"The zebra stood in the night" by Kerry Hardie (Bloodaxe, 2014)

I've not heard of this poet, which is a surprise given that this is her 7th book and she's had a "Selected" published. Poems come from Atlanta review, Manchester review, Ploughshares, Poetry Ireland, Poetry London, Stinging Fly, etc.; an impressive list.

Several pages in, I'm still to find anything noteworthy. On the back cover George Szirtes writes that the world is "rendered truthfully, plainly yet freshly". Pages 15, 17, 18 and 24 for example seem to be true enough, plain, but not fresh. She can do imagery though - Black-boned trees gibbet/ the spread skies of morning (p.30) for example. I like "Europe" in the sense that if it started a short story (which it could easily do) I'd look forward to reading more. I was attracted to "Software Update" by the title, but I don't get the poem.

Part two is a 5-page article and 16 poems about grief. I prefer it to part one. Here are some extracts -

• Everyone tells us this pain will lessen but they speak from a reality that has very little to do with us ... it isn't that we don't believe them: we simply stare at them blankly waiting for their mouths to stop moving ... Death pushes us deeper into our lives, we act and react from a place that is not normally accessible to us, we experience phenomena that at other times we would be unable to experience (p.59)
• Slowly the suffering of he (or she) who loves lessens until the day comes when there are moments when it is almost absent. If these moments join up for even a brief period of time, then we are capable of relaxing into a state of non-suffering .. The return of joy, however fleeting, is usually accompanied by feelings of betrayal and hence the return of suffering ... There is a gap in the intensity of our grief so life rushes in (p.59)
• The door is always open ... You'd simply walked through the door that you'd stood beside since the day of your birth (p.68)
• Hiddenness is the ballast on the ship's keel, the great underwater portion of a life that steadies the rest (Jane Hirshfield, quoted on p.73)

Other reviews

• Claire Prescott (Refreshing the themes of seasons, nature, and time, Hardie contemplates, while at the same time experiences, the non-linear process of finding peace in loss, grief, and mortality. ... the clarity and simplicity of her poetry seems to stem from her own disillusionment with inaccessible poetry ... The power in Hardie’s work lies in her vulnerability and honesty. She does not pretend to have discovered the meaning in death and aging or to have found peace in the loss of her brother. In sharing her solitary experience of grief, she establishes a sense of belonging and unity. )