Breathing︱David Van-Cauter

To order a copy, please contact the author directly at dvcwins@gmail.com

In ‘Breathing’ David Van-Cauter maps out the topography of different losses and absences in finely calibrated poems that are as affecting as they are effective.

Van-Cauter has a knack for observing the small details — motorway graffiti, band T-shirts, first-generation iPads — and a gift for adept phrase-making, all of which makes the emotion, particularly in the most personal poems, all the more poignant. But this isn’t to say that the poems here aren’t shot through with wit, and a sense of the absurd at times.

In ‘Breathing’ we hear a voice trying to make sense of the world around him, whether it’s dealing with a declining difficult parent, wandering around follies of the past or today’s Brexit-battered high streets. And a sense of the end of the world haunts many of these poems: creeping closer to the flat-earther at his computer screen, or dealing with the emotional debris and physical detritus that accumulates from those who’ve left.

These are accessible poems that speak clearly to the reader, but deepen on each re-reading. The third part in particular, a sequence that is delicately and perfectly structured, is one of the most moving things I have read for a long time. I felt my own breath catch reading it, and needed the voice of the poet reminding both himself and the reader to focus on the ever-moving horizon, to keep breathing.

Emma Simon