THE BREAKFAST ROOM
Stewart Conn
Bloodaxe Books, Paperback, 24th February 2010, pp64;
ISBN 978-1-85224-856-7
Price £8.95

Phil Sidney

The geniality and generosity of Stewart Conn as a narrator is established right from the beginning. ‘Invitation’ welcomes the reader into The Breakfast Room where, proffering an umbrella, he solicitously advises her to keep ‘a lookout // for tripwires or briers that might snag your hair’ and to ‘Reassure yourself regarding small carnivores.’ Although appreciated, these warnings are unnecessary, for The Breakfast Room is more well-tended garden than wild wood. Flowers proliferate, from the eponymous blooms in ‘The Camellia House’ to the ‘lavender and thyme ladling the air’ in ‘The Life Ahead’; while the collection is well-cultivated in other ways, abounding in responses to art and music (not least in the title-poem, inspired by the Bonnard painting of the same name that features on the cover).

Conn has a gardener’s eye and a gardener’s sense, simultaneously practical (‘I see you’ve chosen sensible footwear’, he remarks approvingly in ‘Invitation’) and alive to the microcosmic wonder of life and growth underfoot, what he calls ‘the unregarded epiphanies of the everyday’ (‘The Life Ahead’). Unregarded, that is, but for Conn, who does an awful lot of regarding, both in the sense of gaze and of esteem. His eyes are particularly acute to the shifting relationship between the real and imagined, his perspective morphing in ‘Mull of Oa’ between what he sees and what is there as ‘seal turns to rock’. ‘On the Lagoon’ lauds a painting that ‘strives to please both eye and spirit’ if the book’s second section repeatedly describes poetry as ‘illusion’, it’s an illusion to the eye but not to the spirit.

The poet’s freedom with perspective gives him generosity, as he shifts between the points of view of spectator, subject and painter in ‘The Breakfast Room’. It’s this ability to identify, to see others with a wry tenderness, that makes The Breakfast Room such a charming read, especially in the love poems that comprise the book’s third and final section. Conn provides intimate portraits of the particular filled with the universal, like ‘the twin-lugged loving cup with our initials/ intertwined, unbreakable because imagined, / Brimful of memories that can never spill’ (‘The Loving Cup’). These love-lyrics are some of the best and most touching poems in the collection, whether portraying the conjuring of intimacy out of absence in ‘Anchorage’ or in ‘Carpe Diem’s evoking the preciousness of time and each other.

Conn’s powers of sympathy often stretch beyond his intimate ties, however: the collection is replete with benevolent, good-humoured acts of the imagination, whether towards his window-cleaner’s golfing (‘I like to think he shows prowess’- ‘Let There Be Light’) or a hulking Texan’s new-found Scottish roots:

I eagerly await the sight
of those massive hands serving the full Scottish breakfast,
or cradling a clutch of speckled eggs in the soft dawn light.

(‘Homecoming Scotland’)

This is not to say that The Breakfast Room is exclusively cosy and untroubled. The book is scattered with threat, the sight of a beautiful woodpecker triggering thoughts of ‘the sparrowhawk’s return’ (‘Just How It Was’), while a pastoral scene on a plate prompts the fear that ‘our Arcadia could topple/ and shatter to shards on the kitchen floor’ (‘Arcadia’). Yet the chill of death, tragedy, sadness, never quite overpowers the poems: acknowledged and incorporated, it adds depth and tone to the assured tranquillity to the collection as a whole.

Indeed, the few stumbles that Conn makes in The Breakfast Room seem to be due to the poet knowing what he’s doing almost too well. Occasionally he reaches too assuredly for the hackneyed epiphany (‘Gondola’ ends with the identification of the titular barque with ‘ourselves, too, as we steer/ into the wind, bearing life’s freight’ joining the slow-moving flotilla of poets who’ve made exactly the same metaphor), and there are times when his grip on language loosens a little. However, these occasional missteps do not detract from how good, and full of goodness, The Breakfast Room is: Conn is droll, wise, and illuminating company.