If I struggled with Ishion Hutchinson’s House of Lords and Commons that was because all too often I felt the poems sacrificed meaning in order to be ‘poetic’. Often too poetic. For a large chunks of time I had no idea what was being said, getting lost in over-long ‘sentences’ and the tricky syntax.
I could imagine Hutchinson reading the poems at an event and people being mesmerised by the sounds he was making, the rhythms of the words – but then being unable to articulate what the pieces had truly been about.
Having said all that, ‘Marking in Venice’ is splendid – and splendidly accessible.
Ian Gouge - Writer 