Review by Christine Hammond of "Small Birds Singing" by Matthew Welton

Small Birds Singing gently canters across a city’s green spaces covering a twelve-month seasonal period from September to August. Observing and recording the everyday acts of life, stanzas comprise two lines typeset asymmetrically. 

Effectively, this brings structure and order to the sheer volume and apparent randomness of the content. Often, it is used to juxtapose what may seem mundane with a reflection that encourages the reader to a deeper level of understanding of our reliance on and interaction with the objects around us: Thinginess and Thinkiness as Welton describes it, as seen here in "October":

a woman in the doorway, holding her palm out into the rain
in each window of the apartment block, a tall yellow flower

           on my desk, the stalks of apples I ate yesterday
                in a curving brick wall, a curved wooden door

is it thought we return to 

or that the thought returns to us? 

           

           a curving line of mushrooms in the grass
                 pigeons on a flat felt roof

almost as we’re watching, the bunch of tomatoes becoming plumper
the heap of shabby mattresses behind the hotel

            the more sporadically we follow the path a thought takes,
                  the deeper the thinkiness we drag ourselves into 

Journeying through the seasons allows the poems to draw heavily on nature for context and placement of both the everyday acts and surrounding items that are the backbone of the collection. It is here that the gentle canter has potential to move into more of gallop inviting the bigger questions, as noted in March:

the shadow of a breeze blowing through the shadows of the branches
our faces fizzling from the frozen rain

                            two small crows on the rusty railings
                            a heap of compost twice my height

the unending mumble in the things of the world
resembles the mumble of the unending wind
                  
                            a magpie taking a twig from one tree
                            to add to a nest in another

among the worn-out daffodils the pale new primroses 
the table lamp topples

things muster themselves
to meet our attention

Small Birds Singing is an innovative, book-length poem full to the brim with everyday observations, occurrences, items and natural rhythms that make up the fabric of our human experience. The appeal is wide, particularly for artists, poets and readers who love to walk, record and reflect. 

About the reviewer
Christine Hammond began writing poetry while studying English Literature at Queen’s University Belfast. Her early poems were published in The Gown (QUB), The Female Line (NIWRM) and feminist publication Women’s News, where as one of the original members, she also wrote Arts Reviews and had work published in Spare Rib. She returned to writing again after a long absence and her poetry has been featured in a wide variety of anthologies including The Poet’s Place and Moment (Poetry in Motion – The Community Arts Partnership), The Sea (Rebel Poetry, Ireland), all five editions of Washing Windows – Irish Women Write Poetry, Her Other Language (Arlen House) and literary journal The Honest Ulsterman. She has also been a reader at Poetry NI’s Purely Poetry open mics in Belfast. Her collection Sojourn – Moments in Poetry is now available on Amazon in both Paperback and Kindle format.