Tenderness
£5.00
Tenderness was a winner in the 2003 Book & Pamphlet Competition, and a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice.
Tenderness, by Tim Dooley: a pamphlet bulging with as much charge and scope as most full collections. In Dooley’s hands, a dull convention becomes an apiary where “passion can harden/ to a dark and sticky/ concentration of cells”.
A conker exposes its “coffin-shaded fruit”. Issues of tribalism and social manipulation are played out through the delight-with-violence gladiatorialism of a rugger match. Yet Dooley’s sum exceeds his image-making parts. Exploiting the lightly-clad pamphlet’s ability to flit beneath our radar he targets, from unexpected angles, such ‘big’ themes as historicity and 9-11. Suffused with humane politics, Tenderness enacts its title in the way it moves through both popular and literary motifs (vinyl discs, Narcissus) to close-stitch its fabric with subtle effects. Amalgamating poise and intellect with a thoughtful pacing of each poem’s release, Dooley injects his words into their precision mouldings with a characteristically delicate and perceptive pressure.
‘Tenderness, by Tim Dooley: a pamphlet bulging with as much charge and scope as most full collections. In Dooley’s hands, a dull convention becomes an apiary where “passion can harden/ to a dark and sticky/ concentration of cells”. A conker exposes its “coffin-shaded fruit”. Issues of tribalism and social manipulation are played out through the delight-with-violence gladiatorialism of a rugger match. Yet Dooley’s sum exceeds his image-making parts. Exploiting the lightly-clad pamphlet’s ability to flit beneath our radar he targets, from unexpected angles, such ‘big’ themes as historicity and 9-11. Suffused with humane politics, Tenderness enacts its title in the way it moves through both popular and literary motifs (vinyl discs, Narcissus) to close-stitch its fabric with subtle effects. Amalgamating poise and intellect with a thoughtful pacing of each poem’s release, Dooley injects his words into their precision mouldings with a characteristically delicate and perceptive pressure.’ — PBS selection judgement
In stock