‘Missing the Man Next Door’ by Annie Fisher

Is there a poet more enjoyable to read than Annie Fisher? She is such good company.

Missing the Man Next Door (Mariscat Press, £9) is a shortish book – just 32 pages – but is full of good things.

She is a kindly writer. Several poems deal with the man next door of the collection’s title, who must often have been a trying neighbour, with

‘Classic FM turned up to deafening,
The cricket commentary, His Brian Blessed voice
blasting from behind the fence.
Good morning, Madam!
Good morning, Mrs BIg-Knickers’

But Annie Fisher tells us: ‘I liked that he was there./I liked the way he sang Italian operas off-key.’ Annie Fisher likes people, (And Mrs Big-Knickers was probably the cat, not Annie)

She likes poems too. ‘Mountain Lion’ is a wonderful evocation of the shock and delight of reading D.H. Lawrence’s ‘the Mountain lion’ for the first time. ‘R.S., Me, and the Great Maybe’ describes reading a book by that grumpy (but excellent) old poet R.S. Thomas, when the neighbour’s Classic F.M. starts belting out Palestrina:

I ask R.S. If he would like to dance.
Taking his silence for a yes,
I clasp his late Collected to my chest.
Before he knows what’s going on, we’re dancing cheek
to cheek across the lawn on waves of silky Kyries.

There is a touching poem about the death of her mother, and several that feature Catholic priests, whom she often regards with pity (‘They starved for lack of ordinary love.’) Not that she is a sentimental writer: (‘the skylark’s ecstasy is the sparrowhawk’s breakfast’)

But the Fisher poems I like the best are where she indulges her taste for nonsense, as in her list of ‘A Few Favourite Things’, which begins:

Beetroot, puffins, barn-owls, sheep,
silence, Marmite, pillows, sleep,
naked swimming, hugging trees,
Seamus Heaney, Scotsmen’s knees.

This is a life-enhancing book. You’ll enjoy it.

And by the way, you really should take a look at the glorious Annie Fisher poem in June Snakeskin.