Review: ‘Burial Grounds’ by Brian Gavin

Gavin’s poems are quiet, elegant reflections on people—alive and dead—in danger of being forgotten, in towns not in the mainstream of modern life. His verse is quietly formal, usually rhymed, always rhythmic. Sometimes as brief as a sonnet, as with my personal favourite ‘Grand Opening’: an ex-serviceman, mopping floors and putting the coffee on at 4 a.m., running a business at which (apparently) four previous owners have failed, but simply doing what has to be done…

It isn’t so much hope behind these doors
as work to do. (…) He reaches for the light.
He sets his OPEN sign against the night.

There is an inherent mournfulness in these stories of people in places which once thrived but are now hanging on without major farming or industrial or commercial opportunities. Many poems are about people towards the end of their lives, or even later as the title suggests. And even when youth is included it shows up as a teen alone on a swing on a November evening, working her phone:

and nothing moves, but for the falling dark
and the quiver of her thumbs at work.

Railway stations close, businesses relocate, fires happen, towns empty out… but people are still there, poorer, aging, their prospects reduced. The overall tone is an almost religious attitude of accepting where you are, fighting the good fight, doing what must be done… moving, as we all must, into life’s inevitable landscape of burial grounds.