Stella Stocker
Reviews
An Occasional Lean-to by Ian Pople.
Arc Publications, Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road, Todmorden, Lancs 0L14 6DA £7.95.
Ian Pople's poems in An Occasional Lean-to have a painterly quality in their own right and some images are reminiscent of paintings. Turner's hare running in front of the train comes to mind in 'Suddenly, from the adit, / a hare, pelting as if / for its life along / the muddied runnel, past / the wash trough, across // the moor towards the beck...' (from '...in the seventh month). These are not just close observations of nature, but vehicles for both anxiety and individual life-affirming vision. In the same poem 'most strongly is / the clear possibility of water plaiting / and unplaiting down / the backs of furniture.' There is a kaleidoscope of rapidly moving images in this short poem. Quiet reflection is knitted into the implied questions in much of the imagery. In a poem featuring a monastery '...its blue dome bobbed / against the pines, outside / were cannons, a restless / flag...But who owned / them, and the beasts they walked between, and birds / that flickered up and off / as they walked on?'
Page(s) 44
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