?There's nothing romantic about it, eating alone in an empty diner . .. Happy Hour, Andrew Jamison's crisp, appealing first collection, includes Hopper-like studies of disappointment (two brothers homesick at home') and pivots on moments in which a solitary figure (eating alone, or trudging a towpath thinking of how a girl sipped her cappuccino) takes stock of time's avalanches' and of both the play and fade of light. They record the first impressions and the influence of memory, encompassing Belfast, London, the North of England and — following a first, astonished visit — New York City. These award-winning poems feature rich evocations (the hydraulic door huffing open'), playful ironies (This Whole Place'), wry, demotic tones (on a piss of a night', Aristotle blethering on'), a trip to Ikea, the abandon of driving golf balls into Strangford Lough, his grandparents' transformation into mythic figures, and a series — listening to Ash, Kings of Convenience and Them — in which tunes take me back, track by track'. Happy Hour introduces a bold new voice of a new generation.
