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red
silk slippers by Marilyn Francis, paperback, pp 60,
Circaidy Gregory Press, 6.50
Normally
I wouldn't start a review of a poetry collection by praising the
cover and title. I know this risks sounding pretentious but, though I
might let these influence my choice of novel in a supermarket,
somehow it doesn't seem quite serious enough when it comes to poetry.
Instead, I tend to select collections based on knowledge of the
poet's other work or personal recommendation.
However,
in the case of red silk slippers I chose it for all of these
reasons, though I rather suspect the cover and title alone would have
been enough to make me pick up the book. Not only is the cover design
stunning in itself but, like the collection title, aptly epitomises
the contents.
Take
the word 'red' and the striking single image of the
bright hanging bird from Singapore. These are a taster of the
boldness and colour of Francis's poems, which take you from these
red silk slippers from Thailand of the title poem to thoughts
like yellow jelly seas ('Alice B Toklas Has Second Thoughts');
and the oiled rainbow gutters of 'Evening in Paris'.
silk
hints at the sensuousness of sound and description throughout this
collection; from the confusion of bramble at the kitchen window
scraping the panes with black thorns/tapping witchy-fingered on
the glass ('Dressing Table') to sound/slicing/like a
wire/through the dark ('Nocturne in St James' Park') and two old
ladies, Brillo hair on seashell skulls ('Sisters').
slippers
symbolises for me the way particular experiences, memories and events
are made as familiar in this collection as a pair of slippers.
However surreal some of the poems may at first appear, they still
strike a chord. And yet, taking the title as a whole, familiar things
are also made exotic or unusual, as we see when 'Mme de Chirico goes
shopping a song of love'.
The
bird-shadow of the cover can also be interpreted metaphorically.
While Francis may employ a light-hearted tone in poems such as 'The
Last Fairy In The Pack', 'Pig Philosophy', 'Mona Lisa', 'Bananarama',
there is a shadow, or darker side, to many of her poems. Even on
second reading, the last stanza of 'Birthday Present' (ostensibly
about the gift of a kite which leads a boy to become a bird) made me
physically gasp.
One
can find with a single author collection that one grows too used to
an individual poet's style. But this collection avoids that danger.
Francis's variety of rich description and sometimes rather surreal
contents from 'Guerilla Gardening' to 'Unrequited: The Love Song
of a 5B' (a pencil!) keeps one very much engaged. And, while most
of the poems are free verse, Francis takes advantage of a range of
poem lengths, stanza lengths and line lengths, making particular use
of shape in her unusual 'The Jarrow Crusade'.
I
could continue; there are so many more poems worthy of mention, from
waiting for the table to shrink/to the optimum size/for a nuclear
family ('Protect and Survive') to the the explosive 'The Machine
Aesthetic'. Like Francis's ghosts that still wait at the
platform's edge ('ghosts'), this is a collection that leaves a
presence. The poems linger long after the book is closed.
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