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 It Must Have Been A Sunday by Catherine Benson.
Smith/Doorstop Books, The Poetry Business, The Studio, Byram Arcade, Westgate, Huddersfield HD1 1ND £3.00.


Catherine Benson explores past experiences in It Must Have Been A Sunday, including the 1950s and 1960s.  She writes mainly of people, lovingly exploring them, for instance in My English Grandfather April 1954. She uses dialogue effectively. The scenes are vivid, humorous and full of action, all combining to portray the characters: '...But it was cabbages he preferred to grow / blue-green, rubbery leaves in huge rosettes. / I would pinch the leaves to hear them squeak / and send a thousand whitefly flying'.  Later 'When he hosed them down, the water pittered and drummed / and spattered into mercury-balls that skittered across the surface, / slid down the veins and into each heart. / the whitefly lay low'.   Lynn, 1945-1961 is a beautifully-constructed, valedictory poem:  'Framed by the hospital bed, / the white pillow, the white sheet, / white counterpane all seem a blank canvas. / Only a head painted in, / blonde tendrils curled round a brow yellowed / to the colour of ivory. / Your face unmarked, serene in pre-Raphaelite sleep..' She reflects, contrastingly, on how the death, in a riding accident happened, 'Where are those hoofbeats into soft flesh? / You lie in seeming perfection;  only your eyelids, / purple as pansies, swollen as plums, to shock.'