Thimbleful of Thoughts

A Thimbleful of Thoughts is a collection of poems too varied, too honest, and occasionally too rude to sit comfortably in a single mood. Hamish McLeod moves from the mud and cannon-smoke of a cavalry charge to the quiet ache of a soldier returning home; from the slow-burning grief of losing a brother to the absurd, cigarette-lit comedy of trying to quit smoking. Nothing here stays in one register for long, and that's the point.The collection opens with WAR & REMEMBRANCE, five narrative poems following soldiers through the anticipation, violence, and aftermath of battle, each grounded in small human details that outlast the fighting: a letter that arrives with bad news, a wounded horse, a black ribbon on a familiar door. "e;The Charge"e; is a full account of a cavalry engagement told from inside the saddle; "e;The Shortest and Most Costly War"e; steps back to ask what any of it was for.LOVE, LONGING & BETRAYAL traces a relationship from first desire through domestic tenderness to the bitter clarity of being left. GRIEF, ELEGY & CONTEMPLATION sits with loss without rushing past it, walking through bluebell woods and Covid wards alike in search of what remains after someone is gone.VICE & SELF-DESTRUCTION is the collection's darkest and funniest stretch: a mock-elegy for a dying cigarette lighter, a sardonic statistical defence of smoking against public health warnings, and "e;Life's a Bitch and Then You Die,"e; a long, unflinching poem that traces addiction from tobacco through cocaine and heroin and back again. COMIC & LIGHT VERSE lightens the mood deliberately and unapologetically, including a Wordsworth parody about being arrested for ranting near Stroud, and a poem in gleeful defence of not having a bath.DESIRE & THE BODY and POLITICAL & PHILOSOPHICAL close the book on unguarded, sometimes provocative ground, from a strip-club fantasy to a hymn-parody argument for reason over religious faith. Four Haiku Interludes are scattered between the longer sections, brief three-line poems on ageing, quantum physics, lockdown, and love that offer a breath between the heavier pieces.McLeod writes in traditional forms almost as often as free verse, with rhyme and metre used unfashionably and unapologetically alongside looser, conversational lines. The poems are personal and often confessional, and they don't flinch from profanity, dark humour, or adult content where the subject calls for it. This is not a tidy, single-theme chapbook built around one grief or one love affair. It's a genuine record of a wide-ranging poetic mind, honest about war, addiction, desire, loss, and the small absurdities of daily life in roughly equal measure — sometimes within the same poem.Readers who want their poetry to pick a lane and stay in it should look elsewhere. Readers who want a collection that can move from a Napoleonic-style cavalry charge to a joke about needing a bath, and mean both equally, will find plenty here to come back to and share.The title undersells it, deliberately. A thimbleful implies something small and contained; what's inside is neither. Across eight sections and nearly eighty pages, McLeod covers more emotional ground than most poets manage across a whole career — not because the poems are long, but because the shifts between them are so sudden and so complete. A war elegy sits two pages from a joke about vaping. A sonnet on ageing love sits across from a hymn parody arguing against God's existence. That whiplash is the book's real subject: an actual life, lived over decades, refusing to organise itself into one consistent tone.Contains strong language, drug references, and sexual content.