NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

An independent small press poetry review

NHI independent review
Other Poetry
29 Western Hill,
Durham,
DH1 4RL,
UK
ISSN 0144-5847
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This page last updated: 14th December 2007. 		Other Poetry #22

With over 90 poets represented as well as 18 pages of reviews and brief biographical details of the contributors this is a brilliant buy. The poetry is of a very high standard but a few are worthy of special mention.

Ganga Prasad Vimal's poem IN THAT DREAM translated from the Hindi by Us Sapne Mein is an excellent illustration of the illusive quality of dreams, their contradictions of the longed for and the terror and our inability to pin them down. This is summed up in the lines 

	That was a dream, looking beyond that
	a series of nightmares only.
This reviewer was pleased to see that the editors have included the poem in its original language after the translation. This is always an admirable way to encourage wider readership and to enable readers of the original language a chance to judge the poem first hand.

MICHAEL MAINE AND THE DEMON OF YOUTH by Raymond Humphreys is a disturbing tale of youthful nastiness made even more frightening by the mantra 

	Michael Maine (not his real name).
It deftly portrays the dehumanising aspects of mob violence and the way that society conveniently forgets its victims. Alistair Elliot's poem THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN is formed on the page like two war planes or, depending on your interpretation, two pyramids 
	a pyramid of peaceful courage
The poet uses lists to contrast the heroism of war with that of the peace 
	armourers with shining shirts of bullets, refuellers, bomb handlers,
	patchers and pluggers of holes with their dope and canvas, metal and rivets,
against 
	all in their hats, their suits, their dresses of several ages, a pyramid
	of peaceful courage, and not forgetting the dog — unless it's a masterly cat.
It contrasts the pilot heading a team backing him up against a matriarch supporting an expanding family. We ask who is the braver? All the poems in this collection are worthy of close reading.

reviewer: Polly Bird.