Paul Lee
Reviews
Rescript, selected poems by David Holliday,
ISBN 0-903212-01-3, A5, 58pp, Bucephalus Press, 67 Hady
Crescent, Chesterfield, S41 0EB, £3.00.
David Holliday is the erstwhile editor of Scrip and iota, and racked up a quarter of a century between them both, a testament to unusual fortitude or masochism, depending on how long you’ve been a member of the tribe of poets. This collection, from his own press, reaches back to the 60s, and consists mainly of jobbing rhyme-and-meter verse. I can acknowledge and often admire the craft - the poems that he calls ‘Song’ really are songs - even if I do not always see the point of the poem - ‘Libraries embody memories.../ All that can be read, enjoyed or used / set out and classified; libraries / reflect the varied minds of genius’ - Libraries. There are several outstanding poems - ‘Caedmon’, a poetic staple, I know, but..., ‘ Logria’, ‘i.m Franz K’ and my favourite, ‘The Descent of Innana’ - ‘Innana, Heaven’s holy Queen, / loved and desired by gods and men, / forsook her temples and her throne / to tread the hollow road to doom. / “I go to meet the Queen of Hell, / my sister, dark Ereshkigal.” ’
ISBN 0-903212-01-3, A5, 58pp, Bucephalus Press, 67 Hady
Crescent, Chesterfield, S41 0EB, £3.00.
David Holliday is the erstwhile editor of Scrip and iota, and racked up a quarter of a century between them both, a testament to unusual fortitude or masochism, depending on how long you’ve been a member of the tribe of poets. This collection, from his own press, reaches back to the 60s, and consists mainly of jobbing rhyme-and-meter verse. I can acknowledge and often admire the craft - the poems that he calls ‘Song’ really are songs - even if I do not always see the point of the poem - ‘Libraries embody memories.../ All that can be read, enjoyed or used / set out and classified; libraries / reflect the varied minds of genius’ - Libraries. There are several outstanding poems - ‘Caedmon’, a poetic staple, I know, but..., ‘ Logria’, ‘i.m Franz K’ and my favourite, ‘The Descent of Innana’ - ‘Innana, Heaven’s holy Queen, / loved and desired by gods and men, / forsook her temples and her throne / to tread the hollow road to doom. / “I go to meet the Queen of Hell, / my sister, dark Ereshkigal.” ’
Page(s) 21
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