Poems from Poetry Review, Rialto, Ambit, Oxford Poetry, Magma, etc. Over 2 pages of notes and a 2-page dictionary.
A mother leaves her family in the Philippines to work as a nurse in England. "The Shaman, The Servant" juxtaposes the 2 worlds. Simple and good. "Mastering English", in the form of a multiple-choice quiz, asks about phrases like "I'm just popping out" etc. I like it. I don't think "Checkmate" works though - the chess analogies are too familiar.
I don't wholly like many of the poems, though several have their moments -
- "There, in the unchecked wound of the world, you lie on a bed,/ IV drips hang over your head like a battery-drained cot toy" - p.16
- "sunlight/ snakes across the underwater sand - p.19
- "Gone are the nights he steals/ the moon with a mango picker/ and swaps it for her pocket mirror - p.21
- "she speaks to her patient/ about his petunias but doesn't mention the blooms/ of tumours on his endoscopy scan" (p.28). I don;t like that. blooms?
- "Once, my mother cut through the blurred backs of men/ towards a gasping child, and found/ a blade of grass fluttering in his throat./ The air opened and she was gone" (p.29)
- "Stifled/ by surgical-bright lights/ the miasma of antiseptic and Hibiscrub/ footsteps smack// the swish-snap/ of plastic aprons slap of latex gloves// cardiac monitors/ bleep bleep/ bleep bleepbleep/ bleep__________ " (p.31) (marred by the gaudy layout)
- "But a secret unfolds into a pair of wings -/ my stomach muscles tear apart,/ each tendon snaps, seethes like sulphur.// I am halved in order to be whole -/ I rebuild by leaving/ everything I love" (p.55)
- "relearning" has a haphazard layout. Missing out the unhelpful white space, here's the ending "i will get a glimpse of the mirror ghost on a thunderous night/ and shatter in laughter again/ i will trust and play chess/ against myself again"
- I like much of the title poem - "A vertigo of distant lights will not deceive you. ... But keep the afternoon your father sold his buffalo to rent a jeepney to take you to the airport ... So, here is the karaoke mic - sing your soul out until there's El Nino in your throat, and you can drink all the rain of Wolverhampton"
I don't get p.26.
Other reviews
- Kate Kellaway (Each poem is a go-between: it is through poetry that worlds meet and converse)
- Stella Blackhouse
- Martyn Crucefix
