For two decades or more, the name Henry Normal was most often associated with an illustrious string of hit television comedies such as The Mrs Merton Show, The Royle Family, The Mighty Boosh and Gavin and Stacey. His roles on these shows included various combinations of creator, writer, script editor and executive producer.

In recent years, however, Normal has become increasingly recognised as a poet thanks to his much loved 'occasional series' for BBC Radio 4, A Normal ..., his epic UK tour alongside similarly celebrated poet Brian Bilston, and his prodigious poetic output which numbers six volumes of work in the past five years alone.

His latest publication is An Alphabet of Storms (Flapjack Press), and its subtitle, 'a premature collection of posthumous poems', leaves us in no doubt that this collection will take us through some heavy weather whilst retaining the trademark dry humour with which Normal makes difficult subjects so much easier to face. The book's opening poem, ‘Empire of Rain’, somehow manages in just 20 lines to rally us all to stand together against colonialism through the metaphor of our national obsession with rain: “Only when the individual / is joined by others / has it succeeded.”

Placing this as the first poem was no accident as it sets up the reader for a carefully crafted collection in which serious themes lurk beside or beneath humorous sketches of modern British domestic life, seen from the viewpoint of a man in later life.

In ‘Redistribution’, for example, Normal bemoans, in rollicking rhyme and metre, how the hair on his head is thinning whilst growing abundantly elsewhere:

 

     I'm hirsute in my hooter

     my nostrils are like forests

     If nose hairs were azaleas

     I could open up a florist's

 

Visits to the doctor receive similar treatment in ‘Patiently Yours’, where Normal professes his love for his GP and delights in playing with the language around healthcare, whilst pointing out how this vocabulary is subtly changed when referring to older people:

 

     'No' I said 'I've fallen for you'

     She didn't flinch at all

     She looked at my age and said

     'You mean you've had a fall?"

 

In ‘Twenty-Five Miles’, Normal uses a visit to his mother-in-law as a lens through which to show the depth of the plight suffered by the people of Gaza. This domestic, relatable setting proves to be an immensely powerful way of bringing these horrors to our own doorstep:

 

     By the time we reach Bexhill

     we have seen nearly 15,000 dead children

 

Fans of Normal's previous poetry volumes will be delighted to see more of his signature list poems, though even these poems seem to have acquired a new layer of complexity, as can be seen in ‘Making Pot Holes into Poet Holes?’:

 

     Will councils compound Pound to save pounds?

      Slash cash with Ogden Nash?

 

There are so many highlights to this book, which veers from topics as diverse as the  desperate times we live in (‘Where is the World?’)  to well-worn cardigans (‘Debobbler - The Greatest Gift of All’) and the increasingly bewildering requirements of technology (‘I Don't Think I've Got Another Password In Me’), but the standout poems for me are the ones in which Normal faces his growing sense of mortality with his customary wit and heartbreaking matter-of-factness, such as in ‘Ten Thousand Steps’:

 

     I don't think I can face another salad

 

     and I wonder how many summers

     we have left

 

In the final poem ‘Preface to the Complete Works’, Normal talks of “the coming night” and how he feels that he has not created a poem “of beauty and worth”. On this point, I must entirely disagree; this is a collection of great worth and beauty. It shines a light into the dark (and not-so-dark) corners of human existence and shows again and again how laughter and love are our best defences against this darkness. An Alphabet of Storms will be loved as much by those who 'don't like poetry' as by those who do, so I suggest you buy it for everybody.

 

Charlotte Oliver's poetry has been heard on BBC Radio 4 and published widely, such as in The Dirigible Balloon, Northern Gravy and Candlestick Press. She was an Ilkley Literature Festival New Northern Poet in 2023 and has had poetry commissions from the BBC, the North York Moors National Park and a number of arts organisations. She is one of the Poetry Society's 'Poets in Schools' and regularly facilitates workshops in the community

 

 

Henry Normal, An Alphabet of Storms, Flapjack Press, £12

 

Henry Normal’s new BBC Radio 4 show, A Normal Humanity, is broadcast on 18 June at 6.30pm, and is repeated at BBC Radio 4 Extra on 25 June at 9am and 10pm