Review:
Window Dressing for Hermes - Rhian Saadat
Parthian, The Old Surgery, Napier Street, Cardigan SA43 1ED
54 pages £7.99
Rhian Saadat’s first collection is divided into three sections. The first is a miscellany and the other two are enriching journeys through other worlds by this poet who was born in south Wales and has lived in Germany, Cyprus, the Middle East and southern Spain. These poems are tightlywritten, vivid, sometimes fun and always interesting. In Fetishes at the Musée en Hèrbe she takes a swipe at self-important art experts - This is sexy stuff, and mustn’t be disturbed by noises/ off - academic mutterings over petits fours/ smelling loudly of canned fish pretending to be/ playdough.
The narrator and partner rush home to make love and then go back
to see the rest of the exhibits - shamanic goats and wild cats, the fun-fur motorbike/ with the naked girl dripping with embalming oil/ and entitled, ‘ Study in Baked Clay’. Every poem in this collection is strong so it’s hard to choose another example but I’ll go for this from The Cartographer’s Apprentice: Her seamless skin was pleasing; its laced webs,/ woven hairs, the pale green passages pulsing/ out the eager hands. And the underside of flesh/ where the sun cannot reach - so untrammelled/ as to almost not exist, except as a membrane/ between light and dark.
Page(s) 56-57
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