NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

An independent small press poetry review

The Dawntreader Indigo Dreams Press 8 Reynolds Court Hildersley Ross-On-Wye HR9 7NE UK Ł3.50 [RoW Ł4] subscriptions: 4 issues Ł13 [RoW Ł16] email The Dawntreader Web design by This page last updated: 14th December 2007.		The Dawntreader #2
		The Writers Guidelines to The Dawntreader stipulate that submissions should follow the theme of the mystic, landscape, myth, nature, legend, spirituality and love/concern for the environment. Poetry, prose, articles and legends are welcomed. The poems and prose in The Dawntreader attempt to reach these miraculous domains by way of a series of wry poems, humorous pieces of prose, rather ordinary slices of life and plangent reminders of the passage of time. Where the authors are content with a simple presentation of their material, this works quite well. It's a risky business, however, to delve into the mysteries of life, since they are necessarily working at the edge of anecdote and banality. Such writing calls for a craft of constraint and simplicity but there are times when authors overwrite, strain their fancies too hard or lose their way. In this collection we find such pearls of wisdom as Geoff Stevens I AM AS OLD AS SONG: I am as old as song as the sagas of the Vikings a boat battered by the beating of the waves that rise and fall like the pulse of sound Richard Bonfield's VALE OF THE WHITE HORSE: Today The whole hill Is a horse in motion Sunlight streaming down her windswept flanks Epona in the saddle A neolithic equus Galloping to Avebury and Claire Knight's IRISH GREETING: "seven blessings on my heart" as I step across your welcome threshold. There is, too, the kind of gaiety typified by this ending to a description of THE GREEN MAN in Tina Negus' poem of the same title: Leaves of green proclaim me, Wherever trees do grow. None can hurt or maim me, New life from me will flow. Nothing can ever tame me, While the wild winds sigh and blow. A couple of the poems are stylistically varied and borrow their ideas from other writers or from myths. For example, Joan Sheridan Smith's poem NOT DOVER BEACH is loosely based on Arnold's poem, DOVER BEACH, although she ends her poem on a more upbeat note: Though war and suffering remain, I cannot share Arnold's despair. ANTIGONE by Hannah Pidsley, takes its title from the Greek story of Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, who was ordered to be buried alive, but who took her own life before the sentence could be carried out. The poem tells us how As I lick a handkerchief, wipe your face, I remember — I have done this before, as you came from your brotherly brawl, grinning and dirty. You pranced, avoiding me as I attempt to keep you clean. Bernard M Jackson's IN A KENTISH WORLD is a striking poem with its ballad-like rhythm When I came down by Appledore, The land was green with spring; Broad skies beamed down from buttermilk, And curlew on the wing Cried echoed joy to scattered fold, As morning stirred the sheep. In ON DEVIL'S DYKE, NEAR NEWMARKET — Patricia Ives' remarkable poem, she finds herself Climbing the steep sides Of chalky peril, nettle and thorn. Unflinching clarity informs her vision of the landscape; the sudden appearance of the devil, a subtle foil to her ruminations: He faced me. Eyes dark and hard Glared into mine and down His stocky calves came blood From thorns. Dawn Bauling's SWIMMING IN RAINBOWS is a triumph. Bauling allows the poem's character, a girl who once swam in rainbows to see and hear the rainbows, although others laughed at her: Now, if you cut her she will bleed red, orange and yellow onto your hand, she will speak blue and green, she will touch you and leave indigo finger prints, breathe deep violet. The poem comments on the magnificence of the rainbows and the girl's experience of them, what they mean to her and how they affect her. In another poem, MUSINGS ON LA MANCHA by Jean Atkinson, the reader is invited to experience the landscape of Cervantess birth ... ... swathes of colour, elongated Shapes of ochres, browns and terracotta, Hum-drum, maybe, for those elated By awesome peaks and gruesome gorges. The prose pieces include: ISLAND OF FOOTSTEPS — Claire Knight, GREEN MAN — Pamela Trudie Hodge, WEST CORNWALL — Eric Coates, and WITCHES AND WIZARDS IN ZAMBIA — Les Merton. ISLAND OF FOOTSTEPS distinctly blends autobiographical matter with nature and myth: St Patrick who is said to have placed his saintly feet here. The consistent concern in Knight's work is with trying to capture the mysterious nature of the island and the history of the place: you may catch a glimpse of Norman soldiers scrambling up the entrance ladder, pulling it up behind them – soldiers whose plundered treasures lay undiscovered in a well for 400 years. The telling of this story is to an extent Knight's also, as she must reconcile seeing what is actually there with what she sees in her imagination and negotiating the transposition of historical time to the present day. This concept of vision — literal and figurative — is central to the piece, just as the sustaining trope is that of discovering that breathtaking beauty and peace are the real treasure . . . for those feet still to come. GREEN MAN defies generic categorisation and is told simply from the point of view of the protagonist, Kev: Kev had had the Green man up to here. He'd rather go clubbing but Kath, dewy-eyed, refused, took his hand and led him through the sleeping village to Hob's Wood. As one would expect, there are reverberations, as They went to photograph a carving on the end of a pew in the local church. Kath kneels before the carving, kisses its mouth, and gazes into its gentle, passionate, leaf-green eyes holding a promise. This is humorous reading, as the passionate Kath and Ken who once played a bumpkin in sandals and sacking in the school play, meet in the woods at twilight for a tryst that goes horribly wrong. The ambivalence of THE GREEN MAN is fervently recorded, the episode reaching a predicted conclusion. WEST CORNWALL is a meditation on the beautiful, awe-inspiring Celtic land of Arthurian legend; and the writer's symbolic and emotional investment in this area. The narrator described the way in which West Cornwall now caters for the tourist: Now good for the artwork, the potteries, knick-knacks, ice creams, coffees, pasties and cakes. Cream teas, sweeties, No Parking and flakes. This leads him to consider, with insight, the traditions and mythology of the land where, on the edge of the fog bank, the mythical mists still swirl and whorl through old Arthurian battles. This reflective disclosure leads Coates to sense the spirituality of West Cornwall where, Those Celts, open air storytellers by birthright — their golden thread stays unbroken. The piece indicating that people need to be involved in their everyday interactions with mythology, history and the power of place. In WITCHES AND WIZARDS IN ZAMBIA, the author relates the story of what happened in Zambia after the funeral of Angus Ngulube. When his family were awaken by something falling on the roof with a heavy thud, rolling off the roof to land on the ground with another impact, they decide to investigate. In this instance, the sister noticed some strange object near the door that looked like a humanoid monster. The creature gradually turns into the shape of a man. When confronted by the police, he claimed to have been flying with six others and had fallen out of a magic aircraft. As well as describing his richly allusive story about witches and wizards, Merton asks, Can this story be explained by western thinking, perhaps the fallen were aircraft stowaways who had tried to secure themselves to aircraft under-carriages. Maybe you have another answer? Merton's text is a powerful allegory of the way in which stories grow and are embellished in the culture of a people while demanding and rewarding our efforts to understand and make sense of them.
		reviewer: Patricia Prime.