Maureen Scott Harris, Canada

Change, metamorphosis, and transformation are the order of the day in Matthew Francis’s Whereabouts, not as supernatural forces but as the essence of the planet that houses us in landscape, seascape and urban setting alike. Though continually unfolding change can disorient, the skill with which Francis inscribes change offers immense delight. As we find ourselves wondering “Whereabouts is this whereabouts?” we're led to realise it’s here, right in front of us.

Each of these 35 short poems pulls us in by taking us through the poet’s process of perception to the shiftiness of our surroundings – the play of light and dark, distance, shadows, weather, water, which all refuse fixity. Francis’s metaphors are stunning and accurate: a flock of starlings becomes the evening, which is “flying home / in waves of dark, shapeshifting at a twitch / of its shared REM mind” (Starlings), while a village seen from a hilltop is a spider-web “suspended from its power-lines” (Dwelling Place).

Francis anchors his perceptions on his own power-line: an inventive syllabic form. Each poem has three stanzas – 3 lines followed by 2, followed by 1 – and almost without exception 45 syllables, reducing by line from 13, 10, 7, 6, 5, to 4. The funnelling effect of this shape on the page intensifies the perception in each poem. The ease with which Francis uses the form 35 times, without it becoming forced or repetitive, intensifies the reading pleasure.

Matthew Francis exploits his chosen form with devotion and such a sense of play that Whereabouts proves utterly beguiling. More than that, the depth of his attentive looking enlivens the reader’s own and makes us richer for it.