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Drysalter
Michael Symmons Roberts’ sixth – and most ambitious collection to date – takes its name from the ancient trade in powders, chemicals, salts and dyes, paints and cures. These poems offer a similarly potent and sensory multiplicity, unified through the formal constraint of 150 poems of 15 lines.
Like the medieval psalters echoed in its title, this collection contains both the sacred and profane. Here are hymns of praise and lamentation, songs of wonder and despair, journeying effortlessly through physical and metaphysical landscapes, from financial markets and urban sprawl to deserts and dark nights of the soul.
From an encomium to a karaoke booth to a conjuration of an inverse Antarctica, this collection is a compelling, powerful search for meaning, truth and falsehood. But, as ever in Roberts’ work – notably the Whitbread Award-winning Corpus – this search is rooted in the tangible world, leavened by wit, contradiction, tenderness and sensuality.
This is Roberts’ most expansive writing yet: mystical, philosophical, earthy and elegiac. Drysalter sings of the world’s unceasing ability to surprise, and the shock and dislocation of catching your own life unawares.
Like the medieval psalters echoed in its title, this collection contains both the sacred and profane. Here are hymns of praise and lamentation, songs of wonder and despair, journeying effortlessly through physical and metaphysical landscapes, from financial markets and urban sprawl to deserts and dark nights of the soul.
From an encomium to a karaoke booth to a conjuration of an inverse Antarctica, this collection is a compelling, powerful search for meaning, truth and falsehood. But, as ever in Roberts’ work – notably the Whitbread Award-winning Corpus – this search is rooted in the tangible world, leavened by wit, contradiction, tenderness and sensuality.
This is Roberts’ most expansive writing yet: mystical, philosophical, earthy and elegiac. Drysalter sings of the world’s unceasing ability to surprise, and the shock and dislocation of catching your own life unawares.
- GenresPoetry
155 pages, Paperback
First published April 4, 2013
About the author
Michael Symmons Roberts
24 books20 followersMichael was born in 1963 and spent his childhood in Lancashire, England before moving south with his family to Newbury in Berkshire in the early ‘70’s. He went to comprehensive school in Newbury, then to Oxford University to read Philosophy & Theology.
After graduating, he trained as a newspaper journalist before joining the BBC in Cardiff as a radio producer in 1989. He moved with the BBC to London, then to Manchester, initially in radio, then as a documentary filmmaker. His last job at the corporation was as Executive Producer and Head of Development for BBC Religion & Ethics, before he left the BBC to focus on writing.
His 4th book of poetry – Corpus – was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for best collection, and the Griffin International Prize. His 6th collection - Drysalter - was the winner of the 2013 Forward Prize and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
He has previously received the Society of Authors’ Gregory Award for British poets under 30, the K Blundell Trust Award, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize for his 2001 collection Burning Babylon. In 2007 he received a major Arts Council Writers Award.
His continuing collaboration with composer James MacMillan has led to two BBC Proms choral commissions, song cycles, music theatre works and operas for the Royal Opera House, Scottish Opera, Boston Lyric Opera and Welsh National Opera. Their WNO commission - The Sacrifice - won the RPS Award for Opera in 2008, and their Royal Opera House / Scottish Opera commission - Clemency - was nominated for an Olivier Award.
His work for radio includes A Fearful Symmetry - for Radio 4 - which won the Sandford St Martin Prize, and Last Words commissioned by Radio 4 to mark the first anniversary of 9/11. His first novel – Patrick’s Alphabet – was published by Jonathan Cape in 2006, and his second – Breath – in 2008. He is a trustee of the Arvon Foundation, and Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. In 2012 he was made a Fellow of the English Association, for services to the language arts.
He is married with three sons, and lives near Manchester. (source: http://www.symmonsroberts.com/about_l...)
After graduating, he trained as a newspaper journalist before joining the BBC in Cardiff as a radio producer in 1989. He moved with the BBC to London, then to Manchester, initially in radio, then as a documentary filmmaker. His last job at the corporation was as Executive Producer and Head of Development for BBC Religion & Ethics, before he left the BBC to focus on writing.
His 4th book of poetry – Corpus – was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for best collection, and the Griffin International Prize. His 6th collection - Drysalter - was the winner of the 2013 Forward Prize and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
He has previously received the Society of Authors’ Gregory Award for British poets under 30, the K Blundell Trust Award, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize for his 2001 collection Burning Babylon. In 2007 he received a major Arts Council Writers Award.
