Managed Woodland by Tim Youngs

Almost all of the poems in Managed Woodland have an intensely personal genesis (the artist Gurminder Sikand who inspired them was my life-partner), but that element seems to me almost incidental now that the poems are gathered and arranged for publication. Of greater significance, I think, are the processes of selection, composition, design, and sequencing. By the first of these terms I mean not so much the choice of which poems to include as the not always conscious identification of memories, events, utterances and exchanges that come to mind as ways of suggesting the departed. Just as many of Gurminder's works are characterised by the contrast between the precision of figures in the foreground and a more abstract, undefined background, so I'm aware of the white space around each of these mostly short poems. I have tried to capture, in both senses of that verb, something of the artist and of my life with her. The poem "Work-Out", after Gurminder's late drawing "Woman and Cell", ends with the words, "The artist has her own shape here." In her drawing she does. Whether and how far she has it in Managed Woodland is quite another matter, for the act of representation is mine. The cell of Gurminder's drawing is a house-like structure, outside of which the woman stands proud, larger than it. - Tim Youngs