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Lockdown
Jane McLaughlin's meticulously observed and linguistically adept poems brim with fresh imagery and moments of surprise. She has a gift for taking the quotidian and seeing below the surface of the instant so that new connections are made, chains of small epiphanies that make this collection as humane as it is accomplished. From sustained sequences to tight lyric pieces, the pressure on language and the attention to detail gives this collection an enviable poise.
Piano
He pushed her piano out into the snow,
shouldered its rumbling bulk over the step.
Lurching, it rang a mad arpeggio.
The keyboard, silent since the day she left
rattled its teeth. Fortissimo
the blizzard thumped its panels till they bent.
Winter rain lifted the veneer, soaked the wood
to mouldering green. Slugs chewed up the felt.
A rat nested in the wires, started a brood.
Still he could not stop the ostinato
of loss and music sounding in his head.
The piano haunted him, unburied bones.
As Spring came, woodwind squalls blew through
the rotting carcass, playing Aeolian tunes.
'A mature artist who knows what she wants to say; there are flashes of brilliance everywhere. A striking and vivid collection'
Matthew Francis
Piano
He pushed her piano out into the snow,
shouldered its rumbling bulk over the step.
Lurching, it rang a mad arpeggio.
The keyboard, silent since the day she left
rattled its teeth. Fortissimo
the blizzard thumped its panels till they bent.
Winter rain lifted the veneer, soaked the wood
to mouldering green. Slugs chewed up the felt.
A rat nested in the wires, started a brood.
Still he could not stop the ostinato
of loss and music sounding in his head.
The piano haunted him, unburied bones.
As Spring came, woodwind squalls blew through
the rotting carcass, playing Aeolian tunes.
'A mature artist who knows what she wants to say; there are flashes of brilliance everywhere. A striking and vivid collection'
Matthew Francis
80 pages, Paperback
Published September 20, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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October 9, 2016I’ve previously had the good fortune to hear Jane McLaughlin read her poems a couple of times at events organised by Cinnamon Press. So I’ve been looking forward to the publication of her first collection and the chance to read her poems after listening to them.
She is a highly observant poet and many of these poems capture moments of paying close attention; from the boys from London “skinny, daisy-pale, shorts drooping like seaweed being let loose in Sydney in ‘the Rooftop Pool’ and where a
“yellow plastic spade
lies buried like a dinosaur bone”
‘Playground in December’
My favourite poem was “Learning about Potatoes” which encompasses the Irish famine as well as the life of
“a Mayo nun in her grey cotton apron
pitched the piled weeds onto the barrow
and crying with the pain of those who lay
where they fell…
The book includes three sequences of poems; Coming ashore at Halifax, The Apprentice and Ways of Falling. I liked all of them but appreciated the first one the most about the sinking of the Titanic. I had not realised that bodies of the victims were recovered and buried in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
“A sea-town is never far from loss;
sea-widows and their children
know the closing of hope
its people live at the edge
of drowned lives
never knowing what will come home.”
She is a highly observant poet and many of these poems capture moments of paying close attention; from the boys from London “skinny, daisy-pale, shorts drooping like seaweed being let loose in Sydney in ‘the Rooftop Pool’ and where a
“yellow plastic spade
lies buried like a dinosaur bone”
‘Playground in December’
My favourite poem was “Learning about Potatoes” which encompasses the Irish famine as well as the life of
“a Mayo nun in her grey cotton apron
pitched the piled weeds onto the barrow
and crying with the pain of those who lay
where they fell…
The book includes three sequences of poems; Coming ashore at Halifax, The Apprentice and Ways of Falling. I liked all of them but appreciated the first one the most about the sinking of the Titanic. I had not realised that bodies of the victims were recovered and buried in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
“A sea-town is never far from loss;
sea-widows and their children
know the closing of hope
its people live at the edge
of drowned lives
never knowing what will come home.”
September 29, 2017
It's taken me a week or so to read and reread this book - and in a good way! There's so much to enjoy and to think about in Jane McLaughlin's beautifully-observed, resonant poems and poem sequences. I admire the skill with which she segues seemingly effortlessly between current events, myth, history and personal history. She finds poetry, for example, in the fine detail of lace-making or a seamstress's craft - and there's poetry in her deft shifts from fabric to social fabric. The collection spans an exhilerating range of contexts, from London street life (a powerful evocation of the world of night workers) to a retired boatman's memory of 'kingfisher noons/with the engine running sweet', to the wreck of the Titanic, to our contemporary tragedies, 'the men and women who seem to sleep/on the sandy beach at Tarifa'. This is a collection to treasure.
November 29, 2016
Mclaughlin observes life with deep astuteness then intricately threads each emotion into words. From a spiritual ride with Tamil Taxi and Guruji to the gritty reality of Lockdown and Walking Home the collection encompasses everyday experiences and turns them into a sublime adventure. An exquisite array of poems;a collection I will delve into again and again.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews