The Impossibility of Nothingness

In an extraordinary late flowering, these new poems — written in his nineties — are still characteristically and unmistakeably the crafted work of Ian McDonald, and they are also remarkably other. McDonald’s hallmark qualities are all still here: a capacity for genuine compassion; an exploration of the complex nature of love; a profound engagement with the natural world; and character vignettes, powerfully drawn, empathetic but never sentimental, that are an essential archive of a disappearing Guyana. These late poems bring new angles on McDonald’s perennial themes. There is the exploration of memory and intimations of mortality, a focus on grandchildren, the garden and the sheer wonder of being alive at the poet’s great age. But in addition, there is something new-minted and unrestrained about the language of these later poems that is remarkable. These poems are, if anything, even more surprising, moving and inspirational than those pieces beloved by generations of Caribbean readers. There is a kind of carefree truthfulness about the poems in The Impossibility of Nothingness. Richly imagistic, the poems feel elemental, written without the constraint of wanting approval or applause but because they demanded to be written. As he says in the final line of the short title poem – which is an assertion of the possibility of momentary joy in even the bleakest of situations – “I record this just in case it’s true”.