NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

It is not a new idea to ask a collection of different creative practitioners to re-act to a single stimulus. It has worked well for musicians and particularly painters who have produced fine mixed exhibitions of themed work.

It does seem to me however that writers suffer the same problems as musicians in the respect that quick comparisons are difficult to experience, though, at least with the written word it is a simple matter of reading and re-reading until the similarities and differences clarify.

In MEDUSA the theme is well illustrated and documented for us by the editor, indeed the publication is worth the asking price in itself for the thoughtful topping and tailing by, first, the introduction, and last the reviewing of previous MEDUSA poetry, and the outline of the legend itself.

Between these poles we have the telling of the tale by 51 poetry writers, 27 from the UK, 14 from overseas, mostly from the USA.

This is an anthology to pore over. Between its 58 pages are the well wrought thoughts of a collection of accomplished poets, many of them academics whose achievements are carefully listed on four very full pages at the conclusion of the anthology.

FAIRGROUND MEDUSA by Geoff Stevens places her firmly in the traveling-show.

	mutant in a freak show
	sitting in her caravan
	after the funfair has closed
	but with the red, blue and white hung-out lights
	still stuttering through the window
	onto her scaly golden skin

	...
	time to relax a little
	and daydream of being rescued by a handsome greek warrior
	of flying away from here
	on his beautiful winged horse.

	But she must not fall asleep yet
	not before she takes the mice for their cage
	and feeds them to the snakes
	the snakes that hiss and writhe
	that hiss and writhe.

	There was a panic in the salon
	when a harridan appeared.
	she'd got no appointment
	but loudly demanded
	that someone did something
	to sort out her writhing hair

	...
	the owner
	told Tracey the new girl
	to give her a crew cut
	but to put on thick gloves
	and brush up the cuttings
	as fast as she could,
	then tell the woman
	in the clearest of terms
	not to come back.

	She'd wanted it all different,
	described to the thin young man
	in the low lit salon, I'd like, well
	ringlets, all over my head.
	And that's what she’d got
	And she loathed them.

	in his private dome
	made Apple growing an art
	or tinkering with the lifeboat,
	hiding his dark mood with a swish
	of the black flag.

	...
	He never bargained though for Sid,


	...
	buzzing in his face
	like an irate wasp, impossible to brush off.

	...
	Sid
	tugging the sleeves of his coat
	and crying plaintively, Well, did she?
 	Did she?
	Did the Medusa go to heaven do you suppose?

	What monstrousness
	shambles from grantham
	to mesmerize and lay waste

	...
	wreak discord where was harmony.
	Devouring consensus into conflict,

	...
	ossifying these islands to stone

	...
	all I hear
	is the sound of murdered pits,
	skeletons of stilled steelworks,	
	the ghost-dead of the Belgrano,
	time-weighted, cast to stone
	and lost

	& everywhere
	I see the serpent spawn

Many of the poems just re-tell the legend from different points of view. Noteable is MEDUSA'S TALE by David Kopaska-Merkel and the wryly barbed MEDUSA, QUEEN OF THE LIFE-SIZED YARD GNOMES by Michael Lohr. Similarly MEDUSA'S DAUGHTER by James S Dorr is a marvelous poem which looks at the tale a generation later.

As I have already said, this is an anthology to pore over. There are very very few unworthy of mention, but there is never room enough to deal with all the poems that catch the reviewer's imagination. Buy it and see what I mean! And let me leave you with a snakelet by Mike Johnson, FAMOUS LAST WORDS:

	Skinhead, seeking fame,
	finds Medusa, 'Oi, fangface,
	who are you stari...'