Why Are You Shouting? by James Womack review

This rich fourth collection by James Womack ponders the fraught relationship between place and dweller – and our craving for connection

James Womack’s latest collection sees the city as both muse and antagonist. A frustrated energy merges with sentiment in poems that feel like a last hurrah to living as we know it. “The city is dead, and yes, the country too, / and probably, beyond, the grey wide world,” he declares in Seasons. Womack, the author of three previous books of poetry, wrote this collection in the shadow of climate crisis and the pandemic, which is why it oozes with anguish. But there’s a quietness, too — a sense of acceptance so the poems never blare.

The opener is an epic titled The City, an Argument and sets the tone for an ongoing fraught relationship between place and dweller. The narrator makes bold proclamations that bounce between banal and menacing. “Beloved, the city wakes up after the weekend… / Beloved, the city eats and shits its citizens.” It’s a poem for our times. Here, we see Womack’s affinity with cinema. He generates a landscape of rich visuals that satisfy all the senses.