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Dilys Wood

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Review

Seven Silences, Katrina Porteous

Lapwing Chapbooks, 2008
Seven Silences, Katrina Porteous, £2.50 ISBN 0-9531212-8-3

Seven Silences by the highly regarded Katrina Porteous consists of three poems, two commissioned for broadcasting and one commissioned as part of an international project, Writing on the Wall. This potent 24 page pamphlet focusses on Northumberland farmers, the foot and mouth epidemic and longer-term threats to livelihood and way of life. The writing here is intensely lyrical, informed by dialect speech (but not opaque or clogged with footnotes), down to earth, and (not easy to find the right term) piercing in its understanding of human nature and the way tragedy hits communities. For those who admire the Basil Bunting of Briggflatts, Porteous might seem his direct heir. She conveys his sense of the landscape standing on watch while human activity waxes and wanes: “And miles of scarp stretch black and blind, / And there is no voice but the wind: // I wear men down like stones. They pass / Into the dark, no more, no less / Than wave on wave through the long grass”. Strong rhythm, use of rhyme, incantatory use of place-names, use of dialogue contribute to the large impact of this short collection.

 

 

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