NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

Susie Gordon's first poetry collection, PECKHAM BLUE, is based on a journey from her home on the Lancashire coast to South London to rediscover the family who gave her up for adoption. The ten poems work as a thread of exploration for both the big and unanswerable questions of life as well as the familiar and everyday experience. These are poems that are in turn funny and serious, revealing a writer who — though relatively new to her craft — gives a poignant take on the theme of identity.

The personal is conspicuous in a number of these poems, with certain of them — PECKHAM BLUE, WEDDING DAY, ELVIS OF POMEROY STREET, A CIGARETTE WITH MY FATHER — pinpointing the figure of the absent father. The title poem PECKHAM BLUE points to Gordon's capacity as observer:

	Walking out from the station,
	the same way that my father walked,
	coming up from the platform,
	I saw Peckham blue for the first time, below a chalk sky.

	I picked out the older ones in faded packets,
	the ones with rounded corners, grainy brown,
	and everyone with mullets, jackets with big collars,
	lurex for nights on the town, and she was there
	with bluish eyes and red hair;

	Tawdry, tragic town
	scored with tramlines, jilted
	when the lights go down;
	sad old Havisham.

	Elvis of Pomeroy Street,
	cocky hip swinger, hands-in-pockets saunter
	around your patch,
	sly word and suitcase always packed
	for when the shit hits.

	All of us, as halves
	of selves, twists of DNA, must have been
	five times each around the world, so I —
	as demi-curl of chromosomes — have buzzed
	over Blackheath Common on Raymond's bike

	I want to walk beside him here,
	arm in arm or feet apart,
	two reflections making clear
	that he is with me, I with him.

	sink towns on the
	brink of
	towns where the rooves are
	grey crowns
	staggered camelots
	Graffiti
	Tapestry