NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

An independent small press poetry review

NHI independent review
ANNE LEWIS-SMITH: EVERY SEVENTH WAVE
Oversteps Books
Froude Road
Salcombe
South Devon
TQ8 8LH
UK
ISBN 0 9552424 5 2
£8
A subsequent collection is RED SHOES (Poetry Monthly Press ISBN 978 1 906357 28 3)
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This page last updated: 23rd November 2008. 		ANNE LEWIS-SMITH: EVERY SEVENTH WAVE

Many of Anne Lewis-Smith's poems are not just about places, but they are filled with people or memories of people associated with these places.

The sea is a prominent image in her work: witness these stanzas from LITTLE HAVEN AT LOW TIDE:

	In eight hours time this space,
	this air I breathe,
	will be drowning sea

	...

	I shall be drinking tea
	behind my sandbagged door
	when that unceasing beast
	explodes with rage against the cliff,
	spits spume against my window-panes,
	at four o'clock
Powerful words and she achieves the same mastery in a sequence of poems about Napoleon and his days on St. Helena.

This is the author's 10th collection. My only regret is that there a few too many poems about the art of writing itself. The less reflective poems are far more interesting. Not all the poems are recent as I was delighted to see included First a poem I first published in 1970 and later reprinted in Editor's Dilemma.
reviewer: Gerald England.