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The Go-Away Bird, Geraldine Paine, 2008, Lapwing Publications. £7.95 ISBN 978-1-9054259-2-1

"This is a multi-faceted book that will have appeal across a wide readership."

Paine has occupied many roles in life from actress to magistrate, lived and worked in the UK and abroad and written extensively about the people/places she has known. Many poems are ‘in memoriam’; many others also take a subinscription. Indeed, so many that they are, perhaps, a distraction.

One of Paine’s strengths is her ability to close a poem with a line which resonates beyond its immediate context. This is evident in Rialto Fish Market. In a bare ten lines we imbibe the market’s atmosphere, consort with the women workers, feel their drudgery and recognise the wriggling fish – “the water’s deserted them” – as symbolic of the women’s fate as “youth deserts girls with cold hands.” The Pink Shop takes us from the sea and ancient shipwrecks to the confines of a Kent oyster shop only to return us smoothly to those wider horizons “And pouring one in her mouth, she releases the sea”.

Paine is not afraid to experiment. Her tendency to favour conventional syntax ensures that the first poem to deviate from it makes a strong impact. Short, explosive words and phrases, often disjointed, lie under the title Vincent, thus we are cleverly transported into the frightening world of the mad. Similarly, when she deviates from conventional lineation in Leaden Hearts 1788-1868, the ‘set-aside’ sentiments gain added pathos although the inverted pyramid shape of Knife Edge fails to impress.

Zimbabwe Songs are some of the most moving poems in the collection. Based upon Paine’s own experience, though obviously extremely topical, they are simply but vividly related. The people and the landscape burn into our consciousness to the degree that, in Time of Rosellas, the footnote explaining certain terms seems almost an intrusion. If ‘kopje’ is not in our native tongue the feel of language the poet has given us enables us to inhabit this land “where stories are told without words / in caves without date”. If there is one quibble in this section it is in the title poem. Italicisation of Two million dollars a loaf? – even if the italics are there to indicate speech – conveys the information too crudely. Far more effective is the “she hasn’t kept up – not enough noughts”.

Despite these tiny cavils The Go-Away Bird is a fine debut collection from a committed poet.