How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
In attempting to be more like photography, the poems actually become less. (…)
Loydell makes the reader do all the work, rarely offering his own interpretation, or even a helpful signpost to meaning.
Which wouldn’t be so bad, if he didn’t keep asserting that there is some sort of deeper meaning to be found here. Every poem of the collection ends with the refrain “the condition of our lives”, tantalisingly hinting at revelations about the human condition, and all that poetry at its best strives to encapsulate. But merely stating it, in amidst such a hap-hazard stream of language does not elucidate anything, does not paint a picture for the reader, or delineate shades of meaning, or even hint at a conclusion which we can draw for ourselves. This isn’t so much Pointillism as join-the-dots. Without the numbers.
Loydell also doesn’t seem to understand the concept of a ballad.
photo { Luke Stephenson }
