Bob Mee
Reviews
The Cartographer Sleeps - Barbara Daniels
Shoestring Press, 19 Devonshire Avenue, Beeston, Nottingham NG9 1BS 66 pages £8.95
Barbara Daniels, a Lancastrian living in Wales, enjoys tackling the puzzles of poetic forms, and usually finds a way to overcome the constraints involved. Too often the problem with formal poems is that the form appears more important to the poet than the words, which has always seemed an odd concept to me, as if the cutlery’s more important than the dinner. Formal structures suit Daniels’ wit and light but certain touch, as with the tongue-in-cheek, decasyllabic poem in three-line stanzas, 'Enhancement': She forms in his real eyes as he downloads/ the icon of her smile, her taut, white skin;/ it’s slow, it always is, it discommodes// his system when he meets her face to face./ There’s something not quite right - so he begins/ to mouse-click on his clip-art database. Sometimes the concept is too contrived and needs freer language to work, as in 'The Race to Paris 1914', but the finely constructed, poised, atmospheric 'St Sebolt' is suited by constraint. There is also a neat inversion of norms in the poem 'Family Planning', when the unconceived child has the power of decision... it fancies Simon’s nose and Sarah’s hair/ but they’re not even flirting. It would hate/ Robert’s slipped chin and mottled ears or Kate’s/ sour tendency to acne. Unaware./two party-goers magnetise and pair.
This, I think, is Daniels at her best.
Barbara Daniels, a Lancastrian living in Wales, enjoys tackling the puzzles of poetic forms, and usually finds a way to overcome the constraints involved. Too often the problem with formal poems is that the form appears more important to the poet than the words, which has always seemed an odd concept to me, as if the cutlery’s more important than the dinner. Formal structures suit Daniels’ wit and light but certain touch, as with the tongue-in-cheek, decasyllabic poem in three-line stanzas, 'Enhancement': She forms in his real eyes as he downloads/ the icon of her smile, her taut, white skin;/ it’s slow, it always is, it discommodes// his system when he meets her face to face./ There’s something not quite right - so he begins/ to mouse-click on his clip-art database. Sometimes the concept is too contrived and needs freer language to work, as in 'The Race to Paris 1914', but the finely constructed, poised, atmospheric 'St Sebolt' is suited by constraint. There is also a neat inversion of norms in the poem 'Family Planning', when the unconceived child has the power of decision... it fancies Simon’s nose and Sarah’s hair/ but they’re not even flirting. It would hate/ Robert’s slipped chin and mottled ears or Kate’s/ sour tendency to acne. Unaware./two party-goers magnetise and pair.
This, I think, is Daniels at her best.
Page(s) 55
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