Peter Rawlings The Humdrum Club June 2015. 44 pp. ISBN-13 978-3-901993-51-0 (= PSPS 14) £6.50 (+ 1.00 p&p), €6.50 (+ 1.00 p&p), US$ 9.00 (+ 1.50 p&p)   "Peter Rawlings has an ear for the extraordinary in the ordinary. I could have said 'eye' rather than 'ear', but thegreat thing is how the language coheres. It is demanding without being frightening. 'These are not ordinary objects / aswindows and blinds, eyes and lids / open up and close down.' His oddities sound right and make something special." Jon Glover "In this far from humdrum collection, Peter Rawlings sets out to explore the nature of the ordinary. The poems aredivided into four sections suggesting different attitudes to the every-day. They are anchored in the built environment,taking place in classrooms, cafés, semi-detached houses, on trains and also in the great wardrobes of literature, amongshirts and ties. But they dart quickly away from those surfaces, asking questions that are at once charming and disturbing:'What do they do all day / the empty rooms?' and offering insights by turns dark and generous: 'Something was hidden inDaisy Buchanan / until now, inside the dressing room'. Read them. Daily life will never be the same again." Mandy Sutter

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Table of Contents

Excerpts from The Humdrum Club

House and Home

The house crouching below in a knot of trees
could be waiting for Hansel and Gretel.

Note its chimney, its geometry of windows.
Think its door the climax of a winding path.

Dwelling is an idea from the womb
crayoned into the artistry of smoke

curling skywards.

Later, indoors, in touch,
we inhabit, piece by piece,

a separation of walls, the coordinate stairs.
We cross the boards and try the doors.

We look out
as we had looked in

but the line of memory snaps
and no eye sees itself.

Divided from ourselves,
we settle pans on the stove

and lower the blinds.

Girl in a Shirt

Innocence is put on like a garment,
hands threaded through,
a billow over the back
then buttoned up with neat fingers,
her sleight of hand
an unthinking daily act

but it is incalculable
along with all the other manners of nature,
wind-borne maple wings,
adrenal gland leaking
straight into the blood,
the short lease of our rememberings

our first sight of this
and its fading to naught.

Reviews of The Humdrum Club

"Tension is maintained throughout, leading from the mundane into the personal with ease. The editors' adept placementof the work makes me beautifully willing to follow. There are some delightful touches: the drumbeat ending to 'Oskar & Daisy',the wonderful description of terraced slates

... kinked just out
Of true like a fractured thighbone,

Or exploring isolation, the trope of a storm internal and external, which still manages to be moving. [...] This is a tightrope-walkof a collection which will leave you feeling slightly uneasy, but grounded at your core."

"Rawlings' particular strength in this collection lies in the examination of the ordinary (the humdrum?) from obliqueangles, revealing unexpected depths and shadows, places and moments of illumination, objects in the social landscape seenafresh in a raking light, as it were."

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