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Distances brought closer

03/05/08

Permalink 10:13:16 am, 527 words, 156 views   English (UK)
Categories: Poetry Anthologies

Distances brought closer

A real treat for writelink newcomers and for those who may remember her work from the poetry arena is Close Distances by prize-winning writelinker Marilyn Jenkins (croescade).

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Close Distances by Marilyn Jenkins, Cinnamon Press

Of course, it's probably not a good idea to write a review of work by someone I know from writelink. But there again, it's nice to celebrate the success of someone one knows, even if not very well!

Some of the poems I recognise from early drafts on writelink arena. But collected together and presented here with many more I've not seen before only gives them even more substance. Indeed, the poems contained in this book are thought and emotion provoking and crammed with some stunning imagery. In fact, the title sums up this whole collection nicely. It is close in its observation and the emotion and empathy which the poems evoke, while also covering great distances in the breadth of subject matter explored.

In the first part, entitled Going Back, I particularly enjoyed
Maes Y Beddau and Town Park ("I wait for rain/from the past to reach me;").

I did find a few of the poems the start of the second part of the collection Voices less engaging. This probably says more about me and my tastes than it does about the collection. Either way, I'm not sure whether this is down to the voices themselves, the sparseness in style of some of these poems (eg Light on Wood and March Snow), the contrast with the greater part of the collection or a mixture of all three.

However, this section does also contains some strong, absorbing poems on a range of subject matter. I particularly enjoyed: Pastiche, Evidence Bag, Colour Sense, Holding Stone, Wolf Hunger (an interesting take on Red Riding Hood), August (Octavia to Antony), Biochemist, Retreat, Negative Capability (about Keats)and The Green Velvet Dress.

To give some more precise examples, in Cameo, there is the sound of:

"...Then thud

of clods broke"

Then, there is the imagery of:

"...Your
straight body

paused, arrowed
black against a branch's
white bow..."

In Rebirth, scientists start with the discovery of a girl's skeleton and use it to establish her identity:

"...Skilled hands wrapped
the core of skull in clay, grew
the face of a girl in search of a name."

Then:

"...And from that

bone-seed flowered her reproduction."

The collection ends on the strong sounds and images of the death of a hunter in Record:

"we watched his slow spin, arms in helicopter
whirl, to hushed landing in snow..."

"...a spill of brains,
slipped safely into a stark hollow like cream into a glass cup."

The scene replays for the "I" of the poem like one from a film noir. As the events leave strong images with the narrator, so the poem leaves strong images with us, enhanced beautifully by the ending:

"...but I hold the director's version that includes
an unwitnessed aftermath of thaw when the cup dissolves, flows
mellowed, away with a soul's remains ungrspable as air."

Reviewed by Sarah James, website at http://www.milltech-systems.co.uk and blogging at http://www.writelink.co.uk/blogs/sarah_james .

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