Leaves
Hazel Press
Limited pamphlet, 24 pages (19 November 2020) ISBN: 9781838081614 |
Shortlisted for the Michael Marks Pamphlet Award
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Henry David Thoreau wrote of fallen leaves, ‘they teach us how to die’. Seven years in the making, Leaves is a long poem by Matthew Hollis, which holds loss and grief in one hand; new life in the other. It explores the relationship of a father and daughter, set in the perpetual choreography of autumn. What do we say to the young child who has discovered mortality? Here is an elemental cycle, a turning of generations: childhood to parenthood, parent to child, child to parent, a sense of deep time, shedding and passing, rooted in the body, balanced in the five elements of the Chinese tradition of Wu Xing, Fire (火 huǒ), Water (水 shuǐ), Wood (木 mù), Metal (金 jīn), and Earth (土 tǔ). In Leaves, Matthew Hollis intuits and rediscovers a sense of the life force of hope.
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A film by Eileen Haring Woods for Hazel Press
Reviews.
‘Leaves is a moving meditation on the dynamics of a father/daughter relationship, set against the backdrop of autumn. In clear dialogue with Eliot’s Four Quartets, and laying bare the strange, mythic quality that lies under the surface of the everyday, it explores themes of departure and return, the loss and renewal of life, in musical sentences that pull us on mesmerically through to the pamphlet’s regenerative ending.’
– Michael Marks Judges
'Seven years in the making, Matthew Hollis’s long poem Leaves explores loss and catharsis in the form of a conversation between a father and daughter during a walk through autumn woods. Loosely based on Eastern ideas of the elements wood, fire, earth, metal and water, it isn’t too fanciful to call this poem a song of seasonal degeneration and rejuvenation on account of its use of subtle musical effects; the poet is highly attuned to the nuance of sound. It isn’t surprising then to learn that Hollis is also a guitarist who is interested in the confluence between poetry and music. The poem’s songlike quality lends it an incantatory rhythm that quietly but insistently interrogates the ecological future of the planet and laments the carelessness with which it is treated. [. . .] This is the kind of poem that makes a reader wish Hollis could be a little more prolific.’
– Dzifa Benson, The Poetry Review
‘Since his debut, Ground Water, in 2004, Faber poetry editor Matthew Hollis’s poetic output has been as rarely sighted and reverently received as a very occasional migrant bird. Leaves, like 2016’s Stones, and like Eliot’s The Waste Land, is a five-part poem. [. . .] Dedicated and addressed to his daughter, it movingly interweaves themes of infancy, ageing, family and a world-weariness induced by grief. Hollis’s quiet reflectiveness about the passing of time emerges in momentary perceptions of beauty [. . .] the cumulative poetry of Leaves and its enchanting explorations of time make it irresistible.’
– Matthew Paul, Sphinx
‘The last eighteen months has brought, for many, a renewed appreciation of the natural world and a greater sense of how vital it is we deal with the environmental challenges that lie before us. This beautiful and simply produced pamphlet from Matthew Hollis is just the sort of reflective writing I think people have been pushed towards. [. . .] I don’t imagine this pamphlet will stop traffic or hit the headlines in bright neon fashion – but then perhaps the works that do are also quick to fade. Instead I think this work will help readers look at the world a little more closely, to see the details in the seasons more fully; that might be all that is required from a work of such sweet brevity.’
– Neil Elder, Sabotage
