Dilys Wood
Review
For the Hills I Sing, Pam Russell
Lapwing Chapbooks, 2008
For the Hills I Sing, Pam Russell, £2.50 ISBN 0-9554056-7
Pam Russell’s range was also I thought probably well-represented in For the Hills I Sing. The book title seems to give away the sort of poet she is, musical, traditional and steeped in the work of many poets she has read and ‘absorbed’ (but not in a slavish way). She offers her own highly skilful ‘take’ for example on Thomas Hardy in her poem Overlooking the Little Yarrow and on Edward Thomas’ Adelstrop in her Edinbain. John Clare and Edward Fitzgerald are also invoked. I wondered if, at times, past poetic diction has crept up on her too much – not, perhaps, in her immediate observations of nature but, especially when closing a poem, she can fall into cliché.
Page(s) 59
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