Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Springboards

Three new poetry collections
by
April 2021, no. 430

Springboards

Three new poetry collections
by
April 2021, no. 430

I Dont Know How That HappenedI Don’t Know How That Happened by Oliver Driscoll

Recent Work Press, $19.95 pb, 74 pp

Oliver Driscoll’s note on his first book I Don’t Know How That Happened praises the inclusive flatness of David Hockney’s still life paintings, and it is to this inclusiveness that his poems and prose pieces aspire. Droll reported speech creates a comic atmosphere but also moves into Kafkaesque alienation where nothing seems to follow any pattern. Sometimes these casual observations feel undercooked, but at times the flatness works as cool satire:

I read an extract about a piece I wrote about Sarajevo and Bosnian literature at a small university panel event. At the end of the event, an audience member asked if I was of Bosnian heritage. No, I said. The man beside me on the panel said, ha, yeah, we used to be able to do that, right, claim other people’s suffering. The piece is kind of about that, I said, how we see and think about other people’s trauma.

Right, he said, as though he’d won something fair and square.

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.