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Following her collection Imagining The Full Hundred, which dealt with her earlier life abroad, Going Gentle is a collection rooted in the daily experiences of Fiona Owen's life on Anglesey: her family, friends and pets, and her on-going conversation with fellow poets about poetry itself.
Her style is accessible; sometimes so simple that it seems mere anecdote, but her approach is summed up in the epigraph by James Hillman: ‘The world does not ask for belief, /It asks for noticing, attention, appreciation and care.’ This introduces the poem in which – describing the minutiae of waiting at Llandudno Junction – she considers her own impulse to write and the insights of various contemporary religious poets. Her self-deprecating humour is evident here and in many other poems such as ‘Why I Write’, ‘Getting Down Off the Fence’ and the splendidly titled ‘Avalokitesvara on the day his Great Compassion was born’. They have a serious message but do not take themselves too seriously.
There is an elegiac strand to the collection, several poems being concerned with the death of friends (human and animal), but while acknowledging grief they also witness to hope.
Those of us who live by the Western sea perhaps share a particular awareness of light – the more complex work of Christine Evans, for instance, is shot through by the same imagery and experience. This is manifest in many of Fiona's poems but nowhere better than in 'The Nature Of Light' itself, where:
‘ . . . the spray of beams
seem to seek the heart
and can be followed back
to the flame.’
Although some of the sketched stories remain just that, it is generally in her expression of intimate encounters that Fiona Owen's poetry works best. In ‘Lleucu’ or ‘August Caterpillar’, for example, her precise observation makes ‘every creature . . . a mirror of life’.
Caroline Clark
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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