Evidence of a disciplined religious upbringing betrays itself in the titles and subject matter of a number of poems at the start of this collection. Elsewhere, there are  echoes of the first lines of hymns, with Biblical phraseology present in other poems. The title of the collection is to be found in two poems. In ‘Concours d’élégance’, a car that has seen better days is described as being “the last one picked / for team or troupe”. In ‘I should have played more football’, the stigma of always being picked last hurts. Taking the long perspective though, things have a way of working themselves out because this collection came out top in winning the Indigo-First poetry prize 2024. (Remember that phrase, the last shall be first and the first last?)

I am always drawn to unusual titles, a number of which occur in this book. ‘Oi!’ is one. How many poems do we know with this title? Probably none. It is a witty piece that begins with a linguistic analysis followed by a description of surprise and embarrassment on the part of the hearer – a feeling of disbelief that anyone should be addressed in this manner – and then the final line upon which the humour of the whole poem depends. This is Handysides at his best, choosing his words carefully to achieve the best results.

In ‘Spring morning in the surgery’, Handysides, now a retired GP, writes with candour and authority about the doctor-patient relationship in a clear yet moving way:

     I have to broach it straight away

     he can’t go home believing all is well.

     He needs some tests, he has to be referred.

     He won’t sleep well tonight (and nor may I

     - at least I’ll know I’ve done my job).

     I may have saved his life (put off his death)

     but he will know mortality exists

    for him – that health will be provisional,

     time-limited, dependent on review …

Like William Carlos Williams, another physician and poet, who found some distraction contemplating a red wheelbarrow, Handysides focuses on a man in a safety harness cutting down a branch of a tree with a chainsaw and compares the outdoor life with his settled place of work. Again, he chooses his titles well. The words ‘Spring’ and ‘morning’ are redolent of new beginnings and yet, clearly, the patient he is examining is not in the prime of life but possibly near its end.

Care has been taken to place these poems in order so that they play off each other. ‘Spring morning in the surgery’, for example, is immediately followed by ‘The rite of autumn’ in which Handysides contemplates the health or otherwise of his own joints and muscles prior to a run, then later gives thanks that a hurt knee has repaired itself by natural means. The title has a Stravinskian echo of its opposite, The Rite of Spring, but mention of autumn has that hint of ageing about it.

Another title with a good echo in it is ‘Family reunion’ (think of TS Eliot’s  The Family Reunion). Handysides poem, like Eliot’s verse play, explores themes of family dynamics and memory.

One of my favourites in this collection is ‘A solitary mare’, a wonderful piece on the theme of nature and man. He wants to communicate in some way with the horse but it is the horse that comes to him in the end:

    At night she nears my caravan.

     I hear her snort, tear off the grass

     I feel her presence, weight of hooves nearby

     and next day when I sit to wire a plug

     she comes to see

     her long head reaches over me

     hot jets of horse breath on my hands

     she rubs her mighty forehead on my back

     her fellow feeling floors me.

There is a generous variety of subject matter here. Whether he is writing about the Ferrybridge cooling towers (now demolished), St Jude, photography, cars, Blue Mountain coffee, composing an ekphrastic response to Edward Hopper’s painting Rooms by the Sea, revisiting Larkin’s poem ‘Church Going’ or sampling a range of liqueurs, Handysides never fails to engage his readers. This is a remarkable debut collection. Football aside, I am glad he has turned his hand to poetry.

Stuart Handysides: the last one picked, Indigo Dreams, £9.50