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Europa, Moniza Alvi, 2008, Bloodaxe. £7.95 ISBN 978-1-8522480-3-1

“Magic tiptoes through these pages.
The poem Mermaid [is] inspired by the
cover painting, [and is] equally as
devastating”

The immediate thing about this remarkable collection is the cover painting by Tabitha Vevers – When We Talk about Rape. It shows a mermaid – I can hardly put the description on paper – who has had her tail slit all the way up to where a woman’s vulva would be – and it is so vivid and wonderful and painful that when I have this book on my reading table, I keep it cover side down, although now and then I turn it over to steal another look. Seldom does a collection have a cover which so brilliantly matches what it is saying.

The title poem, the story of Europa and the bull, is the centre piece of the work. There are 25 mostly short sections within the poem, each one able to stand on its own. The language is often gentle, which suits the strength and potency of the myth, because there is heartbreaking beauty in such stories. Her imagination is extraordinary.

Talking of weather in the first section, she says:

Although
it was Spring it was treacherous
for the heifers and the bull – they were glad
when the sky was swept clear.

And further on, in III

Europa was very much the King’s daughter –
         his eyes, his nose,
and sometimes she felt she wore
his heavy gold crown, that his
kingdom trailed behind her like a dress.

In Stanza XII …she describes the bull …

He carried her along at the sea’s edge,
carefully, at first,
                       tried to lick her arms,
her face.

Splashed her –

teasingly
                      stepping into the waves

In the poem Moniza Alvi has woven all the components of the myth, not forgetting Europa as continent, and all the language is very simple and yet conveys so much.

This simplicity of language is carried throughout the book, which begins with

Post-Traumatic

Not now said the mind to the brain
Not yet

And it cloaked itself in amnesia
And time curled up serpent-like –
its dusty mosaics
                        cemented together…

Magic tiptoes through these pages. The poem Mermaid, inspired by the cover painting, and equally as devastating, begins:

About human love,
                                  she knew nothing.

I’ll show you he promised,
But first you need legs.

And he held up
                                     a knife…

In the last section of Europa, the words become denser, closer together, but the close relationships with myth and nature continue… In The Trees Outside My Window she says:

Only they can reach into the depth of me.
Without them, I should have died long ago –
they keep my heart alive, its eager ways.

Towards the end of this must-have collection there are two more Europa poems, one Europa’s Dream, which suggests a more unwilling evasiveness than the earlier love story, and in the last poem of all, Moniza Alvi gives the closing words to King Agenor, Europa’s father:

…..And you tell me you are not
as you were. Not at all.

Nor is any sensitive reader who had read this book from cover to cover. Not at all.