Topic: David Swartz

Ewan Whyte’s first volume of poetry, Entrainment, demonstrates masterful craftsmanship and maturity. It contains 28 poems, some of which span a couple of lines (“Graffiti for the Palatine”) while others run for as long as four pages (“Guiraut Riquier: The Last Troubadour”). The collection as a whole is tightly knit, yet without a systematic philosophy. Itʼs poetry for the sake of poetry, or so it seems at first glance. Though well planned and meticulously chiselled, it rolls along like a train to nowhere.

“For there is hope for a tree, when it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and its shoots will not fail. Though its roots grow old in the ground and its stump dies in the dry soil, at the scent of water it will flourish and put forth sprigs like a plant.” (Job 14:7)