The third collection of the poems of Vuyelwa Carlin, comprising 35 diverse poems reflecting her childhood in South Africa and travels in Poland and America, together with meditations on various aspects of aloneness and disabilities, some poems having already appeared in previous publications.

Trydydd casgliad o gerddi Vuyelwa Carlin, yn cynnwys 35 cerdd amrywiol yn adlewyrchu ei phlentyndod yn Ne Affrig a theithiau yng ngwledydd Pwyl a'r Amerig, ynghyd â myfyrdodau ar amryfal agweddau ar unigrwydd ac anabledd; mae rhai cerddi eisoes wedi ymddangos mewn cyhoeddiadau eraill.

Marble Sky opens with a striking poem, 'Bottles of Blood', set in Uganda, 1958:

Forty years ago
you had a job, blood-collecting.
You, and an orderly, drove through the dust,
the vivid dusty green, some of it near-jungle,
to young men's colleges, crates
of bottles rattling in the back.

The scene is cheerful and innocent; the young men suffer no ill effects. And the poet leaves it there, but we will surely reflect that Africa today is ravaged by AIDS and the disease is carried by blood. The poem is powerful precisely because it does not say so.

Vuyelwa Carlin is interested in that thing called 'the soul' and its relationship to the atoms and electrons which make up our universe. She looks down from an aeroplane and muses on 'our azure lump of star'; she wonders whether music is real if played in a desert; she writes about identical twins who were mysteriously one person before the egg split. 'Is God real? - the only question, ever' she asks rhetorically. Well, not the only question, perhaps, but it has been known to lead to some good poetry.

Her best poems are those like the one above, where the bottle of blood means more than just itself. Other images which work are a mad dog, and a green boy found in the forest. You can absorb such images and go on to contemplate wider questions. Less successful is 'Escape of Two Pigs', which has a good subject but trickles away in phrases like 'there was a mythic feel to it'. The artist is supposed to show, not tell.

Other poems in the collection which seem to me not to come off are 'A Filter of Nerve', which talks earnestly about 'gulfs of synapses', 'dream-reality' and 'word-reality', and the title-poem, 'Marble Sky'. This is too long, has too many different images, and if I had not known it was a meditation on autism I would have had trouble working out its meaning. Her liking for the abstract concept, the literary reference, the philosophical argument, must limit the audience for her remarkable gifts.

Merryn Williams

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 ganiatâd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.