Stephanie Smithe Browne for New Hope International, 2004

'As the key persona of Alan Morrison's third poetry collection, CLOCKING-IN FOR THE WITCHING HOUR, Al-Andrew-Fred is a man of many names but one poignant face: the face of a clock, of time — lost, stolen, gone — ticking on unfailingly, unfortunately. Morrison's poems are a convincing chronicle of one working day (or rather, working night) of a man whose life has been littered with good intentions but heart-rending consequences. Set as composite parts that work as chapters in the story of Al's routine nightshift existence (SETTING OFF, CLOCKING-ON, FIRST WATCH, CLOCKING-OUT FOR TEA AND BISCUITS, etc.), the collection begins with a nursery rhyme rhythm:

It's half-past half-past nine'o'clock

so hickery-dickery-dock

tired eyes accuse the clock

as if the mantelpiece were a dock

and the ornaments that clutter it, a jury

"How many ticks to a tock?" we are asked in an aside. How long is one life's span? The image of the ticking clock runs throughout all the poems; here, wedded to the childhood-pulsing rhythm, it haunts the opening poems, as Al readies and departs for his "cap-badge" wearing security officer's job. Just another day to tick off the calendar of his depressingly depleting life:... Don't get me wrong — even though the subject of the poems is a man with a stifled spirit the effect of reading these poems is anything but dismal. On the contrary, I was amazed at Morrison's ability to sustain this portrayal of a man trying... Each poem shrewdly archives the hours of Al's bleak shift: from the yammering of his crude co-workers... through reminiscence of lost opportunities — but for a twist of fate, LAST LAG OF FLAGGING NOSTALGIA TILL DAWN, in which Al remembers the mother who flung her body over his child's frame to protect him from the bombs of the war, the great-grandfather who was a Fabian socialist... Though Al's life is marked by nostalgia and lack, the poems are inversely marked by a plenitude of energetic (though sometimes visually tiring) lists. One of the best catalogues the details of the life that was and could have been. With his beautifully sated descriptions, Morrison slips from the homely to the erudite to the religio-political. The fullness of his sketch logs a mighty absence in his protagonist's life...

Morrison's textual style is also notable, for he makes ample use of formatted theatrical asides, or what at times could be read as footnotes or editorial commentary on the main thrust of the stanzas next to which they sit... The space and formatting of this review does not allow for a fuller exploration of this technique, which Morrison deploys with marvellous skill throughout. But again, what begins as a wonderfully refreshing technique, used to explore the unspoken or side-spoken emotional import of the words that find expression in the main stanzas, becomes, after a while, somewhat exhausting. I admit that this may well be my own custom-made pique, for I can imagine readers who would find the sustained intimacy and forcefully thoroughgoing revelation of the method stimulating. There is a refrain running through the poems of a man just hanging on, conceivably suicidal, trudging through his ghost of a life. It is a testament to Morrison's skill with poetic narrative and his precise management of tone that the reader is sympathetically and fascinatingly drawn in to this sad man's story...'