FROM 2015--THIS is his first collection, I believe, with a second arriving last year. It feels like an old-school kind of poetry collection to me, in that it does not seem to be a "project," exactly, with a defined mission and some set of formal constraints. Instead, the book seems to say, "these are my best poems from the last n years, and I think they hang together, more or less."
I can see why project collections seem like a good idea; it's a way to catch the attention of a publisher, or a prize committee, or a hiring committee, I imagine. But nowadays there seem to be more project collections than non-project collections, so Underwood's book was a welcome change of pace, less "this book has a mission," more, "here are some interesting poems."
The book does have a kind of unity in Underwood's voice, though, with its dry-as-the-Gobi humor, its juggling of high culture and popular culture, its wit, its obliqueness, its quirky Syd Barrett style melodicism. I think I must have picked it up because I came across a poem of his I liked--in Granta, perhaps?--and taking that risk paid off, for I enjoyed the book greatly. (I went ahead and ordered the next collection).
I wonder what is going on in British poetry, which I admit to not having followed much for quite a while. Various poets I heard about (Robin Robertson, Carol Duffy, Christopher Reid, Mark Ford) I sampled and respected without feeling much enthusiasm. But I get the feeling some new current has entered the scene. Underwood's acknowledgement page tips the hat to Emily Berry, whom I also read this summer, and to Sam Riviere, whose novel Dead Souls and I have read about two-thirds of. Berry and Riviere's books were both excellent as well. Something's happening.
