NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

An independent small press poetry review

NHI independent review
Pretext
Pen & Inc Press
School of Literature & Creative Writing
University of East Anglia
Norwich
NR4 7TJ
UK
ISBN 1 902913 23 X
£7.99
Subscriptions: 2 issue £14 [£16 Europe; £18 RoW]
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This page last updated: 3rd February 2009. 		Pretext #11

This literary journal is always interesting to read because it provides a platform from which established writers can launch views and also provides some space for new writers. I am especially pleased to be reviewing this issue of Pretext because it contains one of the best poems I have seen in the past year — THE PLAYGROUND by Seamus Heaney. The playground fight is extended to incorporate the daily fight that is part of everyone's life. Heaney hurls the reader into the scene with the opening lines:

	The blows that flattened him hurled him at the same time far ahead.
	He saw how it would be in years to come, how he'd still be there,
Only an experienced, top poet can write about life like this:
	Even after, he would worm himself back down there, into that
	knowledge, its innocence and dumbness, like a bush being suckled
	by its roots, a smashed bush holding up inside its struck down branches.
This is an extraordinary poem, being tense and ultimately uplifting. Heaney continues to be at his best — a well-tuned and meditative free spirit. His love of nature, as always, seems to solidify then be broken into floats that permeate his work. THE PLAYGROUND is a mature and sparkling achievement. Only a few poets can reach this level. It is one of five poems by Heaney in this issue, and I do not wish to comment further because it is an offered jewel, and Pretext is a good read anyway. Heaney's new book of poems, BRAIRD, is due for publication by Faber in Spring 2006.

THE PLAYGROUND is written 'after Rene Char', and interestingly, David Solway explores the older line and its variations in COUNTING THE WAYS:

	How do I love you, but past all pretense.
	I love you better than Elizabeth
and the theme of poetry writing is given a deft and interesting hand in Solway's WHAT MAKES A POEM. This poem begins with the lines:
	The barley
	  and the manner of its malting
	  its standing up to the wind
	  its sprouting and drying
	  its gradual ripening
Michele Roberts and Patricia Duncker present a very entertaining set of letters called THE DIFFERENCE OF VIEW. In it, the concept of 'women's interest fiction' is explored. This issue also contains some very interesting fiction work and an interview with Ian Sinclair.

reviewer: Doreen King.