The Hebrew for fly, zvuv, “is surely one of the most magically exact onomatopoeias in any language”, Steven Connor writes in his study of the insect, Fly. News that Douglas Dunn’s poetic muse has taken wing again, 17 years after his last collection, deserves an onomatopoeic outburst of its own of relief and delight. Slacking is hardly a trait one associates with the diligent Dunn, but the opening quatrain, “Idleness”, listens out for “The sigh of an exhausted garden-ghost. / A poem trapped in an empty fountain pen.” There are ghosts and exhaustion aplenty in The Noise of a Fly, shortlisted for next week’s TS Eliot prize, but rarely if ever does the poet find himself stuck for words.
It is almost a half a century since Dunn made his debut with the northern realism of Terry Street, but the influence of his fellow Hull librarian Philip Larkin still remains strong. Dunn is 75 (12 years older than Larkin was when he died), and his poems of ageing show all manner of convergences with the bard of Pearson Park. “Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs,” wrote Larkin. Dunn broadly agrees: “So much time wasted wanting to be remembered / Ends with desire to be forgotten.” “Gave yet another lecture. God, I’m boring,” begins “Thursday”: “Dear God, it’s true, I’m just an ancient bore.”
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