Books Review: Yarn; Sunshine and Shadow, by Hughie Carroll

Hughie Carroll’s public début as a poet began on social media during the first national lockdown in May 2020. The variety of direct, colloquial, honest, and tender poems were immediately engaging: pared to the core and punchy. I joined with the many who encouraged what rapidly became two books of poetic memoir: Yarn and Sunshine and Shadow. 

The early poems take us to the perilous edges of being Hughie in all of its risky, rebellious engagement with adolescence and young adulthood. He does not turn away nor edit out unflattering details. His young self emerges as a performer of many talents, juggling with audiences and adrenalin. A musician, a magician, a clown, a juggler and a stunt man in a ‘new circus’, he delights in the creativity and ‘nonsense of it all’, jesting with life like a medieval fool. 

In 1991, when Hughie was 26 years old, he suffered a serious fall when a stunt with Snapdragon Circus went wrong during a rehearsal. The effects of the fall, physically and psychologically, have resulted in chronic PTSD and ME. He began to attend Buddhist retreats at Maenllwyd in 1996. 

Yarn was written during a three-month solitary retreat at Gaia House in 2019. In 2005, inspired by John Crook’s The Yogins of Ladakh he went on a long pilgrimage to many important Buddhist sites: Ladakh, India and Thailand, all touched upon in the second section of Sunshine and Shadow. This poetry is more contemplative and spacious, sometimes using rhyme and haiku forms to express his inner changes. 

We meet Hughie in search of healing and meaning, articulating the unspeakable (both trauma and awe). He lays bare the delusions of the small self with empathy and self-irony. He conjures light relief with sleight of hand. 

Ladakh 

…behind the noise
the same silence of
home 

Thank you, Hughie. These poems have helped me to wake up and feel the ‘aching heart of the world’. They call to be read, heard and embraced by all who tread the Way of the Bodhisattva. 

Notes

Yarn, Hugh Carroll, 2020; Sunshine and Shadow, Hugh Carroll, 2020. 

Obtainable from the author: https://hugle.uk/stuff/shop/ 

Also available from: 

https://www.blurb.com/b/10210368-yarn  

https://www.blurb.com/b/10258007-sunshine-and-shadow