Roger Turner – Wounded Deer (Graffiti Books, 2026)
A fair amount of contemporary poetry is opaque and can leave the reader (this one, at least) bemused, bewildered and sometimes even a little frustrated; now and then, not only is the subtext impenetrable, but the surface text itself is incomprehensible too.
It’s refreshing, therefore, to encounter a poetry collection like Wounded Deer by Roger Turner that requires no real head-scratching and where the substance, style and sense are clear. Turner’s poetry generally offers the simple pleasure of a glass of rosé or Pimm’s on a warm summer’s afternoon.
The poems are usually on the shorter side, most within two dozen lines in length. Travel, short encounters and classical music abound; there’s also an abundance of floral imagery, which is to be expected given the poet’s previous non-fiction publications on landscape history, plants and garden design.
There are some weightier, moodier pieces – mostly about confronting old age and death’s approach, as well as indications of some deeply difficult childhood experiences. Often, though, Turmer explores these themes while maintaining a carpe diem attitude and a remarkably stoic view of the past. Indeed, a reasonably high proportion of poems conclude with a particularly short stanza that’s a kind of flourish, akin to a toast at a party, as the meal draws to a close; these conclusions might be gently melancholic or offer a dose of dry, wry humour, but almost always there’s a sense of joie de vivre.
Here and there, the endings don’t quite land – sometimes I had the sense that thoughts, feelings, and moments in time were being avoided; that there was almost an unwillingness to go deeper onto the strange and difficult terrain that’s in a long life. I couldn’t help noticing that idiosyncratic British humour – the stiff upper lip – creep into the verse at times when it might have been more interesting to dive further rather than create a joke-like punchline. Nevertheless, this tone, so often on display, contributes considerably to a poetry collection that is, overwhelmingly, charming.
It would be fair to say that my favourite poems in this 90-or-so page collection leaned towards the more meditative and often deal with a desire to understand the self or to face up to the reality of death (albeit with that typical cocktail of defiance and acceptance I mentioned earlier). The poem ‘Sandwich Bay’ illustrates this well, while also exhibiting some of Turner’s tell-tale go-to concerns and motifs. In the first stanza, the poet finds himself back home from ‘the turquoise sea’; a place of
‘bougainvilleas
entwined cerise and tangerine’.
Perhaps sad to be back, the vacation ended, the second stanza reflects an attempt to self-soothe:
‘Content yourself, I tell myself,
with this small pebble universe.’
The poem goes on to extol the idea of taking pleasure even in the ‘lifeless thistles’ and ’empty-chaliced heads of wild carrot.’ The work then concludes that ‘After the glitter comes the grey.’ Importantly and typically for Turner, the line strikes more optimistically that it might otherwise, following on from the exhortation to appreciate even the comparatively colourless scenes that are spread before us.
This gentle wisdom and quiet optimism appears in another favourite: ‘On listening to Albeniz’s ‘Granada’…’ In this poem, the narrator is in the car, waiting for the rain to stop while listening to ‘Granada’. The rain forces him to wait in his vehicle and in the pause and stillness, he notices
‘this association
of mood and work and music’
and, consequently, his earlier implied impatience at the weather changes, and he is able to ‘forgive the rain’ that yields, like all ‘long-forgotten Tuesdays’ extraordinary ‘small, unanticipated fruit’. I like, here, the indicated joy and pleasure found in incongruence and the reminder that something seemingly inconvenient can, in fact, bear a special moment if we take the time to widen our senses and be alive to it. This poem has a slowness and poise I particularly liked and found reflected in other excellent poems like ‘This Is It’ and the genuinely remarkable ‘Switching Off the Light’ which point to a more serious sensibility beneath the hop, skip and dance of other poems.
I’d also like to give a nod to what was one of the most curious poems: ‘Mysterious Windows’. Contrary to so much discourse on the importance of looking carefully and seeing clearly, this poem included the idea that
‘if you shine too bright a light,
dissect too much or hyper-analyse’
then
‘things you put great value on
may soon look ordinary and diminished’.
I loved this contrariness; its romance and insight. It’s a great poem.
Crucially and notably, Turner is not the kind of poet to take himself too seriously and there is the genuine humour and fun to be found in each of the five sections of the book; now and then his poems have the flavour of Wendy Cope or Brian Bilston. Turner delights in sound and rhythm, as much as life’s ironies. Indeed, one of his best poems is equally jaunty and hilarious. ‘Sempre Chiuso’ is all about how all the places you want to visit in Italy are constantly closed for one reason or another – holidays, weekends, work, religion – the poem is a song-like and uses exclamations, rhythm and repetition for great effect. It’s the sort of poem you want to learn by heart ready to boom aloud when confronted with a closed sign at a museum door under the hot Florentine sun:
‘Renaissance palazzo –
Scusi, chiuso!
Duomo or museo
Scusi – chiuso!’
Throughout Roger Turner’s poetry collection Wounded Deer, there is a real sense that the poems have been, by and large, fun to write – and that lends the whole collection a light-hearted, sunshine-bright feel. He plays with other texts (‘a tree is not a tree, is not a tree’) as well as form and formatting – the poem ‘Nothing’ is a concrete poem with a large white rectangle in the middle. Highly accessible and a thoroughly enjoyable, Wounded Deer is the kind of collection that will leave you wanting to reach for that glass of wine, ready to raise it high with a triumphant shout of ‘Saluti!’
If you’re looking for poetry that’s highly readable, often humorous and will encourage you to rise early to watch bright flowers unfold themselves in the sun, then you’ll very much enjoy this collection; they might even inspire you to pick up your own pen and write a verse or two.
Poetry review by r.m.d.