NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

FLYING LESSONS begins and ends in the air. Between flights she retreads the journeys of childhood and maturity with the light-hearted skill of a word-dancer who is also an artist. She looks at her personal world with affection, but always with pertinent questions which invite us to draw our own conclusions. There is a matter-of-factness about her work , a telling-it-as-it is quality that eschews the academic cleverness of so much contemporary poetry.

In ROLLER SKATES she recalls;

	[I] remember the first time
	clutching at doors and fences,
	I wanted to be Sonja Henjie.

	Soon balanced,
	I belonged with the tribe.

	Twilight deepened
	over Clepstone Avenue and Birchgate Road
 
	We moved together, a cool machine,
	ballbearings in harmony,
	then spun out into the unknown
	spiralling Van Gogh stars.

	The town I inhabit is
	sootier,
	smaller,
	safer.
	I can reach out and touch the sides.
	Iron masters and shop keepers its elite,
	but gritty men who worked the foundries and shipyards
	its mainstay.

	In the album, a fashion plate at forty,

	A spinster of this parish

	She lived above the shop in Linthorpe Road,
	her watercolours on the wall,
	a drawing room piano.
	behind the spectacles, jet beads,
	she had something up her sleeve.

	How they met I've no idea,
	or when Irish Uncle Tom moved in.
	for me he'd always been there,
	rough tweed against her crepe de chine,
	a growling dog under the table,
	himself knitting by the fire.

	Thirsty bisque sucks in glazes
	I pour and swirl around the bowl.
	Brown peaty pools of tenmoku,
	dolomite clouds matt blue sky,
	pepper –green turns yellow
	and the gorse blossoms,
	smoky blue shadows snow.

	The alchemy of fire
	creating landscapes.
	I tap the rim
	and like an instrument
	the pot rings with perfect pitch.