James Goodman

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Biographical note:  James Goodman grew up in St. Austell, Cornwall, near the Clay Country landscapes described in Claytown. After graduating from Manchester University with a history degree he taught English in Istanbul and rural north Japan then moved to London in 1998. He works for the sustainable development charity Forum for the Future and lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and son.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844712595
ISBN:  9781844712595
Author:  James Goodman
Title:  Claytown
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  DCF
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  15-Jul-11
Extent:  80pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  6 mm
Weight:  120 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 9.99
Price:  USD 15.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  Poems about maps, cats and dim sum sit alongside nature and landscape in James Goodman’s inventive debut collection. Claytown mixes a sense of the awesome beauty of nature with feelings of loss, using the devastated landscapes of the mid-Cornwall clay country to explore a wider human relationship with the natural world.

Main description:  James Goodman’s evocative first collection is warm and inventive, dramatic and ethically-charged, picking its way through the clay country of mid-Cornwall as it tackles the ecological pressures on the natural world. Many of the poems take their inspiration from the scale and force of landscape, finding a unifying beauty in its geology, the maps that describe it and the industries that exploit it for mineral wealth. But this collection also ranges widely in subject, and includes poems on birds, sharks, deer, fish, limoncello, dimsum and the North American Bigfoot. Goodman balances the gravity of some of his observations with comedy and lightness of touch, which all lovers of poetry will find endearing and enlightening.

Table of contents:
Contents
Helman Tor
The catch
We have yet to harness the full potential of clouds
Deer
St Genies
Cherry blossom
Snowflake
Easter Sunday in the Clay
Claytown
In the emptiest square on the map
The White Hill
The cause of thunder
As for the components of the face
Sap rising
Spring, when it came
Limoncello
Avian
The snow estate
OS
Blackbird
The buzz
Beside the Draa
The wishing well
Contours
Pilchard-fishing
Element 109
Vital capacity
Pear tree
Bigfoot
The city
Shark-watching
The toad of the carn
Sky burial
Hensbarrow
New Year’s Eve, St Ives
Blackbird (slight return)
Painting the Clay
The Map of Clay
Fal
Pertaining to the cod
Scope of Clay
The New World
Automotive
Abandon
Arrest
Ascent
OS (slight return)
Acknowledgements

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Excerpt from book:  

Fal

The sea pushes inland from Carrick Roads,
pushes up between the oaky banks
of Polgerran, Borlase, then Lamorran,

the tide’s slide swoons over silt
and shingle, up the continent’s recoil,
its tidy increment of slab and soil,

a lid closing on the river’s eye;
the ocean makes the contours’
dream a dream of filling mud,

darkness in a bowl of sky. At tidal reach,
the loud sibilants of Sett Bridge
wake it, and the water stops and slacks —

though a rumour of salt works on up
following the stream through cowfields
curling through the trackless mesh of woods

up past Creed and Golden, further on
past Kernick mica dam and Virginia
to the river’s nervous source —

even the long-horned cattle there, below
the clay hills’ powder-blast, feel its sleepiness
somewhere in their swim of grass.

Unpublished endorsement:  Where you or I might look at a thing, or be in a place, and think no more of it, James Goodman cannot help but write poetry about it. And the poetry is vital and succulent and makes you revel in the lusciousness of words, the deliciously unexpected metaphor, his magical handling of mystery where we thought there was none. Nor is he too earnest for a snigger and a giggle, for there is laughter in there too, and deftly crafted ecstasy and euphoria. For poems replete with zawn and clitter, there's nobody quite like him. Buy it; read it; and if you're like me, you'll love it.

Chris Stewart

Unpublished endorsement:  These are poems crafted to match the physical nature and power of Cornwall’s post-industrial landscape, rich with awareness of the fractured histories that define this region far off the tourist trail. Cornwall’s mineral, maritime and moorland realities are present here in a vital and present-day idiom, shot through with tough and compelling lyricism. An exciting and thoughtful debut.

Penelope Shuttle