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Turning the Key, Lotte Kramer, Rockingham Press, 2009. £7.99. ISBN 978-1-9048513-0-1

“... her finely-tuned, intense,
wry response does not rest on
historical context. We hear her
unaided voice here. With its
persistent tremble of empathy,
it is fresh and compelling.”

Kramer’s role in the poetry of her adopted country (she came to England from Germany aged fourteen) would be, in theatrical terms, a ‘cameo role’ – that is, not a bullish leading part but a subtle, memorable, true contribution from a skilled exponent with a distinctive voice.

In relation to this, her thirteenth collection, we cannot stereotype Kramer as a Jewish, holocaust poet. Her exile and the tragic loss of parents, beloved teachers and many others in the Hitler years helped shape her sensibility, and there are roughly a dozen poems here which refer directly to that trauma. However, her finely-tuned, intense, wry response does not rest on historical context. We hear her unaided voice here. With its persistent tremble of empathy, it is fresh and compelling.

This book is in three parts: a medley of short poems on different subjects; a five-page sequence, Engadine Poems, of reflections relating to a mountain walking holiday; thirteen pages of versions and translations from Nietzsche, Hölderlin, Rilke, Heine, Stefan George and others. In the first, main section of the book, I was particularly moved by those poems which speak potently about the general pathos of the human condition – such contradictions as strength turning to helplessness (On Age), dependence on parents changed to loss (East Wind), a mother’s care apparently rejected by a child’s growing independence (A Dream). In these three poems, Kramer addresses recognisable people – husband, mother, son.

Other poems in this section seem yet more heavily charged with lament, perhaps because the human suffering is less identifiable, the victims nameless, or the context mysterious. In Rain Kramer merges her sensitive feeling for landscape and weather with her memory of a friend with a wild side to her character: “After too many voices / The soft rain coated our walk ... Then we paused in her who loved / This unhurried rain; who used / To tear off her scarf ... In her the elements rejoiced / And suffered. In her we cross // The alternate answer – In discord and stillness of clouds”. This poem is at first sight naturalistic and unassuming but it is also dense and quite difficult, the language exploratory, as is the thought.

On rare occasions, you realise that English is not Kramer’s first or only language: her adopted tongue will not quite bend to what she wants to say. This is not a fault – it only adds to our sense of her earnest reaching-out to capture difficult thought in words.

Similar in impact to Rain, is another apparently ‘occasional’ poem, Nameless: “Wildflowers, / I don’t even know their names / But they stand up to my waist / near the river’s laziness, / Their scentless / Colours pinned into grasses / Where water’s peculiar smell / Rises like fermenting yeast. / Solitude, / How I love your quiet summer...” This poem carries a charge of sorrow and yearning, as does The Falling Fear, a fascinating poem apparently about someone whose sight has been restored who subsequently fears the fall of night. While sharply focussed on the specific – “But look astonished at / The living sky // See parables / Of colours everywhere” – this poem also has that wider perspective about loss, which is so apparent now in much of Kramer’s work.

The sequence, Engadine Poems, turns out to be ‘pure Kramer’. In diverse poems related by time and place many characteristics of her work – and perhaps her personality, too – come over strongly. The opening poem, The Same World, refers (I think) to the gassing of Hitler’s victims, but these poems are not generally overshadowed by history. A keynote here is the rueful and sprightly comparison of small humans and huge nature, including the glacier “withdrawing year by year / With willpower we cannot enter.” There is release in this group of poems, fun, surprise and a vivid sense of movement and colour. But these elements are also the other side of seriousness: “The Swiss flag, too, on the roof garden, / Turns its full red-cross face to me, / Has found a new direction.”

The sensitive translations here (nineteen, mainly Rilke) are a study in themselves. Kramer’s choice of poems to translate reveals more of her key interests: for example, her deep interest in the role and fate of women.