The Art of Falling

“The poems of The Art of Falling are fearless. There are more good poems filling Kim Moore’s first collection than many poets will produce in a lifetime.” – Alison Brackenbury “This accessibility (in topic or theme) is due not to their simplicity but Moore’s deftness as a poet. Form and language collaborate to give her work an enviable ease, flooring the reader fast with adroit humour and drama, making the reading experience both nimble and jarring as we move from the lightness of a trumpet lesson to the darkness of endured abuse in a violent relationship. Moore’s is an exciting and full first collection.” – Laura Tansley “Take a long, deep breath when reaching for Kim Moore’s first full collection, The Art of Falling, because you’ll be tumbling with her from the first page onwards through her intoxicating verse.’ – Matthew Stewart “Kim Moore's The Art of Falling (Seren) was just a joy – a tough, tender book packed with a variety of forms and emotional clout…. This is one of those rare books that I feel I could give to any non-poetry reader with the aim of converting them to poetry's undeniable charms.” – Sarah Westcott “I find her approach, her language, her emotion, her intensity and her originality compelling. I try here to outline here a few of the reasons why I think it’s particularly impressive. I do so not only because of my own enthusiasm for the book, but because I think it represents the kind of poetry we all should be aiming to write.” – Noel Williams Kim Moore, in her lively debut poetry collection, The Art of Falling, sets out her stall in the opening poems, firmly in the North amongst ‘My People’: “who swear without knowing they are swearing… scaffolders and plasterers and shoemakers and carers…”. ‘A Psalm for the Scaffolders’ is a hymn for her father’s profession. The title poem riffs on the many sorts of falling “so close to failing or to falter or to fill”. The poet’s voice is direct, rhythmic, compelling. These are poems that confront the reader, steeped in realism, they are not designed to soothe or beguile. They are not designed with careful overlays of irony and although frequently clever, they are not pretentious but vigorously alive and often quite funny. In the first section there is: a visit to a Hartley street spiritualist, a train trip from Barrow to Sheffield, a Tuesday at Wetherspoons. The author’s experience as a peripatetic brass teacher sparks several poems. The lives of others also feature throughout, including a quietly devastating central sequence, ‘How I Abandoned My Body To His Keeping’: is the story of a woman embroiled in a relationship marked by coercion and violence. These are close-to-the-bone pieces, harrowing and exact. The final section includes beautifully imagined character portraits of John Lennon and Wallace Hartley (the violinist on the Titanic), as well as Jazz trumpeter Chet Baker and the poet Shelley and other poems on: suffragettes, a tattoo inspired by Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and a poetic letter addressed to a ‘Dear Mr Gove’.