Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878–1962)

Wifred Wilson Gibson has been categorised as one of the Georgian Poets. Strictly speaking they were those poets that were featured in several anthologies of poetry published between 1911 and 1922 and Gibson featured in all five volumes. Reading through this collection it is easy to pick out the traits that are associated with the group. The poems are fairly simple and some might say intellectually naïve. They have a certain realism about them that can slide into sentimentality. Certainly they are romantic but avoid the great themes of the Romanic poets, they concentrate on natural images often anthropomorphising animals. They are very British, rejecting continental and new world influences.

Thoroughfares published in 1914; contains 25 poems and in the book that I read were twinned with Borderlands, which contains three dramatic dialogues. The dialogues in each case are between two men and the first two: "The Queens Crags" and "Bloodybush Edge" are set in wild natural settings. The meetings take place after some physical effort in getting to the spot and the men take their rest and the talk is about nature and women, but soon stray into more unearthly subjects. In his early career Gibson often used the macabre as subject matter and the talk here is of ghosts and apparitions.

The macabre features in many of the poems and Gibson manages at times to bring in a note of eeriness although he doesn't get really creepy. Ghosts and unexplained events feature and the poems reminded me of the subject matter you might find in the early editions of [The Pan Book of Horror Stories]: those edited by Herbert Van Thal. The first poem in the collection and one of the best is Solway Ford, this tells the story of a man whose cart overturns in the estuary crushing him and trapping him helplessly. He waits patiently for the tide to come in and drown him and imagines what it will feel like and how he will take his place among the dead.

......... and he lay down in his place
Among the dreamless legion of the drowned,
The calm of deeps unsounded on his face,
And calm within his heart; while all around
Upon the midmost ocean's crystal floor,
The naked bodies of dead seaman lay,
Dropped, sheer and clean from hubbub, brawl and roar,
To peace, too deep for any tide to sway.

Awakening from a dream or a nightmare is another common theme, which all adds to the strangeness of some of the poems. He can overdo the sentimentality and far too many of his poems are quite one dimensional, relying on a surprise twist or turn for their effect. However he is effective when using images from the natural world here is an example from "Gorse"; a man has escaped and is blundering exhausted across the moor trying to outrun his pursuers;

Then suddenly the sun-enkindled fire
Of gorse upon the moor-top caught his eye
And the gold glow held all his heart's desire,
As, like a witless flame-bewildered fly,
He blundered towards the league-wide yellow blaze,
And tumbled headlong on the spikes of bloom:

The poems are easy to read and even if you can see the denouement coming, some of them have an atmosphere or an image or two that lingers in the memory. Not great poetry but I enjoyed the eeriness and the realistic natural settings and I would rate the collection at 3 stars. I would be quite happy to read some more of Gibson's poetry but would not go out of my way to search for it. Luckily much of it is free on the internet.… (meer)