'We needed coffee but...'

'You're unlikely to read anything like it . . . poems are rarely so curious, precise and committed to their enquiry.'
Jack Underwood

'It arrives with a unique and distinct sensibility; his poems create their own evocative and elusive worlds. There is a kind of relaxed quizzical sensuality running throughout, an easy, compelling confidence.'
The Guardian

'I think this is the first poetry book I've recommended, but it's just stunning and deserves far wider recognition. While there's a playfulness and a lightness of touch to the writing it also left me feeling that every single word was in exactly the right place. Beautiful.'
Dave Gorman

Matthew Welton is prepared to admit that sometimes things need a second, third or even fifteenth look. In his second collection, We needed coffee but...(the full 101-word title is too long to include here) his thoroughness and persistence serves as a reality check on the lazy assumption that things in poems possess an automatic significance which the reader should understand and trust.
In the opening twenty-four-parter 'Virtual airport', light is 'like new aluminium' or 'a gesture not everybody is going to understand' or 'a colour like still lemonade' or 'something only dimly understood'. For all the reappraisal and repitition there is no loss of precision, the ideas never fail to be rejuvenated by each look. The overall impression of such a sustained, focussed enquiry can be exhausting, challenging, but the sense of atmosphere accumulated is uniquely vivid, perhaps even more 'real' orhonest for its rigour.
'Four Letter Words' is one of many sequences drawn from collaborations, in this case with the composer Larry Groves. Made-up entirely of words with four letters, it can make for an odd read at times, particularly part 'vier': 'arsm coss jick dism', but elsewhere things are more still and playful: 'Pour yourself some coke. Grab some blue bean soup.' The sequence adjusts the ear so that the sound of each word becomes inseparable from its meaning. Even a word like 'much' becomes distinctly onomatopoeic.
Part three, 'Aimed at nobody', features more traditionally singular poems. Its visual art equivalent would be demonstrating that aside from abstract studies Welton can also draw a convincing pair of hands without fingers looking like sausages. These are lively, surreal poems following their own beguiling logic: 'The habit of warming a lightbulb in your hands seriously inflates your heart.'
Elsewhere, 'South Korea and Japan 2002' follows the games and stadiums of that year's world cup: 'germicide' plays 'southpaw' in a 'tournament' of vignettes about domesticity, skyline, light and the intimacy. 'Six poems by themselves' is a sequence made entirely from differently arranged horizontal lines (poem blue-prints maybe?) and the final 13-part 'Dr. Suss' grows organically from itself: part repetition/part mutation: 'As slow as winter fog, we set out for our appointment with John Barnes. As slow as winter fog, we missed our appointment with John Cabot...'
Welton's book doesn't chum-up to the reader, but it does work very hard. You're unlikely to read anything like it simply because poems are rarely so curious, precise and committed to their enqu