Reviews
Calendar of Rain by K. V. Skene
A5 stapled, card cover, 40pp, $8 CAN ISBN 0-9734609-1-1 Micro press, Toronto, ON, Canada. [Copies also available from the author at Woodsgift, Western Road, Cork, Ireland (for £3 or €5.00)]
The Calendar of Rain pamphlet is proclaimed the 'Shaunt Basmajian Award Chapbook', but nowhere does it say what it was awarded for. A lifetime's services to poetry, I would hope and expect. Because one of the other advantages of being reviews editor is that one gets the pick of regular contributors to The Journal. And K. V. Skene is another, like Colin Simms, who is keenly aware of the architecture of a poem, of what draws the eye in. (The subject matter being water makes these two collections unavoidably comparable, her minimalism as effective as his splatter.) And what makes her, like Colin Simms, more than just a visual poet, more than just a nature poet, is the savouring of the words in the mouth.
Everspitting rain
clumps of grey-mould
gangene the old bridge
the heart of the dam
collapses
(a snarl of snakes
suck snow-melt)
-Spring Green
The rain of Skene's title can be summer warm, or longed for, or just been, or driving through it... The latter, about an accident, had me not realising I'd held my breath. She's that good.
She also has the enviable knack of putting herself, a part history, central to and unobtrusively in the poem's landscape. We see it through her, not beyond / behind her.
'...Words / tell me how I am at this moment, / and this, / and the
next...'
-Calendar of Rain
A5 stapled, card cover, 40pp, $8 CAN ISBN 0-9734609-1-1 Micro press, Toronto, ON, Canada. [Copies also available from the author at Woodsgift, Western Road, Cork, Ireland (for £3 or €5.00)]
The Calendar of Rain pamphlet is proclaimed the 'Shaunt Basmajian Award Chapbook', but nowhere does it say what it was awarded for. A lifetime's services to poetry, I would hope and expect. Because one of the other advantages of being reviews editor is that one gets the pick of regular contributors to The Journal. And K. V. Skene is another, like Colin Simms, who is keenly aware of the architecture of a poem, of what draws the eye in. (The subject matter being water makes these two collections unavoidably comparable, her minimalism as effective as his splatter.) And what makes her, like Colin Simms, more than just a visual poet, more than just a nature poet, is the savouring of the words in the mouth.
Everspitting rain
clumps of grey-mould
gangene the old bridge
the heart of the dam
collapses
(a snarl of snakes
suck snow-melt)
-Spring Green
The rain of Skene's title can be summer warm, or longed for, or just been, or driving through it... The latter, about an accident, had me not realising I'd held my breath. She's that good.
She also has the enviable knack of putting herself, a part history, central to and unobtrusively in the poem's landscape. We see it through her, not beyond / behind her.
'...Words / tell me how I am at this moment, / and this, / and the
next...'
-Calendar of Rain
Page(s) 33-34
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