John Phillips’s Concrete

John Phillips, Concrete (Bodily Press 2025)

A couple of mornings ago, I opened my letterbox to find an envelope stamped with a profile of King Charles and evidence that someone had paid £4.30 postage to send it to me. It felt like a book, but I hadn’t ordered anything from the UK, and I couldn’t think of anyone over there who might be sending me one. When I opened the envelope and pulled out this slim volume, I was no less bemused. Then, tucked inside the front cover, I found a plain white card:

The man who wrote that, I thought, is a real poet.

Published by The Bodily Press, a small publisher in Amherst, Massachusetts, Concrete is a collection of 26 short, even tiny poems. John Phillips, according to his bio, hails originally from Cornwall and now lives in Slovenia. I can only imagine that he has come across my blog and just wanted me to read his poetry. Somehow the gesture, being ‘out of the blue’ didn’t feel like a request for a review but a friendly offer of connection.

What I want to say about the book is that I enjoyed it! The poems are so short that mostly to quote from one would be to quote all of it. Each of them is like a small huddle of words in the middle of white space, and the meaning of the poem is in the space as much as in the words.

It’s worth noting a feature of the book’s design. Many of the poems have individual dedications, most of them to people I assume are the poet’s friends but some to familiar names like Zbigniev Herbert or Giuseppe Ungaretti. But rather appearing with the poems, these dedications are relegated to a list at the back of the book, leaving the poems themselves to sit on the page clean and uncluttered.

The form perfectly embodies the sense, as most of the poems are about the limits of language, and / or the importance of silence.

The poem on page 15, ‘SAY’, is a good example:

It’s a poem that makes me want to read it aloud a number of times. Once just for the sound of it. Once, wondering if it’s complete nonsense. Once for the image of the word’s truth staying on the tongue while the word itself, vibrating airwaves, goes out into the world. Once for the pun in ‘lies’. Once to see if I can keep those last two readings in mind at the same time. Once paying attention to the line break after ‘lies’. Once more, taking the poem’s title as an instruction, listening to how my reading aloud relates to my silent reading.

And I end up with a mind full of questions about the connection between thought and speech, speech and silence, written and spoken words, reality and language. Ten simple words in four lines, and a rich moment of silence. What’s not to like?

[John, if you read this, please let me know your land address and I’ll send you a copy of my own chapbook, None of Us Alone. I only have one, compared to your own impressive list of publications.]

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I wrote this blog post on the land of the Wangal and Gadigal clans of the Eora nation. I gratefully acknowledge the Elders past and present who have cared for this beautiful country for millennia in song and story.

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* My blogging practice is focus arbitrarily on the page of a book that coincides with my age, currently page 78. The last poem in this book is on page 34. I’ve stuck with arbitrariness and gone for page 8+7.