Bob Mee
Review:
Sanctuary - Matthew Sweeney
Cape, Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA 54 pages £8.00
As far as I’m concerned, Sweeney’s been preaching to the converted for a while now. I know some give him stick for an excess of whimsy, but I enjoy his wry dramas, his ability to tell a story by leaving out details, leaving his poems the way they should be: teasing, multi-layered, open to investigation. The collection begins with an apocalyptic vision, Zero Hour, that conjures up what it must be like to be stranded in a place of war. Ice Hotel is interesting but drifts rather aimlessly at the end with a is interesting but drifts rather aimlessly at the end with a rare flabby line, for me, to finish - We stood in that ice-blue light/swapping whisper after whisper,// drinking vodka after vodka/ till we agreed to go to bed/ and neither of us slept that night. By contrast, Leaving Timisoara in
the Snow, makes positive use of half-heard messages and difficulties in communication to create a brilliant whole. Urine Therapy is absurd, very funny; and I like the freedom of Rite of Passage, which begins: Under the stone was a 100 Euro note/and on top was the scrabble letter M./And nearby the flag of Italy fluttered/ from an oar stuck in the ground. These are poems on the move, poems of the displaced, poems of a restless energy
and sadness, poems seeking, perhaps finding in themselves, sanctuary.
Page(s) 53-54
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