His continuing collaboration with composer James MacMillan has led to two BBC Proms choral commissions, song cycles, music theatre works and operas for the Royal Opera House, Scottish Opera, Boston Lyric Opera and Welsh National Opera. Their WNO commission - The Sacrifice - won the RPS Award for Opera in 2008, and their Royal Opera House / Scottish Opera commission - Clemency - was nominated for an Olivier Award.
His work for radio includes A Fearful Symmetry - for Radio 4 - which won the Sandford St Martin Prize, and Last Words commissioned by Radio 4 to mark the first anniversary of 9/11. His first novel – Patrick’s Alphabet – was published by Jonathan Cape in 2006, and his second – Breath – in 2008. He is a trustee of the Arvon Foundation, and Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. In 2012 he was made a Fellow of the English Association, for services to the language arts.
He is married with three sons, and lives near Manchester. (source: http://www.symmonsroberts.com/about_l...)
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
April 2, 2014
"The world's sick sweetness hooks your throat, / and all our songs and lamentations coalesce – / a hornet's nest that will not let you sleep."
"Drysalter" is a wonderful collection of poetry which lives of the tension Michael Symmons Roberts creates between the poles of religion, mysticism and the utterly mundane, as well as those of chaos and order.
There's an overwhelming sense of architecture to this book. Apart from the fact that this collection contains 150 poems which are all 15 lines long, it has multiple re-appearing and morphing titles as it travels from the first poem 'World into Fragments' to the last 'Fragments into World'. Held together as well as taken apart between this beginning and end, is the architecture of our lifes, our cities, our rooms, our souls, our gods: from chaos to order and back.
These poems deconstruct certainties and make aware of our navel-connection to the huge multi-facetted organism we are part of, which stands in opposition to our general notion to regard ourselves as entities almost outside of nature. Protected by the walls of our cities, cars and homes, our bullet proof scientific theories, there is at times the tendency to believe that we've tamed the concept of reality into something tangible. So one of the strongest images these poems evoked for me was an almost visceral feeling of what it means to be part of the wilderness, the disorder of nature, no matter how neatly we mow our lawns, fence our houses and trim our hair.
and the dream is less a story than a place, less place than state/ an openness through which the wilderness/ will pour itself, a foothold, first step to our towns, / our homes, the crack that lets the desert in.
Beautiful, and highly recommended.
one of the many great poems:
Through a Glass Darkly
Mist can be a form of mercy,
all precision gone, all detail lost.
Cataracted hawks hunt woods
for motion-blur, then stoop
into the slipstream of their prey.
I pray for days like these,
when cars are lit cortèges.
As for oceans, fog is respite
from the ache of holding surface
as a clear line named horizon.
Forensic summer gone, now we
live in close-up: flaked face of brick
frostbitten, verdigris and icicles
on statues. A world drawn tight.
Look up: stars are gone. It’s just us.
January 13, 2016
beautiful.
July 2, 2014
Roberts has written this collection of 150 poems, each 15 lines long, on a diverse range of subjects, from the everyday to the ethereal.
Roberts has a control and mastery over the English language that is astonishing at time. He manages to convey his meaning and feelings with scant few words.
There were a few poems in here that I liked a lot, and some that just washed over me. I put that down to my relative inexperience with poetry, rather than the quality of the writing. It is probably worth a re read after I have read some other poets.
Roberts has a control and mastery over the English language that is astonishing at time. He manages to convey his meaning and feelings with scant few words.
There were a few poems in here that I liked a lot, and some that just washed over me. I put that down to my relative inexperience with poetry, rather than the quality of the writing. It is probably worth a re read after I have read some other poets.
Read
December 18, 2022first sustained encounter with MSR and it's a huge collection of what I assume is 150 poems, each 15 lines long. He's absolutely very talented but I feel the bloat is palpable here. The weaker poems are painfully tangible (not a pun). I want to get to more of him because I have faith in his abilities and when he gets a good poem cracked out here it's really good but the hits seem so diluted in the swamp of it all.
August 31, 2021
To write 150 poems of 15 lines apiece is an ambitious venture and a poetry collection of that size and in that form is inevitably going to run the risk of wearying a reader. At the same time 15 lines (just one more than a sonnet) allows concentrated reading in short bursts and I read through the collection in a month, a few poems a day.
