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Bracken Women in Lime Trees – Pauline Hawkesworth; Indigo Dreams Press, £7.50

Pauline Hawkesworth knows intimately the places and spaces she writes writes about; they are familiar and observed in different lights and seasons, so that she is attuned to change and the magic that can appear in change. She can show how unsettling is the conjunction of familiar elements in unexpected settings, as in Man carrying a swan:

   He has the white feathery package 
   as a breast plate. 
   Its neck emerges periscoping 
   terraced houses, looping out 
   in great swaying gulps 
   trying to orientate the road as a lake ...

This could be labelled surreal, but that is not quite right: there is more humanity, more warmth in her descriptions, and in her skill of fusing the magic hidden in the natural world with everyday experience. Night, dreams, moonlight, trees – these appear throughout this collection as settings for metamorphoses: wives become feathered creatures, able to fly at night; a rainbow becomes solid, and crashes onto a motorway; the moon, entranced by a parked limousine, settles in to the passenger seat. The unity of tone, combining delight and continuing wonder, makes all this credible; we trust the poet because she is at home in the world she describes. At times it can be threatening, but overall her visions refresh us with their generosity. The opening stanza of From the causeway shows how well precise description captures a sense of extended time:

   Towards Cowdray ruin
   where wetlands show off
   meadowsweet and comfrey,
   cattle are moving soundlessly
   amongst tall grasses,
   seeming to float as small islands.

Only once did the editing slip, when a short poem (Bette’s sheets) reappeared in a revised form as the opening stanza of Stains:

   All night the bed-sheets
   stretch tree to tree
   on the high line,
   whilst the full moon rolls her white face
   as if bending to clean her shoes

but the image was so original that I wouldn’t want to lose it. A memorable and uplifting collection.