Reviews

HESITANCIES Sanjeev Sethi CLASSIX 96pp £10.16 (in the UK) ISBN 978 81 952562 2 8

https://www.amazon.co.uk/BooksSanjeev-Sethi/s?rh=n%3A266239% 2Cp_27%3ASanjeev+Sethi Sanjeev Sethi is prolific, following on from his recent DREICH Wee Book ‘Bleb’ is this. His use of the English language is masterful yet playful. His poems are often loaded with unexpected words not often seen in modern poetry. The subject is as always the foibles, intricacies and absurdities of the human condition.(his own included). His delineations are second to none. His precise use of the right word rather than the easiest or most accessible is fascinating. It is no wonder that his poems are widely praised and published. Some might envy his ‘output’ but to me it is a sign that he is entirely focused on the work at hand and labours at his poetry and is not content to settle for the mundane (even if he is writing about the mundane). This effort applied pays dividends and many would-be poets could learn from his work ethic, his exuberant love of words and his joy at creating his cumulative oeuvre. The poetry in ‘hesitancies’ is poetry to be read and read again, to find the gems within, endlessly inventive, 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 sends us searching for a dictionary at one moment, nodding in agreement at another and wiping a tear at 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

THE ARTIST’S TALE Poems inspired by the paintings of Silvana 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. 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 familiar to keen snorkelers) split view of seaweed under the water's surface and snow falling above. This reminded me of swims in light snow and the sense of moving in a novel combined environment.

I was also struck by Luminescence, another view stressing two layers. A scene of straggly bioluminescence is glimpsed under the surface of a night sea. Carol Goodridge sees the light as a warning: "This is our world, they say, leave us in peace". She turns the painting upside down for another poem, taking the luminescence to be coming from meteors.

Many poems are connected with ice-scapes, some with the sagas; or a feeling of saga-style scale and drama encouraged by ice-scapes, places where, in Sue McCormick's words:

"Earth (is) unearthly". McCormick also offers an interesting human/iceberg comparison: "How being human is the balance between what is shown and what is hidden".

Other poems stress hardship and dangers, especially of fishing. Another poem by Goodridge has a fisherman living where "...the catch and he are caught." Annie Wright appealingly intertwines words of English with words of Icelandic connected with water. I was charmed by David Neilson's description of beach stones as "mountain eggs".

So a celebration, but also a book for readers interested in sea and ice-scapes. BM