Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Greta Stoddart’s poems are deceptively quiet but, once read and absorbed, they can be immensely effective. They impact on the mind and evoke not just scenes but atmospheres:

I’ve come from a world where there is no
                                                              taste,
where nothing happens in a small back room
but a chair sitting still and self-possessed.
For days I watched the cold eternal core
of things, heard the pitiful ring of the phone
(only the mirror did what it always does,
showing me a face I don’t, will never, know);
and from the radio came voices of people
who live in a place where things matter.

It’s highly visual and through the picture comes a feeling that the reader responds to. It’s as if the poet has hit a chord which resonates with meaning for everyone hearing it. I’m conscious that I’ve switched from pictorial to musical metaphors, but the point is that the poem does what it ought to do in terms of moving from the personal to the general.

     The visual element crops up in other poems, including one about Greece, where in the afternoon heat, “The dog drags his ragged shadow/ along the walls,” and another which describes the simple act of posting a letter but gives it greater depth and, perhaps, a slightly ominous tone:

Dusk. A thin rain. A child with a letter skips
slowly to the box, reaches up, then hesitates
- so a simple act, freeze-framed, hinges at fate-
eyeing her mother’s shaky hand, the
                              indifferent Queen,
about to slide forever into the black lip.
The lamps stutter on, the street is lit like a
                                                             scene.

     There are poems in the book about personal relationships, though they’re never so introverted that a careful reader can’t access them. And without going into too much detail they can be erotic, again in a way that moves beyond the specific by touching on, if I can use the phrase, the games people play.

     I enjoyed this book. A first glance it didn’t incline me to expect too much from the poems, the quiet statements not seeming to say much of importance, but as I read on and got drawn into their mood I began to appreciate how they worked. They insinuate themselves into the reader’s consciousness. And if the surfaces appear to be serene then underneath they often come across as less so, as if things are not quite what they seem. The shifting and sometimes uneasy nature of relationships is hinted at and that’s what makes the poems stay in the mind.