Just thought I’d bump this up again. David’s book of poems rooted in the Isle of Man is a lovely thing both to look at and to read. The perspective is of a small island community looking at itself and the bigger world around it. Here is pre-history and history, legend, landscape, language farming, family, love and loss.
His poem are wry, forgiving, honest, scholarly, observant, uncluttered, and unsentimentally tender. Many of them have been workshopped here on Eratosphere and having then all in one place adds to their individual magic.
So many things to like.
In a poem about his sister's (?) memorial service, "hills" is rhymed with "daffodils" in a way that is fresh and affecting, proving AE Stallings' manifesto that “Moon and June still have wonderful poems ahead of them”.
I loved the gentle humour: his widowed mother sitting with her sisters like “Mount Rushmore in cardigans”; the decline of the pub “Where are the snugs of yesteryear?”; the singing farmer “tilling us softly with his songs.”
And the striking images: “There pass two solitary birds/like a quotation mark/looking for a flock of words/before the page goes dark”; a giraffe-like gangly teenage son re-learning how to run; the midden “snoring” in the middle of the farm; the nativity angel “bursting with seriousness”.
The illustrations by Vicky Webb are a perfect accompaniment. Bright, simple and subtle. The slice of Battenberg with a glass of milk, brought back a lost world for me.
And it’s all printed on quality paper ! An absolute bargain for a tenner.
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