I took great delight in
reading the Wayleave poets’ pamphlets. Here are brief reviews of their works.
By the Light of Day by Pauline Keith
A collection of
tightly-knitted poems referring to Pauline’s childhood and family. The central
point is the family slaughter-yard where cows and horses are killed as part of
the ordinary process of getting rid of old or sick animals to produce dog and
cat food. But for a child it is a mysterious ritual, ruthless and fascinating.
A world where blood and carcasses, knives and maggots are all familiar,
described with innocent honesty, yet realistically. There is an intriguing gap between the horror
of what is perpetrated in the slaughter-yard and the business-like attitude it
is dealt with. A gap cleverly filled with humour, precise description and
compassion.
The Folded Moment by Mike Barlow
I wrote about this book
before, as I read it when published about a year ago. Re-reading and re-writing
about it, I find it cleverer than ever. The poems evoke nature, both animal and
vegetable, observing, filtering and conveying it in sounds and stories. The
poet is a stone, washed over by cloudy sky and rainstorm, has close encounters
with buck and doe, breathes daylight. It’s all so deeply felt, profoundly
developed and finally, skilfully shaped to be savoured by the reader. A unique
experience.
Crazy Days by Carole Coates
Carole writes about her
husband’s illness which caused distress and pain in their lives. A rare case of
Creutzfeldt Jacob Disease meant seizures, gaps of memory and childish cravings
for sugar. During the cure he became temperamental because of the medication,
not himself. And then the slow recovery. The poems are touching, resilient in
their attempt to explain, understand, help and testify what is happening in
John’s brain. A lucid, compassionate record of difficult times lived bravely.
A Scarlet Thread by Elizabeth Burns
This is a sequence of
poems inspired by the paintings of Anne Redpath, a renowned Scottish painter
who travelled throughout Europe, especially in the Mediterranean countries. She
was an associate of the Royal Scottish Academy and of the Royal Academy and was
awarded the O.B.E. in 1955. The title of the sequence by Elizabeth Burns
relates to a scarlet thread ‘running through the grey’ of her father’s tweed, a
bright colour standing out against ‘quiet’ colours, probably a symbol of her
own destiny, and a leitmotif in the poems echoing the paintings. As Redpath
herself said, ‘I do with a spot of red or yellow in a harmony of grey, what my
father did in his tweed’. The poems describe her work, remind us of her life
and evoke her art; they create images from the pictures and refer to them,
adding meaning and completing what was painted. They are a biography in verse,
giving us an inner perspective.
Moon Garden by Ron Scowcroft
Ron’s poems have always
shown me a sense of domestic simplicity. Using an easy simile I can say they
are as clear as spring water. They speak of him, of course, of his childhood
and of his family. They are sincere, open, rich in words and profoundly
inspired by his memories and experiences. My favourite is Colour Blind, because
of the contrast of ‘the red dress I loved you in’, so meaningful and intense,
with the grey background surrounding it. A blotch of passionate colour in a
monotone world, leading to the beautiful and intimate image of the last stanza:
‘you are a colour no-one can see’. They are certainly poems the reader can’t
forget.
Monkey Puzzle by William Gilson
William Gilson’s poems
are memories of his life in America as a boy and a young man, mixed with his
present life in Cumbria where he has been living for twenty years. The past is
alive in his recollection as if happening now, vivid and everlasting. In
contrast, the present trickles in a desultory manner, unreal, insubstantial,
ungraspable, amid the constant fear of missing out. With the first poem we are
in a graveyard where he used to play with his brother, where death is falling
asleep. The poems unravel as episodes of American life, working on a farm,
caddying at a golf club and then the move to rainy Cumbria, getting elderly,
cancer, feeling the journey of life will end at some point. The conclusion is a
quiet spell just after an escaped danger. Once again the poet is reading and
writing, safe at home.
The White Silence by Jane Routh
The famous story of Sir
John Franklin and his naval expedition to find the northwest passage in 1845 is
cleverly told by Jane Routh in her well crafted poems. She imagines the
silence, the whiteness and the cold the crew had to face once caught in ice,
and the vain effort to find an easier and faster way to circumnavigate the
American continent. It was a waste of time and of human life. Nevertheless
Franklin was remembered and depicted as a hero, leaving space for the poet's
witty analysis. The freezing hell where the crew met death is impressively
described with its trapping stillness and strangling ice. What was rescued from
the shipwreck is symbolic of the vainglory of the expedition. They faced the
Arctic unprepared and ended dreadfully. Ironically, the passage opened for the
first time in 2007 when the ice melted and the oceans met.
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