B O X
B O X
B O X is David Spittle’s debut pamphlet about memory, surreality, relationships, (dis)connectedness and the ending and beginning of things:
“and I thought how sad it was, how pathetic
that “I love you” now became
the imploring “but I love you”
and there it was, it was, there was equivocation
and I remember the sound of gravel under tyres,
dashboard’s glow, lane’s black yawn and Winter
or maybe I remember Summer
and how a photo is the memory
and so I don’t, I don’t remember –”
"David Spittle's B O X is a puzzle and a pleasure, a quizzical and original lyric sequence about remembering, collecting, and making something of a life now. 'If form is never more than an extension of content,' as Robert Creeley famously said, Spittle asks what the dimensions of that extension are, who lives in it, and what kind of view they have from the window. Each box unpacks itself as restlessly as a page of fresh images and phrases you forgot you ever owned. 'These leather bound books? / Nope, haven't read them.' Read this instead, then read it again."
Jeremy Noel-Tod
"These poems are like the unpacking, repacking, and unpacking again of experience, of history, of culture - sometimes in awestruck fascination and other times in frantic despair. Through Spittle's eyes we see the reappraisal of vessels and placeholders; their powers of transformation, as well as their ability to create desire and longing - often with charming humour and wit. They traverse the contents of a wallet, and the cradling void. Spittle's writing is generously direct and is the urgent recording of a searching mind who, on opening one box, cannot help but find another."
Jen Calleja
"B O X is one of the most intriguing, puzzling and ultimately consoling collections I've read recently. The form immediately taps into the thingness of the best poetry, where objects are synonymous with stray thoughts and memories and the most ambitious philosophical swerves are still contained, operating under their own logic in which you're generously invited to participate. Spittle has a restless, eclectic but quietly moving technique and voice, and it's one you'll be grateful to encounter."
Luke Kennard
"David Spittle's B O X is a long, intense dream of being a person, 'brimming with possessions that have never been, nor will ever be, yours'. These sad and funny and beautiful poems resemble Cornell's boxes, or Guy Maddin's films, in that they are nothing like them. What can't be done with the things they contain? They are always 'on the brink of happening'."
Oli Hazzard
A5, 36pp