This Is Not About What You Think
This Is Not About What You Think
Jim Murdoch
Fandango Virtual (19 July 2010)
ISBN 978-0-9550636-3-3
Paperback: 132 pages
12.8 x 19.8cm
It may be something of a surprise to discover that novelist Jim Murdoch (Living with the Truth and Stranger than Fiction) is fundamentally a poet, but he has been writing poetry longer than many of his readers have been drawing breath. This debut collection of his poetry would be at home on the shelf between volumes of Philip Larkin and Harold Pinter, both masters of straight hitting observational poetry. In the same vein, Murdoch's work delivers home truths with a wry innocence and subtle wisdom in language everyone can connect with.
The titular poem opens the collection with these words:
Every name and place has been changed,
what we did and why - all changed,
the dates and times, how we really felt,
the reasons we wouldn't stay away,
everything slightly altered, twisted,
to accuse the innocents
and excuse those guilty...
In his introduction, the author tells us:
"No poem is ever about what you think it is. You're always required to read in between the lines and so it's up to each reader to provide his or her context and meaning generally from dipping into their own experiences. This is true of other art forms but it is especially true of poetry. The mind demands order so we try to make sense out of the words in front of us. We decide who's talking and about what.
"Collections bring additional problems because we feel a need to connect the poems; we look for common threads, a story when there is none. There is no story to this collection but you will find yourself looking for one. Even if the poems had not been arranged in the order they have been you would still see that they chart a life from childhood through to old age but it is not my life nor the life of anyone I know or know of.
"What is the purpose of poetry: to communicate or to record? It can be both. My poetry is actually written primarily to exorcise, to get a specific thought or feeling out of my head so I can examine it before dealing with and then discarding it. The writing process is more important to me than the finished product. Once written I understand myself a little more. I may still be carrying around the same baggage but it's packed a little more neatly."