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Very, Annemarie Austin, 2008, Bloodaxe Books. £9.95 ISBN 978-1-8522479-5-9

 
This is a 160pp, ‘New & Selected’ comprising Very (2008) and five previous collections (1987 – 2003), amongst which there are some ‘stunners’ that illustrate Austin at her very best: imaginative, exploratory, sharp wit and voice to match. 

It’s 1799.  Habitual drunk, Bes Woodcock, is  buried under snow in a blizzard and survives  eight nights and eight days before being rescued  by “William Muncey – or Muney – ”, who dreamed of “a great, white, red-eyed, drunken  hare / so he knew who it was at once” (Snowcase – Versions). The tale is discussed in seven pages, four ‘versions’, each moving the story further along the time-line.  Expertly handled, intriguing, entertaining, and not a foot wrong.

In Moonless, in three short sections, the werewolf is denied the moon. The cow has nothing to jump over. Becoming depressed, they meet at the Great Brine Lake:  “ ‘Remember the swing of the tide?’ she asked him, lowing. / But he could not. His nails curved only a little on her hide”. Hmm. How many long-partnered couples will relate to this, I wonder?

I really enjoyed the poems in Back from the Moon (2003), where “I” comes in solidly and the poems are the more intimate and engaging for it, as in ‘Of a Middle Nature Between Man and Angels’ where “automatic doors refuse to notice my arrival, / my voice won’t record, / the nurse can’t find a vein.” 

Very (2008), reconfirms Austin’s impressive range of topics and depth of detail and is full of questions, boundaries and today’s anxieties: faith, politics, technology, war. “Is it true that through rain / all of a sudden a butterfly will / fly straight?” (On Trains); “But now, out of your need for / castigation, an imaginary enemy raises its / yellow face” (The Parley).  Everything is seemingly on the edge of something; not only the poems’ content but the writing itself, which seems poised to take off in unaccustomed directions.

The title poem is disturbing:

                 … In France old people
died, and their desiccated dark bodies
with transparent paper wings were piled

too high...

                                   … but today
a little bubble of milk settled precisely
on my nipple when I made white coffee –

which discomfited me.  I am not so not young
yet.

                                                                           Very

More, please…