NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW
An independent small press poetry review
 MIRACLE & CLOCKWORK edited by James Roderick Burns Other Poetry Editions 29 Western Hill Durham DH1 4RL UK ISBN 0 9551749 0 2 £9        Web design by  This page last updated: 10th December 2007. |
MIRACLE & CLOCKWORK | |
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A best of selection from poems published in OTHER POETRY, more or less covering the ten years from 1995 - 2005, MIRACLE AND CLOCKWORK contains 129 poems from 129 poets. The selection includes some poetry magazine regulars, eg Anne Stevenson, W N Herbert, Dannie Abse, Kit Wright, Myra Schneider, Jon Silkin, among some less well-known names. It's always good to see a poem from the late Andrew Waterhouse, here with CLIMBING MY GRANDFATHER ... reaching the summit, where gasping for breath, I can only lie watching clouds and birds circle; feeling his heart, knowing the slow pulse of his good heart.Carlos Hiraldo worships KATE WINSLET ..For those round hips of yours, I'll forgive England Wordsworth and its lynching Southern children. How can the British sun nourish so much life?...Whilst Rachel Blake reminds us that blue bottle grubs prevented gangrene in wounded in the First World War battlefields in BLUEBOTTLES V We with the brazen sheen, we infect, we clean, they hum — remember us? — the boys? eating up pus? — battlefields - World War One? Our babes sucked you clean.D A Prince observes KEEPING IN TOUCH She crams each page like a mad woman, hugs every margin, scared of space where doubts and contradictions seed like weeds. And capitals! Loves them: slams them loud among lurching words...And Mark Rutter provides the anthology's title in THE GARDEN IN THE CLEARING, IN THE FOREST IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS LIFE Paperwasps gather goldenrod pollen, their faceted jet bodies, both miracle and clockwork, dancing on the heads of yellow pins, jaws ticking below the lacquered masks, delicate antennae feeling along flower-filaments haired with sherbet, dusted with gold...MIRACLE AND CLOCKWORK is an attractive celebration of OTHER POETRY. As with most anthologies, discussion will be provoked by considering the poems left out, whether the 129 poets were represented by their best poem and the ratio of male to female poets (here 60/40), but that rather misses the point. Let's celebrate: not every poetry magazine survives as long as OTHER POETRY did. | ||
| reviewer: Emma Lee. |