A pamphlet of 23 poems. "Party Piece" starts the collection, displaying a control of imagery evident throughout the booklet
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My mother is taking a turn in my killer heels - they could topple her - the old idol of her body sways like a Madonna shouldered out of a Spanish cathedral .... ...... Now I can't hold her back or follow her |
Note the "killer" heels that could topple her; her body as idol (the swaying image apt); the line-break after "hold her"; and the final line, where "follow that!" is only one of the interpretations. I hope I've duplicated the indentation correctly - quirky indentation is a feature. "Journey 14/34" (I don't get the title) is 5 4-lined stanzas. The first stanza reads "Her father was driving/not to the doctor's/for all her screaming/but to school". Lines 1 and 3 aren't indented. Lines 2 and 4 are indented by 4 spaces - I'll denote that pattern by 0404. The pattern for the poem is 0404 0704 0007 0405 7071 which isn't entirely random. In fact, the indentation seems painstaking - why a one-character indent? Why mix 4-space and 5-space indenting in one poem? Does each space matter so much? Tab-related printing problems? I doubt it, because a few other poems have irregular indentation too.
In 3 poems the persona has school problems. Old parents feature (sometimes unexpectedly as when "Gran is/ dollypegging dad's nappies"), as does love and writing. There are relationship poems as well -"Engaged" didn't grab me but "Birdhouse" (perhaps the pamphlet's best poem) did. "Big Bed Scene" ends
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but we were great together, the way I remember it. Every time I look back we're getting better with age |
I don't know how to interpret those 2 final lines - that the past looks worse each time it's recalled? I don't think the short lines help. "The Tree" is a short-lined single-stanza poem. It begins "When I raise my foot/ off the ground, in line/ with all the other women/ and the couple of men,/ I am expressing myself/simply as a woman with a raised foot" which is a lot of line-breaks.
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