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A Responsibility to Awe by Rebecca Elston

This is a wonderful collection of poems and notes towards further poems. Elson, who died tragically young, was an astronomer was well as a gifted poet. Her poetry is beautifully written and insightful, moving and joyful at the same time. She writes about illness, the natural world, science and the universe and makes the reader really stop and think about the meaning of life.

If ocean is like universe then waves
Are the dark wells of gravity
Where stars will grow.

 

Juliet Wilson, 26 September 2007

Revewing Rebecca Elston, A Responsibility to Awe (Oxford Poets, 2002), ISBN 1903039541

The Best Man That Ever Was by Annie Freud

This is a collection that has already been much talked about, and indeed it has now been shortlisted for the 'Forward'. The blurb describes her as "one of the most startlingly original poets to have emerged in recent years." Is she? I'll answer with another question, "Who is?" However, leaving marketing hyperbole aside, I found this collection to be one of the most entertaining reads I've had in a long time. She's witty, sly and clever, and I like that in a poet. I never felt the urge to skip a poem in reading the book, not even the prose poems (a form over-used these days). They are all worth reading.

The poems are accessible (which is not to say they're simple - they're not), and won't trip you up with obscure classical references and abstruse philosophical debate. They're also very varied in subject and treatment - she's a very versatile poet.

So I liked the poems. A lot. If I have a quibble - call it a quibble-ette - it's with the book design. The cover is dull and uninspiring. More important, too many of her long lines run over into a single word on the the next line, and that's even with very narrow left-hand margins. It looks ragged. A larger page size would have solved the problem. It's picky, I know, but the look of a book is important.

 

Colin Will, 28 August 2007

Reviewing Annie Freud, The Best Man That Ever Was (Picador, 2007), ISBN 033044686X