In ‘Street Sailing’, Matt Gilbert looks anew upon familiar streetscapes. His reader can’t not keep looking

In a blog post announcing the release of his debut collection, Matt Gilbert wrote:

‘Unlike maths, or wordle, there’s no ‘answer’ to a poem – only readings’

Poetry certainly resists the neatness of a single irrefutable solution. Instead, it invites readers to think beyond the obvious and acknowledge the plurality of possibilities that could exist.

That’s not to say though that a poem can’t be a puzzle. A puzzle in the sense of a brainteaser, a head-scratcher; a foot-tapping, eye-rolling, knee-jerking conundrum; a challenge, a problem. The world of poetry has many problems.

Even if a poem can’t be solved, it can have answers. These answers are less likely to be 43 or TOAST than another poem sparked into life by the original or a feeling too complex to put into words. A poem’s solution, however splintered and plural, is there in the text. Where else could it be? To find it: don’t not keep looking.

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‘Street Sailing’ abounds with linguistic games, which pop onto the page like ‘terse notes sent rattling up through buried pipes’. The title already makes the reader do a double take: how can we sail through the street? Is the alliteration so alluring as to prevail over sense?

The answer is yes – and no. The wind that propels Gilbert’s vessel is rhythm and melody, ‘floating for no reason | until the cuff began to form, | sprouting from that plastic seed…’. But sailing the streets is not merely wordplay; it is an ideal metaphor for how the collection asks its reader to look again at familiar sights. Discovery comes in stages that slowly reveal themselves: first, ‘a sleeve, arms empty | followed by pocket, collar, yoke’.

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The poetic game does not have winners or losers; the joy is in the taking part. In ‘Street Sailing’, everyday scenes are taken apart and it is the reader’s job to reassemble them.

In ‘How to flatten the moon’, the poet combines a critique of modern life and its abundance of technologies with an anecdotal plea for the importance of poetry. The title could be taken from a clickbait blog post and, like this dubious genre, you have to read (or scroll) all the way to the end of the poem to get the answer:

… now ease the phone
from your pocket, point it up
towards our ancient friend,
then click.

Now you’ve done it.

The answer is simple: a photo can flatten the moon. But what does that mean?

Given that poets have obsessed over the moon for millennia, there is a certain self-deprecating nod when Gilbert romanticises ‘the rounded milky glint | of our almost full fat | satellite’. Is the point then that, where photography flattens and dulls, poetry adds depth and revivifies? The poet’s repeated focus on the present moment emphasises the disconnect between living through screens and LIVING with eyes wide open and capital everything. Poetry is firmly in the latter camp: to write poetry is to observe, really observe; to read poetry is to read and re-read and re-examine everything through someone else’s eyes. Technology has made our lives easier but it has also overcomplicated something as simple as looking at the night sky: as the poet exclaims, ‘there it is, there it is’. Look at it!

Other readings are available. Flat does not have to mean bad. The final line is deliciously ambiguous: ‘Now you’ve done it’ could just as easily be jubilant as derisive, depending on where the stress lands. Capturing a complex astrological body in an accessible 2D-frame could be considered a modern miracle. In the ‘Editor’s introduction’, Matthew M. C. Smith extols the photographic qualities of Gilbert’s collection, exclaiming that ‘his poetry wanders, camera-like […] then zooms in, on the minutiae that most of us ignore’. Flattening boxes before recycling them helps more boxes be recycled.

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It’s not just the moon that people fail to notice. Drivers are an easy, and justifiable, target: ‘Rush hour cars kept coming, | oblivious to all but road’, while ‘rasping corvids’ and a ‘lone indignant… sparrowhawk’ perform to an empty audience high above (‘Take the second exit’).

The image could easily be a metaphor for governments’ narrow focus on short-term economic growth, while climate catastrophe creeps ever closer. It could also be a critique of humanity’s treatment of non-human animals, whose suffering on farms and in slaughterhouses is kept well out of sight. Either way, there is hope: although the ‘petrol-powered | roulette balls’ keep spinning, the drivers are ‘desperate for their exit’. If systems can be adapted to redefine priorities, the drivers can adapt with them.

‘Rush hour cars kept coming, | oblivious to all but road’

Although some animals are ignored and others are deliberately obscured, a fox hit by a train is grimly compulsive viewing for the poet: ‘I couldn’t not keep looking’ (‘Foxed’). The double negative is symptomatic of humanity’s confused relationship with other species: most people don’t want to harm animals but neither do they want to stop using (and abusing) them. The presence of violence and death uncomfortably close to a shielded human space (‘the platform’s end’) is a reminder of the interconnectedness of nature and mortality – however hard we try to place ourselves above other life forms. Twinged by this sorry sight, the poet feels duty bound to convert his feelings into words: ‘In the absence of a ritual | I shall mark your empty legend’.

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Putting into words the illogical act of staring at something repulsive seems a fitting way to describe why poetry exists. ‘Street Sailing’ is a puzzle with many readings and many answers. Matt Gilbert is a skilful setter, spraying clues, hints and red herrings all around his poetic landscape. Getting lost in this impressive debut is no bad thing.

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Matt Gilbert, Street Sailing (Black Bough Poetry, 2023). Available here: Street Sailing – Black Bough Poetry