"Matthias’ style has two great influences: David Jones, whom he has edited in for Faber, and whose slightly ‘open-form’ writing Matthias actually rejects. What Matthias takes from Jones is an ability to take in cultural reference make it his own and then float it out, like a casting a fly upon a stream to land on the current of the sentence. Matthias’ other great influence is Robert Lowell in the period of For the Union Dead. That reference to Lowell will infuriate Matthias’ many admirers from the post-modern wing of trans-Atlantic poetry. But Matthias is, like Lowell, in many ways, a political poet showing how culture has been politicised and is politicising." Ian Pople • Manchester Review (scroll down)

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