Dilys Wood
Review
Touching Earth, Alwyn Marriage
Touching Earth, Alwyn Marriage, 2007, Oversteps Books. £8 ISBN 0-955242477-9
Alwyn Marriage’s Touching Earth begins promisingly with a lesson about how fossil fuels were formed. We are instantly drawn in to the exposition of the geologist (clearly an opinionated fellow!) who tells his story and ends with some grave modern facts, “We squander it”. This is a thoughtprovoking poem, a little prosy in parts, and is part of an interesting group which focus on the kind of scientific subjects the layman can appreciate. Marriage’s collection is admirably wide in range – subjects, scientific, political, personal, ecological, spiritual. She is something of a natural pedagogue (like the geologist in her portrait?) and this can constitute a poetic nemesis. The poems tend too much towards exposition and explanation of serious matters, clogging the poetic vitality which is also there. So, when sometimes she drops the born teacher, we have rather delightful personal poems, including Cherries al fresco and Sea sandals: “Bought in a cheap French market / for swimming off stony beaches / they were dubbed his condom sandals”.
Page(s) 65
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The