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A quick glance through the acknowledgements of Fiona Sampson's latest collection of poems will give an indication of the diversity of her work. Here, we find that these poems have appeared variously in translation in Romanian, as a commission from Wycombe District Council, as part of Age Concern England's Debate of the Age and as part of a lieder-cycle. In Fiona Sampson, then, we have a poet engaging in the challenges of her community and finding poetic inspiration in many sources.
At her most intimate and unambiguous, as in 'The X File', the poet resigns herself in sonnet form to the end of a relationship. 'You don't love me.', she writes, 'And that's the end of it.' Where once the certainty of attachment lay in 'the tender groove / Between your thumb and palm that once clipped mine / Neat as a file' (and the bureaucratic image here is as pleasing as it is unexpected), now it has come astray, and the poet is left instead to 'travel on'.
Motion is at the heart of 'Travel Diary'. Here, the view of the world through the frame of the train window on some foreign trip, with its timber yards, 'bony trees' and black flax, is conflated with the act of reading, and 'Light is in the sky's / white screen / on the page / on your foreigner's tongue.'
The title poem is, however, perhaps more representative of the collection as a whole. Another syllabic sonnet, the piece philosophizes on the nature of sound and specifically the theory among violinists that an old instrument will retain the 'voice' of an owner even though someone else may play that instrument. The poem problematizes this concept of voice, 'that print of self', and the inextricable link between the sound of the player and of the instrument played, 'uniting / the sound you will make and the one already made.' This is a demanding poem which, as with other pieces in this varied and challenging collection, will leave the reader to tease out a final meaning.
Graham Tomlinson
It is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment 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 ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.
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