A volume of poems on a variety of themes, using fine imagery and power. They are at once comic, moving, magical and compassionate. The author's work has been widely published in magazines and journals. He is also a singer/songwriter.

Cyfrol o gerddi ar amrywiaeth o themâu, yn defnyddio delweddau grymus. Maent yn ddifyr, yn deimladwy, ac yn hudol. Cyhoeddwyd nifer o weithiau'r awdur eisoes mewn cylchgronau a chyfnodolion. Mae hefyd yn gyfansoddwr ac yn ganwr.

‘I have seen leaves migrate/ to parallel lives’. The rhythm and tone of this collection are as delicate and elusive as the migrating leaves of its title poem. After responding 'No' to the shop assistant’s question, ‘Are you Ingrid’s husband?’ the poet begins to imagine the physical presence of Ingrid, her nature, her life, and ends with, ‘Perhaps I should have answered Yes.’ The reader is drawn into these poems, much as the figure in the dark arcade of 'White Balloon' is seduced by the evasive, chasing after a meaning which is ‘always a metre ahead on its current of air’ – the faster he walks to grasp it, the quicker its pace becomes.

Our hopeless desire to find meaning in the random events of our lives is a constant theme, seen at its most pathetic in ‘Six Men in Search of a Car’ – six men who have left their desks mid-sentence to go outside ‘to push a car that isn’t there’. They need the car to unify their purpose, to give them a collective meaning as pack or squadron, but, ‘there is nothing to put muscle into/ no war, no coalface/ only this space, and redundancy/ in the faces of six men.’ What happens when a man feels himself redundant? He becomes like the character in ‘Three Women Running for a Bus’. The poet is on the top deck, watching his mother, daughter and wife running and failing to halt the bus as it pulls away with him in it calling back to them through the glass ‘like a fish miming its own life soliloquy.’ In recognizing our search for meaning as redundant, Henry likens himself to a weathervane, directed by unpredictable elements, ‘By such turns/ I live and die, hammering/ an eternity ring/ on a whim’s mandrel/ knowing what once weighed true/ becomes lighter than air/ a fairground from a forge.’

Using minimal language, Paul Henry creates vast, haunting spaces resonating with absence, grief and loss – of life, love, of a former self. In ‘Between Two Bridges’, he follows his teenage self through the city at night; in ‘Black guitar’ he comes across a guitar after ten years, with Joe written in its dust in a child’s hand and reflects poignantly ‘a man’s tears are worth nothing/ but a child’s name in the dust, or in the sand/ of a darkening beach,/ that’s a life’s work.’ In ‘Sold’, ‘A Tree for David Trevorrow’, ‘The Waiting Room’ and ‘The Viewing’ our efforts to make sense of loss are touchingly evoked through the traces left by those who have gone – remembering the leaves David painted on the walls of their damp flat; an ashtray that says ‘I’ll quit tomorrow’; an empty coat stand ‘draped with your absence’; and on the prospect of moving home ‘Is it the house or love/ we are moving out of?/ Perhaps we cannot say/ but it all hurts.’

This collection does not aim to console the complex feelings brought on by loss, it takes a bold step out into its emptiness, unafraid to explore the grief, despair, the absurd, the unnerving and the overwhelming. Consolation broke through in brief moments for me where nature is a constant reminder of both new and enduring life – a single yellow rose survives the wind and rain under a cold grey sky, ‘the rose that forgot to die’; or in ‘Shed’, where the poet has taken refuge in the rain, ‘Two spiders survive/ One has crossed/ the misted pane to reach the other/ I have known worse places to be lost.’

Jane MacNamee

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.