SIMON PERCHIK: TOUCHING THE HEADSTONE Stride Publications 4b Tremayne Close Devoran Cornwall TR3 6QE UK ISBN 1 900152 14 2 £7.50 Visit the website of Stride Web design by This page last updated: 18th January 2010. |
SIMON PERCHIK: TOUCHING THE HEADSTONE | |
Occasionally in this collection Perchik removes the obscurity in which he wraps the everyday experiences of the world and when he does the result can be quite stunning as in The table too has come to stay though each morning its crust is ground to flour, sifted, stones unfolding into arms, legs, breasts — with each mouthful more crumbs becoming mulch, branches, roots, leaves — you don't need the sun, it's enough the kitchen has grown around you: ...Through it all there is a tension between the writer and the world round him, and the living and the dead, particularly noticeable when he is dealing with natural subjects Half trough, half where this coral stopped in front the way a horse bends down without a rider — it was a mistake, picking flowers till your hand became a claw learning how to swim sideways though these tombstones by now have grown over youHowever these nuggets have to be mined from 77 pages of untitled poems of varying quality. For me the power in these poems, and there is power here — like in the casting of spells meaning little to the uninitiated but sounding somehow right nonetheless — is more in hearing the words clash and scrape against each other as they are spoken and I soon found these poems worked better when read aloud. They have a hypnotic quality and the lack of titles draws you restlessly as images form and are taken away to be replaced by a juxtaposition or complexity. Perchik uses words to create a world vision uniquely his own. | ||
reviewer: Jim Bennett. |