NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

An independent small press poetry review

NHI independent review
JANE McKIE: MOROCCO ROCOCO
Cinnamon Press
Ty Meiron
Glan yr Afon
Tanygrisiau
Blaenau Ffestiniog
Gwynedd
LL41 3SU
UK
ISBN 978 1 905614 07 3
£7.99
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This page last updated: 14th December 2007. 		JANE McKIE: MOROCCO ROCOCO

Starting with the impressive cover design of intricate tiles,we are taken off to Sahara — IN THE BEGINNING

	A backpack,
	a walker—
	the smallest pebble
	upon a silent plain.
Travelling garners freshly minted words, definitely fresh to the reader. At times, the words Khamsin, Sirocco, Haboob could have been spread out more in their setting. Exotic vocabulary cannot always stand on its own — its richness needs to be teased out. Yet Jane McKie in PROCESSION, shows exactly how this can be done perfectly—
	tamarisk, its leaves
	     as fine as ostrich feathers, fronds
	swept along the sand-logged ground
	in the pattern of a fan.
After these ten poems, mostly quite short, Jane McKie really gets going, into her stride back home with her Welsh poems. Richer more sumptuous writing was waiting back in Montgomeryshire, SCALE SIX INCHES TO ONE MILE.
	You could wrap yourself in a map like this one—
	wrap yourself naked as if it were a cloak.
The names of Llanwyddelan, Tregynon, Aberhafesp blend in far easier; this is the geography of home. DRAWING CHURCHES FOR BEGINNERS gives a confession of sorts:
	Never the mountaineer, ever the
	rambler, I lose confidence in the whole edifice,
	thinking:practice must be a form of devotion.
She flies off into a freer world,with childhood picked out crisply here and there,
	Our pond had no fringe of bull-rushes,
	but we heard it whisper about slyly
	concealed baskets; heard it wish
	for black kohl to line its ordinary eye
	with intricate pattern..
Many of these pieces are nearer to paintings, glances at surroundings. One of the highest points of praise used to be "having a light hand with pastry" and having a light hand with poetry is also a difficult gift to acquire. MORROCCO ROCOCO is a fine example of someone searching landscapes both external and internal.

reviewer: Pat Jourdan.