NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

Published twice a year by the Anglo-Welsh Poetry Society. An eclectic bunch of 40-odd poems: introspective, observational, narrative or romantic, short and pithy or long and rambling, poems on religion, even one on Stanley Baldwin, and many others. There is a fine poem, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE VALLEY, by Idris Caffrey in which the poet watching from the hills would like to wring every bit of sun-light out of the day:

                until there is nothing left
       but one small wedge of light,
       that you can hold in your hand
       and throw up into the darkening sky
       to burst into a million tiny stars.

 
                                       the day he died
       Ragwort and bindweed, in a bright green tide
       Reclaimed his work, and swallowed all his pride.

       Beak shut, the songbird rested,
       claws raised in prayer or protest.
       Cupping the body, I stroked its breast:
       the intimacy that death allows.

       We slopped the lot
       Into your old bath
       Where they sloshed
       Like black, unblinking eyes
       in jellied snot.

       And again I'm back there,
       Crouched outside in a thicket,
       Pensive as some ancient exile
 
       Who, hearing the children's voices,
       Enters the first banked circle
       To cooking smells and laughter.

BORDERLINES is a mature magazine that gives the reader poetry, and very little else. It achieves this so successfully that it merits several rereadings.

It's a publication that eshews page numbers, editorials, contents lists or reviews. The distinctive size, somewhere between A4 and A5, is a clue to understanding the carefully considered and independent values that allow each poem a proper space where it can be enjoyed.

Because the reader is not distracted by trimmings or trivialities, any mediocrity would be easy to spot. Unsurprisingly, the degree of thought that underpins the character of BORDERLINES is reflected in the editorial selection. Indeed, the poems are discretely but intelligently marshalled, moving through a range of subject matter and genres.

The first eight poems achieve a collaborative sense of rural borderlands which is bright with detail. Angie Quinn binds a series of fine images into the rhythmical opener, ENCHANTMENT. It concludes:

	a dead dog fox had gone to ground
	suspended, bound, in silent earth.

			the valley heavy
	with the smell of ramsons, a pale
	carpet of stars in the wood.

	like stars on the night-wind.

No editor is short of submissions on this theme, but Kevin Bamford and Dave Bingham have the taste and judgement to make the thread connecting these pieces the stronger — because of such diverse talent in their authors. THE HOSPITAL GARDEN anticipates death, in its brittle portrayal of life, Dan Wyke being one of several who can create pathos that sidesteps the bathetic:

	On the way home, my numb hands
	could still feel your bones,
	bird-thin beneath your fur.

	The mic stand's a conqueror's flag pole.
	You claimed your own life.

	balcony
	hydrangea
	wrestles breeze
	palm languor
	laps iron

Three other items are worthy of mention. First, Dylan Harris impresses with NEW YEAR'S EVE, a brief but razor-sharp depiction of a pub:

		she's occupying clothes
	that leave so much caress undressed.

Finally, a piece by Giovanni Malito, printed shortly after his death and quoted in its entirety:

	equilibration

	the gods look down
	from their bland heavens
	envious of men,
		their turbulence

	and men look up
	from their spinning world
	envious of the gods,
		their calm contentment.