People are reading our poetry… Two more great reviews, this time in The High Window.
“Penumbra is replete with … vivid, sometimes startling imagery, unexpected linguistic shifts and carefully patterned verbal dynamics…”
Talking about ‘Aeroplane trails at dusk’, Tom Phillips says, ‘This, then, is one tiny example of how Behrens successfully engages in ‘making strange’ the apparently ordinary and in opening up ways to explore the emotional hinterlands – or indeed penumbras – surrounding often minutely observed details.’
And a less effusive but very interesting review of Precarious Lives by James Roderick Burns which makes me want to read Jean’s poems again, more carefully.
“Watkins is an effortless poet of nature, and the intimate, surprising details of the natural world suffuse every comer of the book, so the theme is fitting as well as urgent. ‘Wasps’ – ‘ton-up boys’ with ‘ hostile hum’ – demonstrate in sharp, plangent and witty ways the tragedy of our impact on the world. The poem meanders in a carefully-drunken concrete pattern around the page, as if to demonstrate the insects’ disorientation. ”
But then, he says: ‘This tendency to move away from supple, intricate verse into something more didactic seems to occur most often when the poet has a ‘big message’ to convey.’
Really? I do like a big message. I must read those poems again…