NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
An independent small press poetry review
 THE ALLOTMENT New Lyric Poets edited by Andy Brown Stride Publications 4b Tremayne Close Devoran Cornwall TR3 6QE UK ISBN 1 905024 07 X £10 visit the website of Stride Publications        Web design by  This page last updated: 10th December 2007. |
THE ALLOTMENT | |
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According to the anthology's editor, Andy Brown, Experience and how that experience is described is where the confluence of tradition and innovation takes place, this meeting of old and new being the key element of lyric poetry.He identifies the tension struck between newness and tradition as the essential component that leads to innovation. He further maintains that innovation implies precursors, hence, the inclusion of the traditional in his definition of modern lyric poetry. Lyric poetry is a form of poetry that does not attempt to tell a story, as do epic poetry and dramatic poetry, but is of a more personal nature instead. Rather than portraying characters and actions, the lyric poet addresses the reader directly, portraying his or her own feelings, states of mind, and perceptions. Although its name, from the word lyre, implies that it is meant to be sung, this is not always the case; much lyric poetry is purely meant to be read. (Wikipedia)The book starts off with a great deal of promise with contributions from Abi Curtis and Rose Flint who both live and work in the south of England The subject matter of their work ranges from: the bucolic made macabre in the harrowing description of a fox hunt and the mundane made magnificent by the elevation of housework to the realm of zen perfection — Rose Flint's DOMESTIC GODDESS: in these spaces where my orderliness has polished the shine into gold frames and chestnut surfaces, when china sings with all its mouths clean and wide open as nests full of thrushes and glass celebrates itself in mirrors of light ...— Abi Curtis's THE ALLOTMENT: gently brush the furled kale fall in love with veined greengages: rain bubbles solidified to flesh, their globular heads amongst the buttered lettuce. you can watch a marrow loom from lithe courgette to grotesque thumbThe book is then given over to modern and experimental works — Luke Kennard's THE TREE: I was arrested for writing of a tree I didn't care about. The tree represented me in court all the same. It must have really loved me.Whether the experimental poetry holds any interest for the general reader is a moot point and maybe the work is not aimed at the general reader in which case the lovers of this kind of poetry will surely find something that suits them. Jane Routh's contribution, ALL MY DEAD, brings the book back into the realms of approachable poetry with her take on life and death, boats and boating, the coast line and things pertaining to the sea. And those not-yet-dead who know they are next in line, the ones with grandchildren, make ready, and talk among themselves about how someone should have photographed the moor before it was fenced in, or haytime even: this is the closest they come to saying what they mean. Then they start to repeat themselves. | ||
| reviewer: Stewart Findlay. |