Part of my plan for 2012 is to read more poetry. I want to write poetry but know that one of the first things I need to do is read more.
A collection I’ve been reading and returning to is Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21 – Kathleen Jones publishedby Templar Poetry.
This is a collection that ranges across the geography of a poet’s life; that explores the push- pull of a deep attachment to place and a desire to escape. No matter how far we travel with Kathleen Jones including into ‘the impossible distances of history,’ we come back to the Cumbria of her childhood – to the hitch and drag of the fell gate ‘strong enough to pull /a whole life down.’ The attachments are strong, often darkly ambivalent, the language is spare. There is so much to admire here from the moving The Laying Out of the Dead which reminded me so acutely of my own mother’s death, to the understated Terremoto from Camaiore in Italy where the poet lives for at least part of the year.
These poems spoke to me of my childhood, my attachment to place and my desire to escape- for me they do what the best poetry does: connect with us, touch us and give fresh and unique expression to both shared and new experience. Highly recommended.
Do take a look at Templar Poetry if only for their fabulous covers – and why not treat yourself while you’re there?
