Dilys Wood
Review
Stripping the Blackthorn, Lindsay Balderson
Stripping the Blackthorn, Lindsay Balderson, 2008, Vane Women Press. £5 ISBN 978-1-9044091-0-6
Stripping the Blackthorn, Lindsay Balderson, is a rewarding short collection, though the most serious material she presents, poems about contemporary instances of torture, were not the most effective. Poets should, of course, try to handle such important concerns, but the information gathered here was not transformed into successful poems. She has, indeed, tried to do this – by, for example, letting the torturer speak for himself and showing the dull mechanics of his mind – but the poems stay too close to newspaper accounts. It’s not that she can’t handle emotion. Early Words neatly pins down the all too human search for complete love, “If I could take the first loving / phrase you ever gave me / I would keep it safe behind glass” and several poems are skilful, contemporary love poems. I liked Al fresco and found The Man with Hovercraft Shoes a well-crafted and powerful poem. Her ‘holocaust’ poem, Nightfall, about a pupil’s perception of the changed character of his rabbi when the rabbi returns from deportation is a very quiet, oblique and effective reflection on cruelty.
Page(s) 66
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