South Reviews
Elsa Corbluth
The Hill Speaks – Elsa Corbluth; Jurasssic Press, £7.00
When I read the section headings of this collection (‘Dorset and the South’, ‘Iceland and the North’ and ‘Elsewhere’) my heart sank a little. “These are all poems of place,” I thought. I enjoy reading poems of place, but rarely a group with nothing but.
My fears proved unfounded. This accomplished and challenging collection is one where notions of place are reinvestigated in ways other than the merely lyrically descriptive. In the title poem the evocatively named Merry Hill tells its story; Planet Portland uses metaphor and comparison to present a sense of Portland’s ‘difference’; the sonnet On the Routeburn, New Zealand intertwines family history and place. There, the place is itself but also prompts memories of the poet’s daughter, who died tragically young in a fire in a London hostel where she was helping. The continuing pain of that loss is there, directly and indirectly, in poems like Sleeping Beauty, Godsong or The Small Scottish Primrose. Corbluth also engages with the present and the future through place, for instance, in her poems about Iceland, where her son and his family live. Here ‘mythic’ poems from the first section (How to Make a Legend or Old Wives’ Tale) lead to Icelandic Myth or, later still, to the powerfully allusive Even the Apple.
This poet is skilled in using a conversational yet at times urgent tone, imperatives, rhyme and half-rhyme, and telling juxtapositions, as well as metaphor and simile (although, for my taste, there is too much imagery in Dayflower). In some later poems a powerful ‘green’ theme emerges. Humour and wordplay make Björk-Speak, No Euphoniums and The Poetry Hooligans engaging. The closing poem Virtual is, like the opening one, a voice poem, with ‘We, the computers’ speaking. It raises smiles of recognition while slyly sounding important warning notes.
Page(s) 59
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