 Pennine Ink c/o Mid Pennine Arts The Gallery Downstairs Yorke St Burnley BB11 1HD UK £3 email Pennine Ink Before commenting on this review please read the FAQ page Home page Notes for publishers Want to be a reviewer? Anthologies. Books. Audio. Magazines. Software. Video. Artefacts. Web design by Gerald England This page last updated: 3rd August 2005. |
Pennine Ink #26 | |
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In her editorial to PENNINE INK 26 Laura Sheridan states that, Some poems are simply written yet profound in meaning, others are light-hearted or describe memories, people, nature, vices. They are a way of connecting with other human beings, of being part of a rich, intricate mental web that's much more fun than the internet.The journal is comprised of 44 pages and contains one short story, CORRESPONDENT, by Lee J. Duckworth, and the remainder is taken up with poetry. Lee J. Duckworth's story is about a person approaching old age who mails a letter to himself in order to feel less alone in the world: the character says, ruefully, Maybe next time I'll short pay the postage and hope someone actually has to knock on my door and ask me for the difference.The loneliness of old age, the memories of a lived life, and the hope that one won't always be alone, are neatly summed up. The images of "a hated, pointless clock," "a chipped mug," and " a rug so bereft of thread as to be a mere shadow of its original form," evoke the tawdriness of the persona's life. The poets, many with a body of proven work behind them, would probably be seen by many to have produced "small" poetry: poems abound about elephants, sheep, a cat, a bird, a gift, and what it is to live in modern society. But this small poetry is tenderly, carefully crafted, various and often humorous in the light way it wears its crafting. There is a desire to record "a dead man's coat," a game of tiddlywinks, "slivers of ice," "sweat of strangers"; and to face the rigours of loss and betrayal with the same detailed poetic care. Donna Pucciani's poem JEREMY, although it's about a pet, is earthy, surreal, and often sensuous, with its "vinyl-bagged" dog taken home in the back seat of the car for burial in the backyard. With Amanda Bradley's A GIFT, we are asked to join in the delight of someone presented with a goldfish bowl containing a fish smoothly swimming into parts of the bowl where space distortedthen on to the drama of Richard Fleming's THE COCKLE GATHERERS: We found them difficult to love, despised their foreignness.Mike Hoy's STILL CRAZY is alive to the lover who had to let me go.The poems move in and out of a range of objective correlations: classrooms and clouds, skinflints and tramps, home loyalties and a woman in Paris, in order to capture small, meditative, reverent and sometimes fearful moments. In the wonderful poem BLUE by Laura Sheridan, the speaker's sense of self is intertwined with those of the fish through which she swims, her inner lining pulls me closer, until I have to remind myself that these are not my fish.There is nothing pretentious about Sheridan's poem, but there is an emotional rawness carried in its understated craft. Funnily, enough, the understatement of most of the poems in this collection, is often achieved in the laying down of small, not particularly lyrical statements, a domestic mantra of facts that add up to much more than mere factuality. Take for example the poem SLIVERS OF ICE by Isabelle Ghanesh. Here the poet deftly captures an alienated relationship: words facing up to reality: it's so hard to plan a weekend for two people who share the same last name but get mail at different addressesThe irony of these poems creates a strong modesty in the verse; a humility before the facts of life. At the same time, the poets' quiet, verbal attentiveness is moving. It's the linguistic exactness, together with the huge, lived experience behind the voices, which enables the poems to convey sacredness in the everyday events and thoughts of the lives they represent. | ||
| reviewer:Patricia Prime. |