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Anna Wigley’s poems have a great sensitivity throughout, where the natural world and all the elements meet to create visually rich poetry.
The title poem ‘Dürer’s Hare’ opens with the evocative line – ‘Still trembling, after five hundred years’. This is a fantastic summary of the visual impact of the drawing of the hare itself. Her poems are full of unravellings and movement within the natural world, which, in some, becomes symbolic of human emotion, as in ‘Days’: ‘The days lie idle in their wrappings, until you come to undo them’. And in ‘Marigolds’ as though a film has been slowed down: ‘From their bindings they unravel, like dusky lettuces’. There are quick and slow movements throughout, as though nature and the elements are creating themselves in front of the observer.
There is a deep and full engagement with the natural world, the richness which is only recognized when one feels part of it and close to its quick changing atmospheres. One of the most intense of these descriptions is in ‘August Midnight, Lilstock’ – ‘so felted was the dark, it hung on us in folds of powdered cloth’.
There is a fantastic poem entitled ‘Snail’ where she describes it as ‘slender-horned traveler of the lawn’s rainforests’, and there is an attractive use of rhyme later in the poem ‘so venture out now in the minor keys of rain, charting, with your lucent frills, the world’s weave and grain’. We are taken far in to the micro-world of the snail here, with her clever use of language and a gentleness achieved through the use of two-lined stanzas.
One or two later poems move in to the abstract field, where we enter a more surreal world of imagery, as in ‘The Sea Room’. In ‘Southerndown’ she presents imagery which is almost abstracted and yet has a deeply resonant sense of solidity and visual impact.
The whole collection gives the reader the experience of entering a magical, enigmatic space in the world, the visuals are pushed forward as striking and exploratory, we are asked to look properly and observe this world with all its curious detail and subtle humour. All in all, this is a lovely, readable collection where many of the visual images and concepts stay with you.
Clare Maynard
It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgement should be included: A review from www.gwales.com, with the permission of the Welsh Books Council.
Gellir defnyddio’r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.com, trwy ganiatad Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.
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