NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

THE LIE OF THE LAND is an anthology of poetry from Wales. This collection has been put together not only to showcase some fine writing but also to raise funds for the Meningitis Trust. In the foreword, Peter Finch explains that:

Poetry in Wales today is no longer constrained by an obsessive need to express identity

While there are poems that remember the industrial heritage, such as HISTORY by Owen Shears and THE VIVIAN QUARRY, LLANBERIS by Nigel Humphreys, there are many others that readers of any nationality will identify with.

Christine Evans' evocative FIRST SONG tells of an infant beginning to make the sounds that will shape into the language of intelligence as he becomes aware of himself and of the world around him.

	Four months old, Michael
	opens his mouth and looses
	a stream of liquid syllables
	that speak to us, like the whale-singing,
	or another world, our earliest
	surges and soundings.

	Of course, I regret it now —
	that I ushered him out
	with a wave of the kettle,

	in mid-sentence. I was dying
	for a cup of tea, and he
	just wanted to chat.

		But I do
	recall my courteous smile
	didn't fool him;

	the way he left,
	clutching his copy of the map
	of the way things used to be.

	Piece by piece the body drops
	Its usefulness.
	He is stunned and surrounded.

	In December she starts her spring cleaning