32
HESITANCIES Sanjeev Sethi CLASSIX 96pp £10.16 (in the UK) ISBN 978 81 952562 2 8
So work can have a life of its own, as well as having a personal reality for the artist." My favourite painting is Leaving the Island/Snow in the Wind, which has a rarely seen (although familhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Books- iar to keen snorkelers) split view of seaweed under Sanjeev-Sethi/s?rh=n%3A266239% the water's surface and snow falling above. This reminded me of swims in light snow and the sense of 2Cp_27%3ASanjeev+Sethi moving in a novel combined environment. I was also struck by Luminescence, another view Sanjeev Sethi is prolific, following stressing two layers. A scene of straggly biolumineson from his recent DREICH Wee cence is glimpsed under the surface of a night sea. Book ‘Bleb’ is this. His use of the English language is masterful yet playful. His poems Carol Goodridge sees the light as a warning: are often loaded with unexpected words not often "This is our world, they say, leave us in peace". seen in modern poetry. The subject is as always the foibles, intricacies and absurdities of the human conShe turns the painting upside down for another podition.(his own included). His delineations are second to none. His precise use of the right word rather em, taking the luminescence to be coming from meteors. than the easiest or most accessible is fascinating. It is no wonder that his poems are widely praised and Many poems are connected with ice-scapes, some published. Some might envy his ‘output’ but to me it with the sagas; or a feeling of saga-style scale and drama encouraged by ice-scapes, places where, in is a sign that he is entirely focused on the work at hand and labours at his poetry and is not content to Sue McCormick's words: settle for the mundane (even if he is writing about the mundane). This effort applied pays dividends and "Earth (is) unearthly". many would-be poets could learn from his work ethic, his exuberant love of words and his joy at creating McCormick also offers an interesting human/iceberg comparison: his cumulative oeuvre. The poetry in ‘hesitancies’ is poetry to be read and "How being human is the balance read again, to find the gems within, endlessly inbetween what is shown and what is hidden". ventive, and with an ever present twinkle of self awareness that drags him back from obscurity. He has an eye for a sort of labyrinthine zen koan that Other poems stress hardship and dangers, especially of fishing. Another poem by Goodridge has a fishersends us searching for a dictionary at one moment, nodding in agreement at another and wiping a tear at man living where "...the catch and he are caught." the next. There is no one writes like him, works as hard or is as dedicated to his craft and for that I salute him. GOR Annie Wright appealingly intertwines words of English with words of Icelandic connected with water. I was charmed by David Neilson's description of beach THE ARTIST’S TALE stones as "mountain eggs". Poems inspired by the So a celebration, but also a book for readers interpaintings of Silvana ested in sea and ice-scapes. BM McLean. (LIT ROOM PRESS) 80pp (with colour artwork) £14.99 A celebration of the art of Silvana McLean. Also an attractive combination of reproductions of her paintings with poems written by others in response to the originals. The poems/pictures are largely water related and reflect work from her residencies in Iceland and Shetland. Alasdair McLean offers a helpful introduction. He suggests her paintings invite the viewer to either "make up their own story, or to intuit Silvana's intentions, either of which is also a creative process.
