NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

An independent small press poetry review

NHI independent review
D S DAVIDSON: THE BARDS #10
Atlantean Publishing
38 Pierrot Steps
71 Kursaal Way
Southend on Sea
Essex
SS1 2UY
UK
10p
email Atlantean Publishing
visit Atlantean Publishing's website
www
NHI review home page
FAQ page
Notes for Publishers
book reviews
anthologies
magazines
other media
Web design by Gerald England
This page last updated: 1st September 2009. 		D S DAVIDSON: THE BARDS #10

This is a very clever idea for introducing new writing inexpensively to a wider audience. THE BARDS series consists of A4 tri-fold sheets, printed in monochrome fashion, designed

to showcase the work of individual poets
Each provides a sample of that poet's work, which can be distributed easily (for example at readings). This particular example includes eleven poems by poet D.S. Davidson, each poem varying from between two and thirty-six lines. The front page includes an illustration by A.C. Evans, and the back page includes contact details for Atlantean Publishing, details of the featured author, as well as information by the series' senior editor D.J. Tyrer.

For all its conceptual aplomb, Davidson's work here is simultaneously apocalyptic in tone and yet coldly humourous. The poems themselves are relatively flat in their diction and a little unsurprising in both situation and perspective. I also find the rhythms of the poems sometimes jarring in what seems like unplanned ways. Here are the first ten lines of THE HAUNTED HOUSE:

	No-one visits the old house atop the hill
	It has a terrible reputation
	As the place where a mad man chose to kill
	Causing outrage across the nation.
	the local children shun it
	It has been abandoned many years
	No salesman bothers to visit
	For it's the sum of local fears.
	The old man's ghost stalks, in his hand a knife
	There's also the bloody apparition of his wife:
Others, such as in this opening stanza of I AM BECOME DEATH tread a little heavily on familiar ground:
	"I am become Death"
	The words that ushered in
	The birth of the Nuclear Age
	As Los Alamos ended its labour pains
	With the rising of the atomic sun
So, while I am impressed by this ingenious venue for new work, it may be that some new writers might profit equally through having their work placed more directly alongside that of other poets, where their relative strengths and weaknesses might be seen more advantageously.

reviewer: John Ballam.