PARSIMONY
David Troupes
For David Troupes' author page, please click here.
In language by turns mellifluous and metallic, in poems which swing between the Scottish Borders and the woods of his native Massachusetts, David Troupes betrays and explores a troubling ambivalence toward our place in the natural world. Interwoven with this thread of difficult rapture are poems of private crisis, offering a hard-won perspective on those days when everything, for no apparent reason, seems wrong.
Praise for Parsimony
A poetry of watchfulness, of immersion in wilderness and commune with the wild, David Troupes’ fine début is marked by an intensely focused inquisitiveness, delineating landscapes, shifting seasons and their creatures in a meticulous, sparing style, all filtered through a wonderfully lyrical sensibility.’ Robert Alan Jamieson
‘If “parsimony” is often equated with meanness, David Troupes reclaims its virtues – “praiseworthy economy in the use of means to pursue an end”, as my dictionary puts it. That’s a good description of Troupes’ poetic method – a sparingness with words that takes him to the heart of things. While there are moments of discovery, joy and celebration, this is no paradise – too many storms, droughts, predators and depressions – and any consolations are hard-won. What warmth there is, is created by the living beings themselves, and one of Troupes’ most striking images is that of the skunk cabbage, with its deep contractile roots and the ability to thaw frosts. Many poems are addressed to another, an intimate, creating a sense of solidarity both in and against the world. There is also a sense, properly veiled, of the sacred – a sense of wonder, and mystery too, for these poems don’t instantly yield their meanings. Formally confident, Troupes can pull off both conventional rhymes and unconventional line-breaks, and execute the most startling of shifts with his deft similes.’ Ken Cockburn
'Evokes a powerful sense of landscape ... These are spare, sharply focused poems written with great sssurance and control and an often miraculous clarity ... The abiding impression is of poise and sensitivity informed by a searching intelligence. An impressive new voice.'
AC Clarke, The Edinburgh Review
About David Troupes
David Troupes was born in 1979 and grew up in the town of Hopkinton, Massachusetts, a leafy place with good woods and swamps for wandering. He studied English at the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts, and then Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh, gaining along the way a wife and a satisfyingly varied job history. His comic art appears regularly in at least one Vermont newspaper, and has been featured in periodicals in Sweden, Portugal and the US – see www.buttercupfestival.com for more information. He currently lives in West Yorkshire, where he works in social housing.
An extract from Parsimony
The Fieldfare
Lost among the hills, the copper kettles
and mustard jars
of the new world. The thrush-robins
have chosen a tree. Choose a branch. Settle
and let dawn
raw the air. Take your place. Men
are flooding the bogs, threading their taps
through the maple wood,
carrying their baskets to the hill.
The morning star holds its moment
over the smoulder and gloss.
Your song is a trespass. Trespass.