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The Future of Something Delicate by Cherry Smyth.
Smith/Doorstop Books, The Poetry Business, The Studio, Byram Arcade, Westgate, Huddersfield HD1 1ND £3.00.


Smith/Doorstop Books have brought out some excellent booklets, three of which are particularly rewarding. The Future of Something Delicate by Cherry Smyth is vibrant - full of movement and unexpected but apt imagery, for example '...on the sea, volumes of wind / switched back and forth, / moving patches of fast shadow / and gannets steadied their close overlapping / to divebomb the water with a streak / of vertical white...' from Holding Pattern.  She deals with a variety of topics, including feelings about being in water, a beautiful study of a cyclamen growing, places and people, observations, acute and disturbing in Invitation to Nuha Al-Radi where the beauty of a spring garden is contrasted with atrocities committed.   Most poems grasp a fleeting small truth or illustrate a stage in a relationship or moment of insight.  The loss felt in rejection is wryly explored in Painted Horses: ' A small coronary of fear / shot through me / when you said you wanted / someone else, / I felt deciduous, losing foliage / in a forest of evergreens...' to quiet anger expressed in humour '...you said you'd / go out and find sex / if I didn't give you more, / as if I was a ticket machine / and you'd paid your entry, / or a funfair where all / the painted horses / spun round just for you.'