I always read poetry aloud. To me it seems the most natural way to enjoy the medium. I’ve even been known to record myself reading poetry aloud to listen to at a later date. But I don’t like hearing the sound of my own voice played back, so I don’t do it that often! Sometimes it can be quite hard to read a poem aloud the first time that you see it. However, with this absolutely delightful and thought-provoking collection from Imogen Scott I found it unbelievably easy. The words just flowed, and I found as I read them out loud (only to myself) the meaning and the intention behind these words became so much more than if I had simply read them from the printed page.
As with many collections of poetry interpretation lies very much in the hands of the reader. Words, phrases resonate and draw you further in to join the poet who has laid their soul bare to share with you their take on living and life.
The collection is something of a meditation upon the fragility and transience of life and invites us to take a moment to shelter beneath a canopy of intricate words. It’s a collection for those of us worn raw by the shifts all around us who long for some stasis.
The language is tender yet uncompromising, fierce yet delicate.
‘It’s on the tip of your tongue,
the promise of a life where each moment bleeds,
screaming to be seen,
like a pressure on your chest.
There’ll be plenty more days,
but there will never be enough.
There’s a perception and astuteness to the rhythms of life within a natural world and that intrinsic ability to philosophise that seems to exist within folk of certain sensibilities.
We do not know of the gods,
except the laws that make up
the world in which we inhabit,
immediate or otherwise.
Who’s to say that the magic of it
doesn’t live up in the trees,
sketched into the underbelly
of roots that reach to one another
like hands under the earth.
That the mushroom does not bear witness.
to the greater folds of universes,
trapped inside one another
like the curves of a seashell.
I could continue to quote great swathes of the book. But I think it would be much better if you were to seek out a copy for yourself! But perhaps I’ll end with one last, shorter poem, in its entirety, entitled Divided.
I feel my time is limited,
and sometimes feel the brush of it behind me,
like a hand reaching across a divide.
I was told it was a thin veil,
a sheet in the wind, hung up to dry,
and you are standing behind it.
Apparently, this is a debut collection. It doesn’t read like a debut collection, it reads like an experienced poet. I
absolutely love it.
My thanks to the author and to Librarything for a gifted copy.
