Dyslexia (punned in the title) is a theme in this booklet of poems from "The Rialto", "Ink, Sweat & Tears", "The Interpreter's House", "Orbis", etc. There are 3 sections - "Personal Effects", "Symptoms", and "And Other Languages".
The underlying difficulties emerge as surface disruption with varying severity - sometimes as surprising metaphors, sometimes as broken syntax, rarely in layout. There's quite a wide range of styles (about a quarter of the poems are end-rhymed) which might be tiring were there an unrestricted set of themes. Sometimes plain content suffices to convey the emotion - more often felt by the dyslexic person's companion. "The Drama Student's Live Art Hit" didn't need the poetic twist at the end.
Sometimes the shape of written language is the focus of attention - "a murmuration of marks ... the dangling hooks of 'f's and 't's ... 'b' and 'd' stopped turning their backs on each other in bed.
Here are some extracts -
- "you did not crawl since left and right/ were stillborn words on planet you" (p.5)
- "In the street, he stutters on the kerb's teeth./ Uneven pavements dribble him away" (p.9)
- "Next day fills with Mrs Malaprop;/ whotsit pen drives brillig crib sheets" (p.12)
- "Behind her smile, she despaired how words/ shut off the boy from who he was" (p.13)
- "The time between know it and say it/ splits open. I sleep beneath a sheet/ of crumpled plans. The clock's claw-sharp/ hands slit a fleeing hour by the throat" (p.17)
- "Y? must dey mention my detentions,/ Noz bleed, leaky pen, lost attn?/ Sir z my hed wz a washn mchne,/ bt he nvr waits 4 the door 2 cliK (p.22)
Other reviews
- Matthew Paul (One virtue of pamphlets is that a theme can be creatively sustained across twenty-odd poems in a way which might become wearing in a full collection. ... If one point of poetry is to present, in a fresh manner, a diversity of experience that many (or most) readers probably won’t have experienced themselves, then this pamphlet does just that.)
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