Reviews
Atomic by Steve Davies
A5 perfect bound, 104pp. £6.00 ISBN 1-897654-78-2 Odyssey Poets, Coleridge Cottage, Nether Stowey, Somerset.
I was going to write (sounding more familiar than is the case, but it was a way into the review) that Steve Davies and I once worked - he as Social Worker, me as nursing assistant - in the same buildings. We even had some of the same cases, were privy to the same horrors, sadnesses, confusions. And then my intention was to delineate the differences in our presentations of what we witnessed. But Atomic is way beyond such facile comparisons. Atomic is a life's work condensed into 104 pages, and I am in awe of it.
'Condensed' could be the word to describe Steve's short line poetry packed into 3 & 4 line stanzas. But, although being a life's work, the contents do not appear to be in chronological order. They range from his travels in the Navy, his social work - the past telescoped into the present - and his upbringing among coal miners...
Down in the Coalyard
The Wheel
Silence is trapped in this place
air holds its breath: a newspaper
could lay here until it is dust....
In all Steve seems not to set out to impress, but to convey, with exactitude, while not allowing the precision to lose the flavour of the observation. The relationship with his father, for instance, is worked out, and I mean worked out, on the page -
Atomic
Father, you twist inside me
like a helix around the axis of i
a deceptive synthesis, invisible
as a thought; the cells coupling...
and this, from After the Funerals
...I loved his dark, dusky smell, circling him
with my slenderness, pressing my washed body
against the rough fabric of his working clothes
impregnating my skin with the dusty smell of him...
This is a collection, a poetry, forged from experience, and compacted like carbon into jewels. Worth more than its weight in gold.
A5 perfect bound, 104pp. £6.00 ISBN 1-897654-78-2 Odyssey Poets, Coleridge Cottage, Nether Stowey, Somerset.
I was going to write (sounding more familiar than is the case, but it was a way into the review) that Steve Davies and I once worked - he as Social Worker, me as nursing assistant - in the same buildings. We even had some of the same cases, were privy to the same horrors, sadnesses, confusions. And then my intention was to delineate the differences in our presentations of what we witnessed. But Atomic is way beyond such facile comparisons. Atomic is a life's work condensed into 104 pages, and I am in awe of it.
'Condensed' could be the word to describe Steve's short line poetry packed into 3 & 4 line stanzas. But, although being a life's work, the contents do not appear to be in chronological order. They range from his travels in the Navy, his social work - the past telescoped into the present - and his upbringing among coal miners...
Down in the Coalyard
The Wheel
Silence is trapped in this place
air holds its breath: a newspaper
could lay here until it is dust....
In all Steve seems not to set out to impress, but to convey, with exactitude, while not allowing the precision to lose the flavour of the observation. The relationship with his father, for instance, is worked out, and I mean worked out, on the page -
Atomic
Father, you twist inside me
like a helix around the axis of i
a deceptive synthesis, invisible
as a thought; the cells coupling...
and this, from After the Funerals
...I loved his dark, dusky smell, circling him
with my slenderness, pressing my washed body
against the rough fabric of his working clothes
impregnating my skin with the dusty smell of him...
This is a collection, a poetry, forged from experience, and compacted like carbon into jewels. Worth more than its weight in gold.
Page(s) 34
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