Drysalter contains recognisable fragments from Corpus - the emphasis on bodilyness, hints of resurrection and a fascination with the outskirts of life and civilisation which Roberts also explored in Edgelands. A certain degree of knowledge or faith is helpful in picking up some of the allusions, but most of the poems are not notably religious even though the Psalms and the Psalter is clearly the driving pattern here.
Does Drysalter have a clear structure to it (a question that can also be asked of the Psalter)? One poem Portrait of the Psalmist... appears five times to coincide with the fivefold structure of the Psalms. The collection begins and ends with destruction and new creation in the poems "World into fragments" and "Fragments into World". There doesn't seem to be the same move from lament to praise that can be identified in the Psalter, although possible there is a drift to the hope resurrection and new creation. The collection ends very strongly with poems such as Jetsam, Ascension, From the Dead and Song of Ascent leading us (like the songs of ascent at a similar point in the psalms) to a resolution.
Drysalter contains recognisable fragments from Corpus - the emphasis on bodilyness, hints of resurrection and a fascination with the outskirts of life and civilisation which Roberts also explored in Edgelands. A certain degree of knowledge or faith is helpful in picking up some of the allusions, but most of the poems are not notably religious even though the Psalms and the Psalter is clearly the driving pattern here.
Does Drysalter have a clear structure to it (a question that can also be asked of the Psalter)? One poem Portrait of the Psalmist... appears five times to coincide with the fivefold structure of the Psalms. The collection begins and ends with destruction and new creation in the poems "World into fragments" and "Fragments into World". There doesn't seem to be the same move from lament to praise that can be identified in the Psalter, although possible there is a drift to the hope resurrection and new creation. The collection ends very strongly with poems such as Jetsam, Ascension, From the Dead and Song of Ascent leading us (like the songs of ascent at a similar point in the psalms) to a resolution.
March 7, 2017
[rating = B-]
Mr. Roberts has a very accessible style and does not try to pose as some elitist poet genius. He talks of what is in front of him (though at times he does seem to have a bit of the metaphysical in him). He observes very acutely and has a clear voice on what he sees and describes them with very interesting and creative detail. Although not all his poems (perhaps because he restricts himself to 15 lines) are as full as some others, he does showcase a very competent array of poems. Also, his use of religious themes makes his poetry rather different than some other modern poets who are almost always polar to religion. Again, the collection is weakened be cause he restricts himself to 15 lines, yet he does cheat a bit by using the title as a line as well. The most notable were his poems titled The Wounds (I-V).
Mr. Roberts has a very accessible style and does not try to pose as some elitist poet genius. He talks of what is in front of him (though at times he does seem to have a bit of the metaphysical in him). He observes very acutely and has a clear voice on what he sees and describes them with very interesting and creative detail. Although not all his poems (perhaps because he restricts himself to 15 lines) are as full as some others, he does showcase a very competent array of poems. Also, his use of religious themes makes his poetry rather different than some other modern poets who are almost always polar to religion. Again, the collection is weakened be cause he restricts himself to 15 lines, yet he does cheat a bit by using the title as a line as well. The most notable were his poems titled The Wounds (I-V).
November 16, 2019
Though Corpus still holds its head high above this collection in my mind, Drysalter is wonderful still, with probably half of the poems being more enjoyable than the the others. Overall, 150 poems is quite a long collection, but limiting the poems to 15 lines per poem felt like the perfect length. Symmons Roberts has a way with expressing the life-yness of human existence in such concrete images and potent metaphors; it stirs something deep inside me. For that, he remains one of, if not my favourite poet that I’ve read. In this collection my favourite poems were:
Something and nothing II
Through a glass darkly
The darkness is no darkness
Excise me
Hiraeth
Guild of salters
How to raise the dead
Soul Song II
The road retaken
Hymn to the Falschfahrer
In Babylon
In praise of flaking walls
The vows
A new song
The rind
Ascension II
Something and nothing II
Through a glass darkly
The darkness is no darkness
Excise me
Hiraeth
Guild of salters
How to raise the dead
Soul Song II
The road retaken
Hymn to the Falschfahrer
In Babylon
In praise of flaking walls
The vows
A new song
The rind
Ascension II
May 13, 2017
Excellent poetry. These vignettes are crystal-clear, fully comprehensible and meaningful, unlike much contemporary poetry today.
