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By Aaron Lembo

Neil Rollinson is a poet who revels in illuminating the cerebral, and the mundane states of existence. He does so with wit, clarity and profundity. His most recent book Talking Dead was shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Poetry Prize. The book effortlessly explores the physical nature of existentialism, through a dichotomy of familiar and absurd situations.

The central sequence retells different scenes where individuals find themselves caught between life and death. In the first of these poems, ‘Talking Dead – The Wall’, for unknown reasons, two people have been captured, and are being led to their execution. One of these individuals muses on their impending doom and describes their situation as it happens:

‘We held hands as we walked,

and they walked behind us,

smoking cigarettes, talking

in hushed tones, embarrassed.’

The speaker’s matter of fact tone and cool detachment is typical of Rollinson’s verse. Although this sequence is seemingly about death, the poems appear to celebrate the temporal essence of life and all the beauty it can contain. Another poem, ‘Talking Dead – Head – Shot’, describes the immediate moments after the poem’s speaker has been shot in the head:

‘I saw each of my friends

come and look at me.

Some were frightened

and some were full of sadness.

One held my face and kissed me’

The poem ends surprisingly, with the speaker elated by their situation; asking to be shot again, the speaker states and repeats: ‘Oh, shoot me again’ at the end of the poem.

If the ‘Talking Dead’ poems celebrate life in the face of death, other poems in the book certainly celebrate life in the face of mundanity. The incredibly lyrical sequence ‘The Coffee Variations’ consisting of four short poems, have their speaker meditating on the various tastes, and subsequent emotions, they associate with types of coffee they drink. There is a comical poem about a group of individuals revelling in playing video-games all night, while the rest of the world goes on with their day to day lives. There is also a poem which explores how drinking multiple pints down the pub leads to unexpected astronomical assertions.

Rollinson’s readers have come to expect graphically visceral erotic poems, and this newest collection doesn’t disappoint. ‘Picnic’, one of the longer poems in the book, contains  supercharged diction, which describes the setting and actions of two people engaged in passionate sex outdoors:

‘greased and mucky, plastered with grass

and twigs, fucking like bunnies, rutting

like deer in England’s field, the stag

and the doe. The birds are singing,

the living are eating the dead, you’re rooted,

conjoined, at one with nature.

Amazing how good it feels’

Some of the strongest poems in the book deal with loving physical relationships in a much less overtly sexualised way. ‘Christmas in Andalucía’ describes two lovers skyping one another, due to being separated by hundreds of miles. The speaker, who is sitting in a bathtub throughout the duration of the conversation, declares to his partner that he is ‘full of loss and longing’. She then takes off her bra to expose her breasts to her lover when he decides ‘The miles are meaningless…the heart/ is hewn from elm and oak and mistletoe’.

The poetry of Talking Dead deals with the minutia of experiences with aplomb. Rollinson has managed to write poems which address life and death head on. He writes with a comic deftness that elevates the work, while still keeping it grounded in realities we can all relate to.

Talking Dead is available from Amazon and other retailers.

Aaron Lembo is currently studying my MA Creative Writing at Manchester Met. He was the joint recipient of the Bath Spa Poetry Award in 2016 and has had poems published in Erbacce, Obsessed with Pipework and Domestic Cherry. He is one of eleven poets from across the country who has been selected to take part in the Composers and Poets strand of Leeds Lieder Festival in 2017.