NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

The pink and yellowing rose, rather like a pale wintry sun, on the book's cover is a maturing bruise. The red slash looks fresh. The poetry inside is fresh too. The cuts and bruises are real. The tears have flowed. It is, to coin a Dylan Thomas phrase, a work of words, but it is above all a work of insight and good honest courage.

This very strong collection addresses prejudice, violence and hypocrisy in multi-ethnic Britain today. It's about a woman's struggle for survival and acceptance. The poems are arranged chronologically in 3 chapters. There's the hard-hitting beginning, the even tougher middle and then there's the end with it's various possibilities and even something resembling a glimmer of hope.

In the first part JUST LIKE YOUR FATHER, set in the 1970s, we meet:

	three brown children 
	. . .
	with soft shells that didn't need 
	to be hit with a hammer to break

	Babies in pushchairs
	with pink plastic dummies cry;
	. . .
	and everybody smokes

	Little has changed here, up at the big house
	with me, the servant girl, being treated jolly well,
	having praise heaped on me, like spoonfuls of sugar

It was a privilege to read this collection.