‘The Ministry of Emergency Situations’ - Review by Helen Tope

Todd Swift was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1966. After studying creative writing at Concordia University, Swift’s career began in television, writing material for HBO, Paramount and Fox. Swift, resident in the UK since 2003, has since completed a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia. The University’s peerless record in nurturing creative writing talent includes alumni including poets Adam Foulds and Sam Riviere and Booker Prize winner Anne Enright. Todd Swift has published eight collections of poetry. He also runs Eyewear, a poetry blog launched in 2005. In 2012, he then established poetry press Eyewear Publishing which has recently published ‘Jeremy Corbyn: Accidental Hero’, a political primer on the Labour leader which is gaining (like the man himself) a cult following. Swift has been described by Poetry London magazine as a “fusion poet”, marrying together experimental and traditional forms of poetry to create a voice that is all his own. Todd’s influences range from Ezra Pound and TS Eliot, to less familiar poets such as Nicholas Moore, whose emphasis on blending together the playful and the serious can be clearly seen throughout Swift’s work. Invited to University of Plymouth as part of the Peninsula Arts events series, Todd’s reading drew from his earliest pamphlets to newly released collections, taking us on a virtual tour of his poetic development. Notably described by Mark Ford as the ‘Orson Welles of contemporary poetry’, I was relieved to find that Ford was correctly identifying in Swift a charismatic and mischievous quality that made the reading feel all the more accessible. While contemporary poetry has a reputation, unfairly, of being inscrutable and distant, the joy with poetry readings like those being run by Peninsula Arts is that we get to see not only the poet up close, but their ideas too.

The idea of producing work to engender shock value is over 100 years old. As Robert Hughes said in ‘The Shock of the New’ in 1980 – even the avant-garde is now a period style. So instead of having an ‘avant-garde’, ideas can come from anything. Anything can be poetry, anything can be art. Todd Swift applies this technique with aplomb; utilising popcorn cinema with the same intent as an homage to Algernon Swinburne. Swinburne was very much the ghost in the room, as his work on rhyme (he invented the roundel); has greatly influenced Swift. Swinburne’s work may have fallen out of favour with the public since his death in 1909, but his technical virtuosity with metre and rhyme has ensured that he remains a critics’ (and poets) favourite. But it’s not just the word at play in Swift’s poetry: he connects to the reader via his own memories and experiences, retold in touching detail. Often choosing to write autobiographically; the personal sits front and centre. Swift doesn’t shy away from emotionally complex subjects such as mental health and infertility, employing the confessional with great poignancy. I’ve increasingly found that good writing – great writing – doesn’t need to explain itself, and Todd Swift’s poetry doesn’t put up barriers. His decision to combine the domestic with the public means we all have a point of access to his work: it invites you to dive right in.