The World before Snow

by Tim Liardet

In 2013, Tim Liardet met an American poet during a blizzard in Boston and the two began an immediate, life-transforming love affair. The World Before Snow was the result. In a book of passionate extremes, the self-portrait— itself reinvented—documents the ways in which a very particular species of love can allow for the rediscovery of identity, as all fragments of persona put forth to the world are stripped down to expose the raw self.

Genres: Poetry

77 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2015

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Some books are so bad a bonfire is too grand a send-off.

I would hate someone's back garden or compost heap to be disfigured even a smidgin by a single, shitty cinder that was formerly part of this bubbling, Nile-green, fly-blown cowpat of a book.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

(2.5) I couldn’t resist the title and creepy Magritte cover, so added this to my basket during the Waterstones online sale at the start of the year. Liardet’s name was unfamiliar to me, though this was the Bath University professor’s tenth collection. Most of the unusual titles begin with “Self-Portrait” – for instance, “Self-Portrait as the Nashua Girl’s Reverse Nostalgia” and “Self-Portrait with Blind-Hounding Viewed in Panoramic Lens.” Apparently there is a throughline here, but if it weren’t for the blurb I would have missed it entirely. (“During a record-breaking blizzard in Boston, two poets met, one American and one English. This meeting marked the beginning of a life-transforming love affair.”) There were some turns of phrase and alliteration I liked, but overall I preferred the few poems that were not part of that pretentious central plot, e.g. “Ommerike” (part I) about mysterious mass deaths of birds and fish, “Nonagenaria,” a portrait of an old woman, and “The Guam Fever,” voiced by an ill soldier.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[P.D. Dawson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetry teaches us to stumble over words and to enjoy them as we fall into their intoxicating wonder and majesty. The World Before Snow by Tim Liardet, reminds us what a beautiful thing it is to not just stumble, but indeed to carefully settle upon words, the way a snowflake might settle upon a ledge amid a beautiful winter storm. His poetry is deeply rich with metaphor, invention and originality, but at the heart of this collection of poetry, is the reinvention and rediscovery of self. Sometimes we see ourselves most clearly through the eyes of the people around us, and this collection is said to be the resulting inspiration from a life-transforming love affair that started back in 2013, when Liardet met an American poet during a blizzard in Boston.

Each poem is deeply wrapped up in the riddles and circumstances of love, pain, life, and the deep life-changing force of all these things, from the sinful brashness with which it changes us, and the interconnecting embodiment of love that sinks beneath us and saves us, yet twists around inside of us, as if our bodies spiral into one consciousness, but then appears somehow lost. The poems themselves flow like a river across the page, yet Liardet somehow demands to be read slowly, so that his words may sink into us, ‘we loom like giants,’ he writes, ‘through rain and steam, through so much steam.’ That’s just one line that I love, and which seems to demonstrate the freshness and wonderful flow of his words.

The poems titled ‘Ommerike,’ of which there are four, all seem to deal directly and less ambiguously with the storm that sparked a life-changing love affair. In the second one of these, Liardet writes, ‘The Snowstorm came down, it blew across Boston, it said all roads behind you are closed for good.’ The last line perhaps alludes to the fact that life after this chance meeting will never be the same again, for the roads of the past can never be reopened.

This is the first collection I have read of Liardet, and it has certainly made me want to read more of his work. He has a wonderful way of surprising me with his invention, like in the following verse:

and how a thought has feet–how mine can wrap
them around
those of your next thought, which wraps its feet
around,
which grips so tight, they could be hard to separate.’

This will not be a collection to everyone’s taste, but Liardet is a masterful wordsmith, and I’m glad the wonderful title and cover drew me in. It comes from me, very highly recommended.

[Elliot · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love poetry. People got something to say and I’m here to listen.

An excerpt from “Self-Portrait with Cylindrical Snowstorm and Tired Pony Playing”

“We know only the extremity of what we feel and what we do, and for us there can be only these soft collisions, lived life, the more and the more of the road - the snow’s hypnotic.”