Book Review: KEITH DERSLEY

BEYOND THE 

RED BRICK STREETS 

Book Review of: 

‘ALL THE RED BRICK STREETS’ 

by KEITH DERSLEY 

www.derzville.com ISBN-978-1090-969187. 102pp 

Memory is the currency we share. The coins we swap between us. When sixteen-year-old Keith stands ‘at the top of Bishop’s Hill,’ from where he can look down on ‘the whole of Ipswich’, which ‘was my domain,’ he’s doing something we’ve all done. Not Ipswich, maybe. Other cities. Other locations. But the same oceanic oneness with our time and space. The past is a place of lemonade days, as warm as eggs. A time where we read 1950s Western Annuals instead of internet posts. And each memory springs an answer. Like exchanging anecdotes in an ongoing dialogue. Remember when we…? Yes, but what about…? The red brick streets are also a yellow brick road through the scally tales of temporal conundrum. These are easily accessible poems that ‘take words for a walk’, not arsey-versey verse, but poems that flow with stories about athletes, Lotharios, charlatans and polymaths. And those who never made it through. Those who persist only in the memory of lost Pop songs. We watch trash-TV, we scuff with little journals and Creative Writing scribbling lads, we read Beatnik magazines, William Wantling, a biography of Picasso, Jim Burns... crammed into over six feet of shelving. Poems are legal tender throughout the world. Even when there’s the taunting voice that says ‘let’s stay young reading comics and eating sweets.’