Waste Land stinks of whitest male privilege,    v. is four-letter fury, and should be banned,and Briggflatts is a work of heteronormativity.    The gender balance is not what we demand—that's also triggering. All those in favour, do jazz hands, please."

The Pintle poems portray the landscape of contemporary academia as a toxic and unresolvable cocktail of woke point-scoring (see above) and nightmarish business-speak, as in "Re: Application":

we invite fresh applications each year,though from March 2020 all will be screenedfor written support from Lead Industry Partnerslinked to our Strategy Goals . . .

The deception and self-deception required to work in such circumstances is mined to great comic effect. Yet there is something far more serious going on here than at first glance, and the influence of Philip Larkin goes far deeper than simply donning the satirical garb of "Posterity."

Just before the Pintle poems is an autobiographical sequence entitled "The University of Life," where Waterman rehearses his early jobs before starting university. The final two poems in this sequence explicitly evoke Larkin and his poem "Reasons for Attendance" from The Less Deceived. In that poem, Larkin revisits and revises a duality between sensuality and art that is often posed by one of his own masters, W.B. Yeats—perhaps most famously in the poems "Sailing to Byzantium" and "Byzantium."

The poet-figure in "Reasons for Attendance" considers young female dancers through the window of a club and presents a contrast between the immediate gratification of the dancers and the "sex" they represent, and his own avowed preference for what he describes as the "rough-tongued bell" (the "great cathedral gong" in Yeats's "Byzantium") of "Art" and individuality. This leads to some nuanced syntax and an ambiguous ending: [End Page 629]

It speaks; I hear; others may hear as well,

But not for me, nor I for them; and soWith happiness. Therefore I stay outside,Believing this; and they maul to and fro,Believing that; and both are satisfied,If no one has misjudged himself. Or lied.

Larkin ironizes and casts doubt on the clamorous certainties of Yeats's visionary poems. Meanwhile, contrast this consideration of subjectivity with the end of "Cold Calling," the penultimate poem in Waterman's sequence, and one that opens with the line "I'd just discovered Larkin's droll precision":

"Best ignore," said Pat, our head of team,who spunked his earnings on watches, phones and carsand weekend clubbing, living a sort of dreamI couldn't share and learned I could've sharedif only I had cared. Or hadn't cared.

At play here is the same contrast between immediate sensual gratification—" spunked his earnings"—and aesthetic individualism that we see in "Reasons for Attendance" (as well as attending clubs, one can also choose to attend university). Note also the similarity between both endings, as headlong sentences are brought to an abrupt close and followed by curtailed, laconic afterthoughts.

The final poem in Waterman's sequence "Presentations" both underlines and undercuts his assumption of Larkin's pose, as he makes his debt clear:

"'If no one has misjudged himself. Or lied.'  That's how it ends. And...

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