NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

Sometimes when one is writing reviews the very nature of the material begs the question of what stance one takes in relation to it. Had Geoff Stevens been in one of my creative writing classes my emphasis would have been on encouraging its strengths and abilities which are undoubtedly present. But once people have put their work into the public domain, they invite comparison with seasoned, and skilled practitioners of the art of poetry. Geoff Stevens' work is obviously fuelled by passion and commitment as well as imagination, but would benefit from shifting from the general to the particular, which would clarify his expression and might win the reader's allegiance which at the moment, however willing, is left with little to engage strongly with..

This said however, this small booklet of 9 poems has some interesting and memorable images from THE MORE DECEIVED:

	sun shines on faces
	smoulders on flags

	... I can see the chisel marks
	made upon my alloyed imagination

	never ... in the music of the skies
	have they looked for feathers, or for peace of mind.

Other poems show this 'rumble of dissent' but exactly what is the source of the discontent is not made clear. In THE MORE DECEIVED:

	The complacency of the English

	a land where men make a mess of things

SKIN AND HIDE MERCHANTS is a jibe at 'the never people' although it is not clear who these people are and quite what they have done to upset the writer, other than some innate lack of sensitivity or imagination. But there is the strong implication of guilt, even though we have not been told what the crime has been.

The poems that work best for me are the ones where there is no case to be made and no cause to present. The images of the natural world are presented with directness and appreciation, as in PENINSULAR:

	It is a bright, barley-sugar day

	Meccano vegetation of
	cow-parsley
	skeletons the satellite dishes

Of course, one is pleased to read Geoff Stevens' poetry. I'm sure it's laudable to promote a poet's work in leaflet form. It is, though, a credit to Mr Stevens' nine poems that they survive — and very well indeed — this rather basic publication. I doubt if anyone not particularly interested in poetry would be enticed to open up its folds and read — despite the poet's clever ink drawingon the front face. Editors need to convert as well as confirm.

Mr Stevens has his own clear voice; there is no mistaking his intentions. I liked, very much, THE L-SHAPED ROOM. It brings back my student days in which anything larger would have been a liability:

	The L-shaped room
	a part to lie down in
	a part to stand up in

Here are the third and fourth stanzas of a strikingly atmospheric poem — UNDER SAFETY OF DARKNESS:

	While nearby 
	the sodium estate lamps
	next to the mercury vaporised highway
	dingo the urban fox
	as he empties the dustbins of food-waste
	and illuminate burglars as they empty houses
	Only the car headlights of lovers
	join the two places in light

100-odd poems from the prolific Geoff Stevens. How does he manage to write so many? It is well-nigh impossible to open any issue of any magazine without finding one of Geoff's poems in it....but then one always lives in hope (only joking). A fair number of poems deal with places visited, others with love, women and desires and memories, all rather artificially divided into sections such as PLACES IN THE MIND or PLACES I'VE BEEN WITH YOU. In SCUPPERED there is praise of simple and mundane pleasures:

	The Aussie barman disappears and returns with our order.
	Bacon and brie dissolves with beer and wine,
	and outside, the gulls are drowning the sound of the waves.
	What more could we want.

	giant Sequoias of Wellingtonia Pine
	the taste of chalybeate
	the ferrous drink which springs in Rock Park
	near to the Pump Room
	and the Lovers' Leap
	and the sign which says the Automobile Palace
	once sold aeroplanes.
	Who'd want to fly away from here?

	The air up here is stretched to disbelief,
	our lungs gasping at its purity,
	so we pause for cool orange juices
	and cold apple strudels, at a lone house
	that provides them on a small scale,
	for a few schillings, not to get rich quick.

	It was a street corner slouching,
	dog-howling, sort of neighbourhood,
	up to no good behind its shop front
	advertisements for 7-Up and
	hot chilli sauce

	I am living in the wallpaper;
	it is as full of sqiggles as an Arab mosque.

	heart surgery
	and the daisy
	stitch
	rustles the chains in my slumbering head

	ghosts, come to haunt me,
	of the dead,
	those that by-passed life
	under the knife