Importents is Naomi Foyle’s poetic riposte to the zeitgeist. A ‘state of the nation’ address from a basement bunker in lockdown Brighton, her tenth pamphlet charts the converging crises of 2020 UK on a long arc of austerity politics and historical global injustice. Challenging political impotence with an impish intellect and heartfelt faith in humanity, these poems offer hopeful omens from British wildflowers to the toppling of the statue of a slave-trader. Topical, lyrical, caustic yet compassionate, in speaking poetry’s ‘slant truths’ to power, Importents summons the future we all deserve.
PRAISE & A POEM
The pamphlet has ever been an effective form for polemic, and these are in many ways poem-polemics ‒ or, one might say, ‘poemics’. Here, the twin bugbears of ‘Brexit’ and Covid are confronted with defiance, wit and a linguistic energy that manages to almost figuratively extinguish them on the page. But these are also deeply humane poems, expressions of solidarity with colleagues and fellow travellers. The lockdown sequence is a tour-de-force capturing so much of the unreal atmosphere of that long spring pause during 2020, while the Black Lives Matter movement is empathically depicted. Importents is an important poetic statement on our nerve-gratingly eventful times. – Alan Morrison
‘Lockdown, Week Ten’ is hard-hitting, heartbreaking and painful, yet also an affirmation of people of colour, and a positive engagement in the discourses around racial injustice. Thank you, Naomi Foyle. – Catherine Okoronkwo
The castigation of the tyrant has a long poetic history. In the 20th century, its nature and effects are summarised and given the force of legend by W H Auden in Epitaph on a Tyrant. Entering that tradition, ‘Importents’ [the title poem] is lifted, by its folk-narrative style, beyond the frame of fixed “small island” contexts. It is set in the winter of 2019 but uncannily resonant with the current grim year and its “zeitgeist”. – Carol Rumens, The Guardian Poem of the Week (May 9th 2022)
… with Importents, Foyle has managed to come at these subjects [Covid and Brexit] with angles that go beyond the potential for ranting, etc. With the notable exception of ‘Fracking Brexit’ — and I hope ‘fracking’ is being used as an expletive as it is in Battlestar Galactica—the collection instead highlights the impact of both events on the world and on the people the poet knows. – Mat Riches (Sphinx)
This is a memorable pamphlet, full of vivid imagery and metaphor. Foyle concentrates the anger and despair of many parts of society on the apparent dysfunction of the government . . . Well worth reading. – Rennie Halstead, London Grip
2020
Welcome to the year
of twin swans emerging
from two tunnels,
I say, full of sorrow,
having looked ahead
to far distant centuries,
and knowing no other date
will ever match such elegance.
In the floating mirror of 2020
we are all still visionaries.
Such a perfect number, I
almost wouldn’t mind
it on my grave.