GILL McEVOY: UNCERTAIN DAYS HappenStance 21 Hatton Green Glenrothes Fife KY7 4SD UK ISBN 0 9550280 7 8 £3 email HappenStance visit the website of HappenStance Web design by This page last updated: 10th December 2007. |
GILL McEVOY: UNCERTAIN DAYS | |
One of the strengths of Ms McEvoy's poetry is that she writes about what she really knows. A substantial amount of what she knows, at least within the body of this collection, is familial incompatibility, illness and death. In a lesser poet these ingredients might have been prescriptive for mawkish self-pity and reader alienation. Ms McEvoy has, with few lines, communicated not only her feelings (subtle and gut) but also a sense of people and place. FOR FINBAR: The stars are like apples crowding the tree. You could have picked them one by one, kept them in the pocket closest to your heart. But it is I who watch the stars, I, who cannot name them as you did, and the pockets of my heart are filled with holes, the bright apples always out of reach.Although most of the poems are short, there is no sense of truncation; she shows just enough of her world to draw the reader in — to feel, as far as is possible, what she has felt. That this is done with a restrained, descriptive lyricism that in no way detracts from the strength of those feelings shows rare ability — from BREAD: I am considering your death, my illness, the burden of uncertain days. I ball up tight the springy globe, stretch it like a rubber band, let it go. It moulds itself into a mass of yeasty muttering, like men straining at a heavy task, sweats and mumbles, making something of itself. It grows a mushroom sponge of hope. I punch it down. It's mine to shape.UNCERTAIN DAYS is a moving collection communicated by a poet who has an individual voice and an integrity that encourages a reader to listen to it. | ||
reviewer: Michael Bangerter. |