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Singing in the Dark, Alison Brackenbury, 2008, Carcanet. £9.95ISBN 978-1-8575491-4-0 

 
The first time I read Alison Brackenbury’s Singing in the Dark I read it from cover to cover, and found it a cumulatively rewarding experience.   Although the subject matter is varied (opening with her admiration of Edward Thomas and continuing with poems about animals, children, historical subjects, lovely whimsies, serious ideas lurking in ostensibly humorous poems, and frequent looks at the minutiae of everyday life) the controlled use of form and frequent employment of rhyme gives a special cohesion to the whole book. She loves  the balladic form and uses it in many instances. When she does stray from strict form, there is often added poignancy in the exceptions. 

I must confess I found the animal and nature poems the most compelling, particularly the animal ones.  I’ll quote High Walls, one of the most moving and heartfelt ones in full, as it’s short:

This is my contract with the rich:
They may keep their big gardens
With the lush deadly darkness of yew
From which a bird dives, past my shoulder. Soon
I will be yards from the hot road,
Watering my patch,
Where a frog rises, olive,
Plump as the moon.

There are very moving poems about cats and horses.  In particular, the one about Puff, “the computer’s cat” is delicately written.   I sometimes felt that it is in these poems more than any others that the poet is most able to reach inside herself. I loved High Notes, so clearly described, using only a few words to open the reader’s mind – “The buzzard is many birds”.   The verse about its many voices is inspired. 

Then again there’s a wonderful poem, 10 p.m., about a son being out for the evening: “You sit with your quiet friends / The mobile jumps.  It is him, / His voice rich with the Festival’s din. / He misses you. Your blood sings.” This poem uses 16 short lines to paint a full picture of the relationship with leaving-the-nest children. Later there’s the bleak formality of Young, Gifted with its grim line: “Pills, guns or tights, pornography of death” which, with her usual skill, says everything. 

There are other dark poems, sometimes in a more colloquial voice than the usual formality of her writing.  For example December 25th, 12 noon – “No honestly, we are more organised than we look, / The piles of clothes are all washed. / I have fed the birds, then the cats, / Now the cats are out catching birds.”  Although this poem uses a freer form, and has only 11 lines, there is wonderful use of alliteration and, dotted here and there, some lovely unobtrusive rhymes.    In the very next poem there’s a line that entrances me:  “Her coat warm as a hen”. 

There are many more treasures in this book, not enough space to do justice to them all, but seldom are collections completely satisfying. Singing in the Dark has over 90 poems in it and there are a few that are a bit everyday, diary-like entries, recording happenings that, to me, don’t warrant a space in this otherwise wonderful collection.  Breakfast show for instance, is about the new girl on Radio Gloucestershire who has pressed the wrong switch on her first day. But the poem doesn’t carry this idea further and I’m not sure why it’s included in an otherwise impressive collection which is so well produced, down to its fascinating cover illustration – so apt for someone who works in the family metal-finishing business. 

I can’t leave the collection on such a negative note, that would be unfair, so I’ll end remembering another of her inspired lines, in The April foal, whose “knobbed knees plait.  She staggers towards earth.” How else does a new-born foal look except this, but it took Alison Brackenbury to see and say it so well.