September 4, 2017
Unbelievably lyrical and gorgeous.
July 12, 2018
darkness is no darkness
I wear my cure dried hide of absence
cameras glaze as petals falter
headlamps fade to dandelion clocks
I wear my cure dried hide of absence
cameras glaze as petals falter
headlamps fade to dandelion clocks
September 23, 2019
Excellent collection. I heard the author read several aloud, and I was hooked.
May 7, 2020
I probably missed about half of what this is doing.
February 6, 2022
Perfect!
September 18, 2015
Some really great poems in this collection but they're drowned out by the number of average ones. 150 poems is a lot for a collection, and the restrictive form sometimes prevents the poems developing in a more organic way. There's therefore quite a few which end unconvincingly or seem contrived, as the poem's run out of space. I'm also not really a fan of poems which are rigidly About Something - the range of topics here is vast and random and feels a bit like Roberts looked at something and thought 'here's another topic for a poem'. That said, it's a pretty readable collection, and there are some excellent bits - for example 'Through a Glass Darkly': "Look up: stars are gone. It's just us."
August 6, 2013
Fantastic, inventive, swooping collection within a strict discipline of 150 poems all of 15 lines. The title refers to the Psalter and these are spiritual poems shot through with a fresh twist on some familiar themes but no sense of a rigid orthodoxy or expectations of what we ought to mean by faith or spirituality. Tremendous!
March 21, 2016
smitten 17
soul song 25
excise me 36
the others 44
the count 45
portrait of the psalmist in mid-life 48
portrait of a skull 49
night freight 56
the reckoning 59
what is written 63
lupine 69
portrait of a dove 73
a plate for a face 74
in cutaway 75
hymn to a ghost train 82
soul song 107
the road retaken 109
lachrima negativa 113
a new song 128
ascension 133
automatic soothsayer booth 139
soul song 25
excise me 36
the others 44
the count 45
portrait of the psalmist in mid-life 48
portrait of a skull 49
night freight 56
the reckoning 59
what is written 63
lupine 69
portrait of a dove 73
a plate for a face 74
in cutaway 75
hymn to a ghost train 82
soul song 107
the road retaken 109
lachrima negativa 113
a new song 128
ascension 133
automatic soothsayer booth 139
June 7, 2014
I’m very glad I read this collection of poems. The images the author uses are incredible, beautiful, and brilliant. Every poem…every poem seems an epiphany - a stunning morning, a quiet evening. Wow. Over and over again - this poet amazes. Sara Maitland suggested him to me when I visited her in April. I’m very glad she did.
January 17, 2017
A great selection of poems. For this book the poet has confined himself to 15 lines per poem, but within that limitation are a range of forms, subjects and emotions. Subjects concern nature, the spiritual life and some interesting relationships (e.g. a visitor to Olympus).
Recommended to anyone who likes poetry that is modern but structured.
Recommended to anyone who likes poetry that is modern but structured.
February 9, 2014
150 poems, each of 15 lines, but huge variety among them. Some humourous, some bland, some profound, but eventually the uniformity of length felt limiting, as if there were longer, more sustained thoughts not being expressed within the self-imposed constraint.
January 15, 2014
An impressive conceptual book, though not of the Christian Bok ilk. 150 poems of 15 lines each, threaded with interwoven themes and sequences. Several titles repeat with variations. Much to enjoy but a lot to work through. Winner of the Costa Poetry Prize.
Shelved as 'awards-promos'
March 30, 2014
December 26, 2015
This collection contains some really strong 15-line poems, but needed significant paring down. I felt drained even before hitting the halfway point. Still seeking that magical work of poetry that tackles alchemy with success.
March 9, 2014
A fascinating mix of old-fashioned cadences, rhythm, even vocabulary, with a modern slant, references to new technology, shocking new words. Poetry for our times, yet it also feels for all time.
April 12, 2014
Wow that poet manages to create 150 poems of 15 lines and make each one as unique as a snowflake. Definitely worth buying
July 7, 2014
There are a few really top class poems here, but sadly they're lost in the poor quality of the rest of the work. The collection needed a much stronger editor and a significant amount of culling.
August 4, 2014
An immensely powerful book of poetry - I like almost every poem in this book.
January 28, 2016
Read for uni!
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews