Peter Didsbury
Review
on Dunmore
Helen Dunmore, The Apple Fall, Bloodaxe Books, £3.50
Many of the poems in Helen Dunmore's first collection are concerned with the domestic, and the ways in which it both focuses and constricts the imagination:
I go miles, pushing the pram,
thinking about Christina Rossetti's
black dresses—my own absent poems.
I go miles, touching his blankets proudly,
drawing the quilt to his lips.
This concision of eye and ear is typical of her and is employed in a variety of ways. It can suddenly organise all a poem's earlier images ('I would not dare bring happiness/into the chemist's at night-time') or unlock the political and cultural implications of a single glance:
Quickly the manageress leans from the counter.
(As when a policeman arrests a friend
her eyes plunge and her voice roughens.)
She points to a notice with her red nail:
'After all we serve only accompanied females.'
Dunmore has a fine lyrical and rhythmical control, sometimes reminiscent of Christopher Middleton. The Apple Fall is the work of an intelligent contemporary woman, and deserves to be widely read.
Page(s) 71
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The