Eggshell: A Decorator's Notes : New and revised edition

John Froy's first poetry collection emerged from his day job as a painter and decorator, and examines his life - childhood, coming of age, marriage - with trademark precision and intensity. Originally published in 2007, this new and revised edition brings these fresh poems from the world of decorating into print again. Using imagery from house-painting to explore life with subtle psychological and social insight, the poems are filled with a quiet sense of contemplation. They also undermine and blur distinctions between art and craft, manual and intellectual work. There is a sense of closeness to physical work here, which gives authenticity and freshness. The first section, Gloss, is concerned with `the trade', from dry rot in the bathroom - how deep, how far the hungry threads have gone - through `the kinked, ballooning pipes' of old lead water systems, to the heady fumes of VOCs in gloss paint in Escape from Colditz, and the molecular structure of paint, `the fish scales of an aluminium primer'. We meet the poet as Ragged-trousered Philanthropist and then imagining himself working alongside the artist Georges Braque (he also trained as a decorator). The more fragile second section, Eggshell, looks at a troubled childhood, divorce, and death, often through the medium of decorating.